Customer Reviews

Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo

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I picked up this book not expecting it to be true. The author does a good job of illuminating the lives of many people in and around the main character Ota Benga. This book also expertly portrays the cultural and political environment that raped Africans in the Belgian Congo, and oppressed them in Anglo-America. I highly reccomend this for your own library if you are an honest student of history.

I'd read references to a pygmy being placed on display in a zoo around the turn of the Century, but had never seen more till I was inspired to investigate by a song about the pygmy in an album by Pinataland. This book was the only adult book I was able to locate on the subject. I was suspicious because the grandson of Verner, arguably the "Villain" in the story was involved in the book.

The book appears to me to be reasonably unbiased, and certainly is no whitewash of Verner. It tells about Verner's three trips to Africa, how Ota Benga went to the USA with Verner, returned to Africa, and asked to go back to the USA, supposedly temporarily, but what ended up to be a permanent and tragic return. It ends up that Benga was actually on public display twice, and that there was another group of Africans with him placed on display who had a less unhappy end. There are a number of divergences from the story of Ota Benga and of Verner, especially in the first third of the book. These made me impatient early on, but the divergences are justified. There are a lot of people involved in this story from all over Europe and North America, including Bernard Baruch, Geronimo, King Leopold II of Belgium, Roger Casement the Irish revolutionary<!>, Mark Twain, and P.T. Barnum.

I recommend finding the book if you are remotely interested in the topic. My personal suspicion is that after the raid by hostile Africans that destroyed Ota Benga's family originally, Benga was pretty much destined for an unhappy end. This doesn't excuse the selfish and/or indifferent behavior of Verner. Verner shifted from a caring, but not too responsible guardian of Benga early on to to later seeming to actively seek to forget and ignore the human who had placed his future in Verner's hands.

The only real negative about the book I can find is that the author is sometimes tempted to journey into psychohistory of his characters with little justification. As long as you accept these ventures as sheer speculation and nothing more, you'll be fine.

I heard about this book while listening recently to National Public Radio. I'm glad I took the time to get it and to read it. It's the fascinating story not only about a pygmy named Ota Binga, but about ourselves, the people of "the Modern age." Though we're a bit distanced from the early 20th century, we still bear the marks of Modernity with its trust in empiricism and its belief that science has all the answers. Thinking themselves the epitome of humanity's development, and inspired by theories of social Darwinism, inquiring minds went to Africa in search of pygmies they could put on display at the 1904 Worlds Fair in St. Louis, along with the aged Chief Geronimo, Ingorots from the Phillipines, and others.

When S. P. Verner returned most of the pygmies to their native land, Ota asked to return to the United States, once again becoming a pawn in Verner's plan to win accolades and gain financial reward because of his travels in Africa. Though few took Verner very seriously (in great part because of his lifelong struggle with mental illness), the Bronx Zoological Gardens did take an interest in Ota. It was there that he became a virtual prisoner of that institution and became known as "the pgymy in the zoo." When representatives of the Colored Baptist Ministers' Conference received word of Ota's address being at the zoo's Monkey House, they pressured authorities to be allowed to take him to an orphanage (although Ota was already an adult). Finding Ota to be more and more unmanageable, the zoo's leadership agreed.

Rather than ruin the story for you, let me encourage you to read it for yourself. It takes a few more turns as Ota moves south and it eventually comes to a sad end. Abandoned by Verner, and unable to purchase a ticket to Africa, Ota Binga finds another way to return to his beloved land: "If the darkness IS and the darkness is of the forest, then the darkness must be good."

This book is both entertaining and disturbing. Above all, it is thought-provoking. One of the authors is grandson to S. P. Verner, so it was probably a difficult volume to produce. Looking closely at our ancestors can be unnerving ... it can remind us of ourselves.

This is a well written, engaging, and well balanced work. I strongly recommend it if you have an interest in history or sociology.

Also, the book King Leopold's Ghost is a great supplement to this work giving the reader background information on the Belgian Congo.

I urge people who are not even remotely interested in "native people" to give this book a chance as it addresses human nature in general. I am glad I did.

Great history-

covers: Civil war, anthropology, Africa, 1904 St.Louis Worlds Fair, Bronx zoo, and Ota Benga's tragic life story. One of the best stories ever told. Needs to be a Hollywood movie.

Stuart

Berson

Mahwah, NJ

A remarkable story of a heroic pygmy caught up in western society and western prejudices. Recommended as a good read.

Ota Benga

The Pygmy in The Zoo A review by Dan Schobert

It has been well said that `ideas have consequences. It was the idea of evolution which, early in the 20th century, placed a human being behind zoo bars.

The account is detailed in: Ota Benga, The Pygmy in the Zoo by Phillips Verner Bradford and Harvey Blume. (1992, St. Martin's Press)

The story is how the paths of two men crossed in the late 19th century. One was ex-missionary turned explorer, Samuel Verner and Ota Benga, estimated to be about 28 years old in 1906 and described as being 4'11" and weighting some one hundred pounds. By definition a pygmy is a short person, a dwarf, though some people would choose to view these people as being less than human, a creature not quite evolved to full human status.

Verner grew up in a prominent southern family and had visions of becoming an adventurer, not unlike Robinson Caruso. He traveled to the Congo as a missionary but changed his vision when he saw the possibility of adventure, even with financial reward. The idea that he could gain some riches came on the heels of an intense desire by many in this country to develop the science of Anthropology. There were attempts to exhibit people like Ota in fairs and elsewhere, supposedly representing early stages of man in a long evolutionary history. It was into this turn of events that Ota Benga fell a (perhaps) willing victim. During one of Verner's trips into the African interior, he came upon Ota and brought him along to this country. Eventually Ota became part of an exhibit at the Bronx Zoo.

One of the few photographs show Ota holding an Orangutan, in an African setting. Ota was not said to represent a stage of evolution but it was implied. This incensed a number of black ministers in the New York City area who initiated a campaign which eventually had Ota released and placed into an orphanage for black children. Keep in mind he was an adult, perhaps over 32 years old. Later he attended school in Virginia where in died in 1916, at his own hand.

Squeezed between these 280 pages, Bradford and Blume present little glimpses of the atrocities visited upon many in the Congo by King Leopold II of Belgium in his search for wealth.. This story, written in part by Verner's grandson, does not apologize for the treatment Ota received. There is an apparent contempt for the ministers who felt `Darwinism was a Christian fraud.' More than anything, Ota Benga is an account of what happens when people start from the wrong point. Wrong ideas always give wrong results. An apple tree does not produce oranges.

Verner attempted to reconcile his missionary concerns with those he thought to be true from Darwin. According to these authors, "To Verner, there was no contradiction." Apparently Verner, no student of the Bible, was a Theistic Evolutionist.

In all fairness, this story is very interesting though sad and provides some insights into events long past. The idea that someone, an actual human being, would be put on exhibit in a zoo is incredible, but the question revolves around the more basis concern: what does it mean to be human?

This question was being asked in the days of Ota Benga and is still being asked today, largely by those who endorse abortion.

. May 17, 2001