A Fictional History of the United States with Huge Chunks Missing

by T Cooper

  The Pygmy is four feet eleven inches tall, twenty-three years of age, and weighs one hundred and three pounds. He was presented today by Verner to our Director Hornaday; the word around the zoo is that the explorer has fallen on hard times, and lacks the money to keep Mr. Benga himself. To this, at least, I can relate.

  The crowd was the biggest we have ever drawn, I am sure in great part because of today’s NYT headline: Bushman Shares Cage with Bronx Park Apes.

  Verner I did not meet, though I did shake the hand of Mr. Henry Fairfield Osborn, an Evolutionist who made some opening remarks. I have copied into my notebook one of his statements. Through Mr. Benga, he said, Modern Man will have “access to the wild in order to recharge itself.” This I liked, as I have often felt recharged through visiting with the Apes and other animals. Then Mr. Osborn declared that, “The great race”—he means the White—“needs a place to turn to now and then where, rifle in hand, it can hone its instincts.”

  I myself understand this to be merely a lofty way of speaking, but still its effect on me was discomforting. I do not hope to see rifles in the hands of any visitors to the Bronx Zoo, and I’m sure even Mr. Hornaday, although he nodded his head all throughout the speech, would agree.

  My own first glimpse of Mr. Benga came together with the crowd’s. He was brought forward by Mr. Verner, and at a signal from the explorer, the Pygmy opened wide his mouth so as to show off to the crowd his teeth, which are filed down into sharp points. This the crowd seemed to relish, for Mr. Benga’s teeth were met with loud applause.

  Mr. Benga’s contact with Whites has contaminated him in the eyes of his people, Mr. Verner said, for when he brought the Pygmy home from St. Louis, his tribesmen would not speak to him. They believe he stands with the race of white warlocks who separate men’s voices from their souls. This is what Edison cylinder-phonographs mean to them: that the body sits and listens to the soul speak.

  Mr. Benga watched the explorer closely as he held forth, and if I had not known different, I would have sworn he understood the words, and pitied himself. He is to me a strange-looking fellow, the darkest and tiniest I have ever seen, with hairless skin and an odd sense of balance about him, as if he is leaning always forward into a strong wind. But I do not look at Mr. Benga and wonder what he is, for that is clear. He is a man. A man who is in a very bad way.

  It was not until this morning at 7 a.m. that I was able to make the acquaintance of the Pygmy. He has been provided, as companions, with an African parrot and an Orangutan named Dohong, the both of them also donated by Verner. I found all three asleep when I arrived, each in a separate corner of the cage. It is furnished lightly, and contains a sleeping pallet, a blanket, and some bales of hay.

  Mr. Benga did not stir as I went about my morning duties, no doubt worn down by yesterday’s crowds, which stayed on well after the zoo would normally have closed. Verner, Osborn, and Hornaday set out to lead him on a tour of the grounds when the speech-making was concluded, and the visitors swarmed around them in such a density that the trip took hours. Great laughter boomed forth often, at what I do not know. Today, Mr. Benga is to be kept locked up, and if he seems able to handle it, he may be walked again in the afternoon, accompanied by several keepers.

  But when I entered his cage, the Pygmy was immediately to his feet, and the Orangutan as well—both of them regarding me with no small fear. Mr. Benga’s hands stayed to his sides, an odd thing for a man if he feels threatened. Unless he has learned that raising them will make the danger worse.

  “I mean no harm,” I said, and found myself bending at the knees, in the manner almost of a lady’s curtsy, to speak to him. “It is an honor to meet you, Mr. Benga.”

  I do not know what response I expected. The Pygmy looked to the Orangutan, the Orangutan to the Pygmy. First the one, and then the other, bared his teeth. On the Orangutan, I have seen the gesture many times and know it to be harmless. On the man, I decided to believe it was a smile.

  “I am Mr. Berman,” I told him, and reached out my hand. He took a step back, and so did I. In a cage, there is only so much room. “I am a Jew,” was my next remark. I cannot say why these words leaped out of me.

  Mr. Benga made some response in his own language. The effect of my presence had diminished, for his body seemed to loosen, to relax. The Orangutan Dohong, at this point, swung himself over and wrapped his arms around my legs. I scratched his head, as this the Orangutans enjoy.

  Mr. Benga watched, and again his lips peeled back and the teeth came into view. This time, I was certain it was a smile.

  “Are you cold?” I asked, for Mr. Benga had, when I entered, been wrapped in his blanket, and now the cold air of the morning was causing him to shiver.

  I just now read back my account and realize I have failed to discuss Mr. Benga’s attire: He is clad only in a sort of loincloth, to which has been added a canvas vest and a straw hat. It is a wholly insufficient costume, and the vest and hat are badly oversized, making Mr. Benga appear even smaller. Whoever gave these items to him, Verner I suppose, gave little care to the matter, or else little care to the Pygmy’s comfort.

  “I will get you some better clothes,” I told him. “They will be too large, but better than what you have got.” With that, I disentangled from myself the Orangutan and repaired to the sanitation room, where I fetched for Mr. Benga a spare uniform. It is a one-piece, such as I wear, due for the laundry but not badly soiled.

  I returned to the cage and presented him with it, but Mr. Benga could not be convinced to put it on. It took me the better part of an hour to demonstrate to him just how stepping into the suit might be accomplished. I do not know whether his reluctance was due to mistrust. Perhaps he simply found the garment confining and prefers to be cold. In any event, no sooner did he have the thing on than I was called away, to attend to shit-related matters in the smaller primate cages. When I returned to Mr. Benga, another keeper, a man called Stanton, was in the cage, yanking roughly the Pygmy’s limbs from the jumper.

  “What’s the big idea?” I called. “Hey, Stanton! What gives?”

  Stanton looked up. He is a big, red-faced man, a drinker. “This your idea of a joke, Morty?” he replied. “I been trying to get him undressed fifteen minutes already.”

  “He’s cold,” I said.

  “The people don’t wanna see him dressed up like a zookeep!” Stanton shouted. “Hornaday’s fit to be tied. You might as well start puttin’ dinner jackets on the Chimps.”

  It was at this moment that Mr. Benga, having reached his limit after a morning—a life!—of being pulled and prodded about, managed to free his arm from the suit, and swinging it clumsily through the air, elbow Stanton squarely in the eye. I do not think it was deliberate, but Mr. Benga, seeing what he had done, scampered away and, grinning mightily, hid behind Dohong across the cage. He then removed the suit himself.

  “Jesus Christ,” said Stanton, holding a palm over the eye. “That nigger bastard hit me.”

  Then the gates opened and the crowds began to stream in. Shouts of, “Where’s the Pygmy?” and, “In the monkey house!” filled up the air. Stanton ducked out of the cage, and behind me surged a mass of eager visitors. Mr. Benga peered out at them and then, to my surprise, he emerged from his cover and walked straight to the front bars of the cage.

  “The Pygmy!” And up went a cheer. A hand grabbed at his leg, and Mr. Benga pulled back, though he did not retreat. Soon hands were poking through the bars all over. Someone threw inside a shoe, and Mr. Benga picked it up and sat upon the floor, turning it over in his hands with fascination. This prompted sustained laughter, and soon more objects were being tossed between the bars for his consideration: compact-mirrors, handkerchiefs, even an empty billfold. Mr. Benga’s every action produced great response, and this frantic attention continued, without pause, throughout the day.

  Things at the zoo are taking a sinister turn. Today’s NYT reported on the objections of two parties to the exhibition of Mr. Benga. One is a delegation of Colo
red ministers. Their leader is a Reverend Gordon, who told the NYT, “Our race is depressed enough without exhibiting one of us with the apes. We think we are worthy of being considered human beings, with souls.” They have asked Director Hornaday to call off the exhibit, and he has put them off, saying that the Zoological Society supports his efforts. They have requested also to meet with Mayor McClellan, and he has responded that he is too busy. Meanwhile, a separate body of White clergy has also taken exception, on the grounds that the exhibit of Mr. Benga promotes Evolution at the expense of their Christian beliefs. Director Hornaday will meet with them tonight.

  It may be, though, that the exhibit comes to an end for reasons distinct from all of the above. This morning Hornaday gave Mr. Benga a crudely fashioned bow and arrow, and encouraged the Pygmy to shoot it at a target set up in his cage, for the enjoyment of the tourists. This in addition to the rubber balls, mouth organs, and other toys now piled in Mr. Benga’s cage, gifts from zoo and visitors alike.

  Can Hornaday truly be so doltish? It was no great surprise to me that Mr. Benga, by afternoon, had begun to use the bow to fire arrows at the most obnoxious of the visitors standing before his cage, molesting him and making him the butt of jokes at every turn. He is an excellent shot, and clever enough to stand at the back of his cage when he shoots so that the missiles have some time to build up speed before they meet their targets.

  A great outcry has gone up, and though no one was seriously injured, the bow and arrow have been seized. Many take the Pygmy’s aggression to be proof of his savagery, but to me it is something quite different: proof against those who hold that Mr. Benga is mentally deficient, that he cannot learn. He is learning very well. He is learning to hate them.

  Hornaday today gave in somewhat to the pressures of the ministers, both White and Colored, and allowed Mr. Benga to spend much of the day out of his cage. He was this afternoon dressed in a white suit and taken for a walk. Myself, Stanton, and two other keepers were responsible for holding back from him the crowd that followed. Mr. Benga was brought first to the Elephant House, and there photographed for the newspapers with a newly born Pachyderm. We then proceeded to the house of the lesser primates, where Mr. Benga, with evident joy, helped us feed the small monkeys. He also took the chance to feed himself, to the crowd’s great jeering delight, though it was only some vegetables such as any one of them might himself eat for dinner.

  Managing the crowd was a job more suited to police than shit-shovelers. The tourists poke relentlessly at Mr. Benga, try to trip him up when he walks. Some gather pebbles from the pathways and pelt him. Others simply want to touch his skin or rub his woolly head, which is level with most men’s chests and thus difficult for him to protect.

  At the Primate House, Mr. Benga grabbed off of a table a small knife, and with it in hand dashed out of doors. The crowds fell back as he swung the blade before him in great arcs. It is a dull thing, used by us for cutting through twine rope and such, but still the spectators fled in panic. Mr. Benga ran aimlessly about the grounds for thirty minutes, as keepers and crowd followed. Finally, seeing him desperate, I walked slowly up to Mr. Benga and removed the instrument from his hand. He gave it willingly, as if thankful to be relieved of a burden, and collapsed to the ground at my feet. This earned me great praise, and a fellow from the NYT asked me my name and position. Which is a considerable thing, but little did I enjoy it.

  I imagine, as I write this, the fuss tomorrow’s newspaper will make over the incident, and fully expect to wake up to a headline of the order of, Bushman Tries to Kill. When the truth is that the only person Mr. Benga would have hurt, had we let him keep his weapon, is himself.

  It is now morning. The exhibit is to be shut down, and Mr. Benga will this evening be turned over to the custody of the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn.

  My name appears twice in the NYT, and I am identified as “courageous.”

  It is one and a half months since Mr. Benga left the zoo, and today I had my first news of him, courtesy the NYT, in a short account, some pages removed from any position of prominence: Ota Benga Now a Real Colored Gentleman; Little African Pygmy Being Taught Ways of Civilization.

  He is said to be learning English, slowly but with promise, and to have taken up Christianity. His teeth, a dentist has capped.

  It is my intention to visit him tomorrow. I hope he will remember me, and not too harshly.

  Mr. Benga received me in the sitting room of the Howard Asylum, a well-appointed brownstone located in the neighborhood of Fort Greene. He greeted me attired in a shirt and a short necktie of the type worn commonly by young boys. His hair has been shorn close to the scalp, and his first words, upon recognizing me, were, “Friend. God bless you.” I shook his small hand, which he surrendered calmly to the purpose, and we sat down to tea served by the house matron, a handsome Colored woman by the name of Robinson.

  “Friend,” Mr. Benga said again, smiling. The difference affected by the tooth-capping was striking and agreeable.

  “Yes,” I said. “I am your friend.”

  Mr. Benga nodded, then shook his head from side to side. “Zoo,” he said. “No God bless zoo. No God bless.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You should not have been there, Mr. Benga.”

  “No God bless.”

  “No,” I said. “I suppose not.”

  We sipped our tea, Mr. Benga using both hands to bring the cup to his mouth.

  “Tea God bless,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Ota go home,” he said after a moment. “My home God bless.”

  “Your home is beautiful, I am sure.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Benga. “Friend.”

  We sat together one hour, me asking Mr. Benga various small questions and the Pygmy answering with different combinations of the words he knew: zoo, home, God bless, no, yes, Bible, please, thank you, friend, and so forth. The bar of chocolate I had brought him he had no use for, but after I removed it from my coat pocket, he embarked on a thorough investigation of my person, and was happy to find a package of the cheap cigarettes I am accustomed to puffing at.

  “You smoke?” I asked him.

  “Smoke,” the Pygmy agreed. He reached into the pack and extracted a cigarette with a nimbleness to his fingers that was quite impressive, and we sat smoking. Mr. Benga held his fag with all five fingers, blowing into the end as often as he inhaled from it and taking much interest in the clouds we two created. I blew a smoke ring and he leaped up from the couch, delighted. I tried to teach him the trick, with little luck. His laughter made me laugh, and mine him, and so smoke and laughter replaced conversation until Matron Robinson reappeared to escort Mr. Benga to his next engagement. A Colored minister had arrived, and was waiting to see him in the study.

  Mr. Benga was taken last week to Lynchburg, Virginia, there to work at a tobacco factory and be further tutored in religion and the English tongue at a local seminary. His departure was sudden, so sudden that I learned of it from Matron Robinson upon arriving at the Howard Asylum to call on my friend—in advance even of the NYT, which only yesterday published an account.

  There had been an incident, Matron Robinson informed me, involving another of the Howard charges. Creola, the young lady is called. She and Mr. Benga had become close friends—here Matron Robinson gave me a queer sideways look, to be sure I understood what she meant by “friends.” The only thing for it was to remove one of the parties, before the two parties became three. Mr. Benga, it was decided, would benefit greatly from the open air and natural beauty of the South.

  I have spent all day attempting to locate this notebook, and finally unearthed it from a steamer trunk in the basement of the house in which I now keep an apartment, in return for my services as superintendent to this and other properties. I have written nothing here for some nine years, as there has been little in that time to report of the life of Mr. Ota Benga the Pygmy. It is my sad duty to say, that is no longer the case. Today, at an age of thirty-three, my f
riend ended his life.

  By all accounts, Mr. Benga’s mood had for some months been quite black. He had learned to read and write, and had taken up research on the cost of a steamship ticket to Africa, finally concluding that he would never be able to afford one. He could not speak of this without beginning to cry.

  This despite the fact that the Colored community of Lynchburg had accepted Mr. Benga as one of their own. He was often entrusted to look after their children, and enjoyed leading groups of young people on forest expeditions. He was a great favorite of theirs, although the children considered him over-protective when it came to shepherding them through the wild.

  The moments preceding his death, the NYT describes as follows: Mr. Benga, after an excursion, refused the urging of his small companions to take them back into the woods, and instead sent them away. When the children were out of sight, he removed the caps from his teeth, brought to his chest a revolver borrowed from a neighbor woman, and sent a bullet straight into his heart.

  The article concludes with a quote from Director Hornaday, who remains in place as the top man at the esteemed Bronx Zoological Park. It is a shame, Hornaday says, that the Pygmy would rather die than work for a living.

  1924