Ota Benga, the pygmy in the zoo
Throughout the years many of these stories crossed my path.
Of Ota Benga, for example, a Mbuti pygmy from Congo who travelled to the US with the reverend dr. Samuel Phillips Verner to be exhibited at the 1904 Saint Louis Fair.
Phillips Verner Bradford, historian and grandson of the reverend-explorer, wrote the book ‘Ota Benga, the pygmee in the zoo. One man’s degradation in Turn-of-the-Century Amerika,’ in which he took a dive into the archives to retrieve Ota Benga’s path. The story is amazing. read more…
The N***** is in the Shrank
On the 2nd of october 1997 De Volkskrant and De Morgen featured an article, “The N***** is in the Shrank”. It was about a San, stolen from his grave by taxidermists in 1832, stuffed and shipped from Africa to Europe with a load of animals. He had been exhibited in Paris and was now on display at the museum Darder in Banyoles near Barcelona. A Haïtian doctor saw him in 1992 and alarmed the international community. read more…
