The tragic life of dwarves locked up in the zoo in New York

The history of New York City once recorded the tragic life story of a dwarf who was imprisoned with a stable with an orangutan in the zoo, letting curious people buy tickets to watch and point.

The mysterious tragedy of dwarves locked up in the zoo

A small black man, who is only about 5 meters tall and weighs about 46.7kg, has been turned into a model exhibited in the zoo. Assigned to the nickname "primitive Public dwarf" , he was locked up with the stable with an orangutan there.

The incident is considered "the most charismatic act of the century" , attracting thousands of curious people from all over the world to admire, first at the exhibition at the St. Louis in Missouri state in 1904. At that time, the dwarf was turned into a display model along with an Ainu tribe from an island in northern Japan.

Two years later, the dwarf named Ota Benga , then 23 years old, was taken back to keep the cage with an orangutan at New York Zoo (now renamed the Bronx Zoo) in New York City.

As the latest resident of the monkey house in the Bronx, Ota rompes with the orangutan, clings and rolls on the ground as well as wrestling with you in the same cage as wilderness . The dwarf boy also spoke with a language that the orangutans seemed to understand.

Like the beauty of their tribe in the Congo, Ota's teeth are sharp and often used by the zoo to advertise him as barbarians, who can bite their prey.

Without wearing shoes but wearing a modern outfit, Ota serves as a distraction to the crowd by using a bow and arrow at a target. With an entry fee of 0.25 USD / person, excluding 0.05 USD / person traveling to the subway, visiting the zoo Ota has become "cheap afternoon pleasures" and an opportunity to admire " genuine African primitive".

The New York Times caught the attention of the headline "The man who shared the cage with the Bronx zoo orangutan". Another article in the Zoological Society Bulletin describes Ota as a "strange violent beast ".

However, Ota is not a primitive person. He was not a barbaric, but a member of a tribe who stayed in the forest in Congo.

Enraged by the apparent racism , black monks were eventually able to force the zoo to end the Congo dwarf exhibition. However, Ota's fate has not improved.

Ota teeth are sharpened like his tribal custom in Congo.(Photo: Daily Mail)

According to " Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga" by journalist Pamela Newkirk, who quit working on the life of Ota, on Saturday, September 8, 1906, men and women eat The elegant presence of mansions along Fifth Avenue and Madison, as well as countless other people in the Jewish neighborhood, flocked to the House of Primates in the Bronx Zoo to admire "colored boys." The bright chocolate skin of white pants and khaki jacket, may be the lost link between humans and monkeys. "

It turns out, the zoo's William Temple Hornaday created a new game and believed that Ota was a step above the zoo's primates . Up to 40,000 people came to see Ota every day. Each turn, about 500 people bought tickets to get close to see the little man playing with a parrot, using a bow and arrow to shoot at a target or to finance yarn, weaving mats and hammocks.

" The children giggled and screamed with joy, while the adults laughed, completely relaxed, before the strange sight , " wrote Newkirk.

Ota had endured the curious observation and pointing of the people for a long time, until he pleaded with the zoo staff to free him from that.

The man behind Ota's tragic fate, causing him to be taken from the Congo was Samuel Phillips Verner, a missionary and adventurer and also the fake circus, who sought fortune and fame in Africa. . Verner had hoped to earn a lot of money by bringing artifacts from Africa back to the US for museums .

In addition to asking for money to go to Africa, leaving his wife and children at home and dating other women when traveling, Verner made up a lot of illusory stories about how he got Ota, but there was one point. in his statement, "emphasizing that the invasion of Congo by Belgian King Leopold II in 1885 has made Ota and his compatriots easy to be victims of slave traders and self-explorers. how to profess American

Finally, international outrage for "crimes against humanity" led to the end of King Leopold 's domination in 1908, but the Congo was still severely damaged. The country was forced to take all the natural resources and the people were turned into slaves.

Meanwhile, tired of the onslaught of public opinion, Hornaday decided to send Congolese dwarves to the Orphanage for the Brooklyn Howar colored people, where he was taught to eat and speak English. Ota's next and final stop is Lynchburg, Virginia, where he is adopted and cared for by a family.

Ota had fun playing with children and performed to show them what he had learned in his homeland of Central America, but his spirit was down. Desire to return to Congo, but without family, Ota has no homeland to return. People in his tribe either died or ran away into the jungle.

And in March 1916, Ota shot a bullet through his broken heart, freeing himself from life full of bitterness. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Lynchburg.a