Ota Benga
Ota Benga (* between 1881 and 1884; † March 20, 1916 in Lynchburg ) was a Congolese pygmy who was exhibited together with an orangutan in the Bronx Zoo in 1906 as an attraction in a people show.
biography
Ota Benga was a member of the Batwa people and lived in equatorial rainforests near the Kasai River , in what was then the Belgian Congo . Benga had survived the extermination of his village by the Force Publique , an official army under King Leopold II of Belgium .
The American missionary Samuel Phillips Verner (1873-1943) was sent to Africa on behalf of the 1904 World Exhibition ( Louisiana Purchase Exposition ), which took place in St. Louis , to bring pygmies from there for the exhibition. Verner met Ota Benga in the Belgian Congo that year, negotiated with a local slave trader over the pygmies, and returned to the United States with Ota Benga and eight others.
After the exhibition, the pygmies were brought back to Africa. However, Benga found no more social ties there and eventually returned to America with Verner. After several months of traveling in the United States, Verner Ota brought Benga to the Bronx Zoo in New York City in 1906 on the advice of Hermon Bumpu . Bumpus was the director of the American Museum of Natural History and, after Verner's return from Africa, had provided a place to store his cargo of exhibits and temporarily for Benga himself. From September 8, 1906, visitors could find him in the monkey house. Step by step it was literally "exhibited": Benga spent some time in the monkey house and the zoo suggested that he put his hammock there and shoot at a target with his bow and arrow. Soon a sign was put up with the following content:
The African Pigmy, "Ota Benga."
Age, 23 years. Height, 4 feet 11 inches.
Weight, 103 pounds. Brought from the
Kasai River, Congo Free State, South
Central Africa, by Dr. Samuel P. Verner. Ex-
hibited each afternoon during September.
The German translation is:
The African pygmy, "Ota Benga."
Age 23 years. Size about 150 cm.
Weight approx. 51 kg. Brought from
the Kasai River, Congo Free State, south-
central Africa, by Dr. Samuel P. Verner. Off
position every afternoon in September.
The director of the Bronx Zoo, William Hornaday, saw the exhibition as a valuable spectacle for his visitors and was encouraged by Madison Grant , a well-known eugenicist and advocate of scientific racism.
Due to immediate protests by Afro-American Baptist clergymen, the Hornaday exhibition was closed. According to the public, the exhibition was racist : "We think our race suffers enough without either of us being exhibited with the monkeys," said clergyman James H. Gordon. The subliminal support for the theory of evolution also raised concerns; Gordon stated: "The Darwinian theory is incompatible with Christianity, and public representation in its spirit should not be allowed". Benga was then allowed, in a kind of interactive exhibition, to move around the zoo and help feed the animals. As a reaction to his general situation and to verbal and physical taunts from the visitors, his behavior initially became malicious and then in places violent. Among other things, he shot arrows at visitors standing around the zoo who were injured.
In late September 1906, Ota Benga returned to the care of Gordon, who took him to the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum (where Gordon held a senior position), a Church sponsored orphanage . In January 1910, Gordon took care of Benga's relocation to Lynchburg , Virginia .
During his stay in Virginia, Benga's teeth, which he had filed down to stumps in the Congo, were crowned and he was dressed in everyday clothes. He was tutored by Anne Spencer, a poet from Lynchburg, and briefly attended classes in a theological seminary and college. However, he spent considerably more time without his clothes at home and wandering around in the nearby woods with his bow and arrow.
He dropped out of formal training and started working in a tobacco factory in Lynchburg. He was considered a good worker there because he could climb the poles without a ladder to pick the tobacco leaves. The other workers called him "bingo" and he shared his life story in exchange for sandwiches and root beer .
Ota Benga was caught between two worlds, unable to return to Africa, and largely viewed as a curiosity in the United States. On March 20, 1916, at the age of 32, he held a fire ceremony, removed the crowns from his teeth, performed one final tribal dance, and shot himself in the heart with a stolen pistol. The death certificate was issued in the name of "Otto Bingo".
He was buried in an unmarked grave. Records show that it was in the black section of Old City Cemetery near his supporter Gregory Hayes. At some point, however, both bodies disappeared from there. Oral reports suggest that Benga and Hayes were eventually moved from Old Cemetery to White Rock Cemetery, a cemetery that later fell into disrepair.
legacy
Phillips Verner Bradford, the grandson of Samuel Phillips Verner, wrote a book about Ota Benga in 1992 entitled "Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo". While researching his book, he visited the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which has a mask of the face and an imprint of Ota Benga's body. To this day, these are still titled “Pygmy” instead of using Benga's name, despite objections that began almost a hundred years ago by Samuel Phillips Verner himself.
Ota Benga was the subject of a short film by the Brazilian director Alfeu França. França found and used original footage shot by Verner himself in the early 20th century to make the 2002 documentary Ota Benga: A Pygmy in America . In Brazil the film was shown at the Festival É Tudo Verdade (German: "It's all true").
literature
- Phillips Verner Bradford, Harvey Blume: Ota Benga - The Pygmy in the Zoo . Delta, New York 1992, ISBN 0-385-31105-2
- Ken Smith: Raw deal: horrible and ironic stories of forgotten Americans. Blast Books, New York 1998, ISBN 0-922233-20-9 .
Web links
- The Guardian, June 3, 2015
- NPR , English, September 8, 2006
- Ota Benga Alliance , English
- Ota Benga: The pygmy in the zoo.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Benga, Ota |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Congolese pygmy who was exhibited at the Bronx Zoo in a 1906 peoples exhibition |
| DATE OF BIRTH | between 1881 and 1884 |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 20, 1916 |
| Place of death | Lynchburg |