The History of Human Classification 279It has also been employed to rationalize cruel mockery, as
painfully illustrated in the tragic story of Ota Benga, an
African Pygmy man who in the early 1900s was caged in a
New York zoo with an orangutan.
Captured in a raid in Congo, Ota Benga came into the
possession of a North American businessman, Samuel
Verner, looking for exotic “savages” for exhibition in the
United States. In 1904, Ota and a group of fellow Pygmies
were shipped across the Atlantic and exhibited at the
World’s Fair in Saint Louis, Missouri. About 23 years old
at the time, Ota was 4 feet 11 inches (150 centimeters) in
height and weighed 103 pounds (47 kilograms). Throngs
of visitors came to see displays of dozens of indigenous
peoples from around the globe, shown in their traditional
dress and living in replica villages doing their customary
activities. The fair was a success for the organizers, and all
the Pygmies survived to be shipped back to their home-
land. Verner also returned to Congo and with Ota’s help
collected artifacts to be sold to the American Museum of
Natural History in New York City.
In the summer of 1906, Ota came back to the United
States with Verner, who soon went bankrupt and lost his
entire collection. Left stranded in the big city, Ota was
placed in the care of the museum and then taken to the
Bronx Zoo and exhibited in the monkey house, with an
orangutan as company. Ota’s sharpened teeth (a cultural
practice among his own people) were seen as evidence of
The placement of Ota Benga on display in the Bronx Zoo illustrates
the depths of the racism in the early 20th century. Here’s Ota Benga
posing for the camera when he was part of the “African Exhibit” at
the St. Louis World’s Fair.Missouri History Museum, St. LouisCourtesy of Wellcome Library, LondonJohann Blumenbach ordered humans into a hierarchical series with Caucasians (his own group) ranked
the highest and created in God’s image. He suggested that the variation seen in other races was a result of
“degeneration” or movement away from this ideal type. (The five types he identified from left to right are:
Mongolian, American Indian, Caucasian, Malay, and Ethiopian.) This view is both racist and an oversimplifi-
cation of the way that human variation is expressed in the skeleton. While people from one part of the world
might be more likely to possess a particular nuance of skull shape, within every population there is significant
variation. Humans do not exist as discrete types.
Missouri History Museum,St. Louis