In 1904, Ota Benga was abducted from Congo and transported to the United States, where he was put on display alongside monkeys. Benga was placed in a cage with an orangutan as a lampoon on Darwinism. Benga he was given a functional bow and arrow to protect himself from the orangutan if need be. However, he often used it on the visitors who mocked him instead. After he was freed from the zoo, he tried to return to Africa but the outbreak of WWI stopped that from happening. Benga sadly took his own life in 1916.
The story of his life: Ota Benga was born around 1883 in the Ituri Forest of the Congo Free State, which is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He belonged to the Mbuti people, a group of Congo pygmies known for their nomadic lifestyle. After returning from a hunting trip to find his village destroyed and his family killed, Benga was captured and sold into slavery. In 1904, he was discovered by American businessman and explorer Samuel Phillips Verner at a slave market. Verner brought Benga to the United States to be displayed at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri, and later at the Bronx Zoo in New York City, where he was exhibited alongside an orangutan. Following protests against his inhumane treatment, Benga was released from the zoo and placed in the care of James H. Gordon, who supervised the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn. Benga was later moved to Lynchburg, Virginia, where he received tutoring in English and worked at a tobacco factory. Benga longed to return to Africa, and efforts were made to facilitate his journey back. However, the outbreak of World War I in 1914 halted passenger ship travel, trapping him in the United States. Struggling with depression and unable to return home, Ota Benga took his own life on March 20, 1916, in Lynchburg, Virginia. He was approximately 33 years old. Benga’s story is a stark reminder of the dark aspects of colonialism and the exploitation of individuals for entertainment.
@ToK_ScienceTree @Morbidful Who sold him into slavery for the first place?
@Morbidful For who captured him: It says "native African slave traders".
@ToK_ScienceTree @Morbidful After everything he still end up killing himself. Why took his own life after all he had conquered
@ToK_ScienceTree @Morbidful He fought and survived as a kid but only to took his own life as a grown up man
@ToK_ScienceTree @Morbidful Slavery was around for thousands of years before the misery of this young man. It still goes on in this world today.
Goodness, does no one know history at all? Even Native American tribes practiced slavery, China for centuries, Japan, the Middle East (still done in many areas today). Before the African slave trade, whites were enslaved through constant coastal raids throughout Europe and the British Isles by Vikings and, later, North African Pirates and from the Barbery Coast slave traders.
@ToK_ScienceTree @Morbidful 1904. Only a little over a century ago