Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You should know, a production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Chuck Bryan over there,
Speaker 1: and there's Jerry over there, and we have a special
Speaker 1: visitor today, Chuck. Jerry's miso soup? Is that what that is? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you'd lie, Jerry, that is miso soup. I don't care
Speaker 1: what Jerry says. It's miso soup. Chuck is getting up
Speaker 1: to sniffet. One of his beard hairs is dropped into
Speaker 1: Jerry's soup. Jerry's miso soup. It smells like, aren't its
Speaker 1: it's I don't know what that is. Because miso soup
Speaker 1: smells good. I don't think that's me. So it is
Speaker 1: generally cloudier now Josh is smelling. It smells like miso
Speaker 1: soup mixed with hospital corridor. If you were smelling, why
Speaker 1: did the soup ripple under your nose as if you
Speaker 1: were blowing out so gross? Did not see this intro coming? Chuck?
Speaker 1: Oh goodness, So you feel okayh yeah, okay, a little
Speaker 1: unwieldy lately. This's gonna be that's gonna be good. This
Speaker 1: is a really interesting one that a lot of people
Speaker 1: I think don't know about. I didn't know much about this,
Speaker 1: and I think I came across an article just randomly somewhere,
Speaker 1: you know, human zoos. What is that? And I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like if you went to an EPCOT exhibit where
Speaker 1: they were showing like, hey, this is what this interesting
Speaker 1: tribe is like in this part of the world. Okay,
Speaker 1: so so far kind of epcotty. Let's say Scandinavians. That
Speaker 1: all depends on your approach, you know, as long as
Speaker 1: it's not like, look at this weird tribe and it's like,
Speaker 1: look at this interesting thing, right, look at this weird
Speaker 1: tribe and maybe like throw money and bananas at them
Speaker 1: to get them to dance for you. Well, we didn't
Speaker 1: get to that part. It's like if EPCOT used humans
Speaker 1: instead of you know, statues, and they do use some
Speaker 1: humans to an extent, you could actually kind of weirdly
Speaker 1: trace a line between Epcots like around the world thing
Speaker 1: and this I don't know what that is. So you
Speaker 1: know the big dome head Upcot, the geodesic domes. If
Speaker 1: you go behind that, there's a bunch of different countries.
Speaker 1: I went to Epcot when I was like twelve, Oh
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. There's maybe a dozen countries, maybe ten,
Speaker 1: and it's staffed with people dressed like people from those countries. Sure,
Speaker 1: but they are from those countries, right, A lot of
Speaker 1: them are, if not all, that's the deal. Like, if
Speaker 1: you're Sweden, you're Swedish, okay, and you're coming out like saying, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm from Sweden, how can I help you today? Have
Speaker 1: some food? Basically the whole points to go eat. But
Speaker 1: they're they're people kind of bringing their culture forth to
Speaker 1: to be um enjoyed and um and to captivate the
Speaker 1: people who were at Epcot. Right, Yeah, there's there's a
Speaker 1: right way to do that. There is. The human zoos
Speaker 1: were the exact wrong way to do this, and not
Speaker 1: only was it the wrong way to do it, they
Speaker 1: were done for all the wrong reasons too. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I was I wasn't trying to defend this at
Speaker 1: all when I was researching it, but I did think
Speaker 1: about the time period and like a Westerner's inherent fascination
Speaker 1: with other parts of the world, which at its base
Speaker 1: is like that's fine, It's okay to be fascinated with
Speaker 1: another part of the world totally, but not like you know,
Speaker 1: look at how weird that person is who is different
Speaker 1: than me. Let's make fun of them because they you know,
Speaker 1: we'll call them more primitive than we are, right, or
Speaker 1: are inherently inferior to our race, which was another prevailing idea,
Speaker 1: and the the whole the premise of this chuck started with,
Speaker 1: like you said, just pure curiosity. It was, you know,
Speaker 1: Europeans traveling around the world to new areas and we're
Speaker 1: encountering people that they'd never encountered before. And there were
Speaker 1: a there was a thread of people who were exploring
Speaker 1: and like saying, hey, you want to come back to
Speaker 1: England with me, or to France with me, or to
Speaker 1: the Netherlands with me. Um, I can actually introduce you
Speaker 1: to the king and the person would hop along on
Speaker 1: board and they would go back and they would be
Speaker 1: gawked at and and everything. But they were treated as
Speaker 1: an individual. They had an identity, they were a person
Speaker 1: even though they were different and another they still had
Speaker 1: some sort of agency. That was step one that didn't
Speaker 1: last very long. Well, no, because as we saw, there
Speaker 1: was a fine line between you can go meet the
Speaker 1: king and you can be the King's pet basically, yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So step two was really supported by this whole thing
Speaker 1: that happened. And about the eighteen hundreds, the early early,
Speaker 1: the first half of the eighteen hundreds, I gather something
Speaker 1: called like biological anthropology, and it basically is that thing
Speaker 1: that I said about the hierarchy of races, where one
Speaker 1: race is superior to another that's inferior, and that you know,
Speaker 1: there's a spectrum of human beings and UM on the
Speaker 1: one end, or white Europeans, which under this this idea,
Speaker 1: this auspice was the pinnacle of humanity, and on the
Speaker 1: other end, it just kept going and going until you
Speaker 1: basically reached um. Other primates like the apes and all
Speaker 1: other peoples of the world were on the spectrum either
Speaker 1: closer to Apes, closer to to white Europeans, but but
Speaker 1: really nothing compared to white Europeans. And so there's this
Speaker 1: idea that the people around the world were to be
Speaker 1: studied and analyzed and and um poked at and prodded
Speaker 1: and measured in this to support this burgeoning science, right yeah,
Speaker 1: in the name of like study by scientists, supposedly, but
Speaker 1: as far as the general public was concerned, something to
Speaker 1: do on the weekend. Well that was stage three. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Stage three is when the public is finally brought in
Speaker 1: fully and that's when the human zoos really come in.
Speaker 1: And that was the peak of colonialism. You remember our
Speaker 1: Druids episode. It's just dropped today. So do you remember
Speaker 1: we talked about how like Caesar and some of these
Speaker 1: other conquering Romans were like basically writing propaganda about the Druids.
Speaker 1: They committed human sacrifice and cannibalis and all that. So
Speaker 1: they need to be civilized by the Romans. This is
Speaker 1: the same exact thing, except it was you know, nineteenth
Speaker 1: and twentieth century Europeans who were showing their people back home.
Speaker 1: Look at how uncivilized these people are. Um, we need
Speaker 1: to civilize them. This is it's good that we are
Speaker 1: colonizing the rest of the world. Yeah. And obviously, um,
Speaker 1: this happened in Europe, it happened in the United States
Speaker 1: and North America. UM, in France and the eight hundreds
Speaker 1: late eighteen hundre it's there was a a place. It
Speaker 1: was an agricultural site. Um. And this was sort of
Speaker 1: like that Epcotty idea, which was basically like let's throw
Speaker 1: something called the Paris Colonial exposition, and let's recreate these
Speaker 1: uh and indigenous villages from the colonies. That's always in
Speaker 1: the background. You know. People can't forget that because it's
Speaker 1: not Epcot. It's like, these are places we have conquered basically, um,
Speaker 1: and see what life was like there. So they would
Speaker 1: recreate this with human live human beings, um, not quite
Speaker 1: human zoos at this point, but more like acting out
Speaker 1: like what they did, you know, wherever they were from,
Speaker 1: but also really playing it up to the point where
Speaker 1: it was just totally artificial. Yeah. Well, yeah, that might
Speaker 1: speak more to just all art back then there was
Speaker 1: a lot of subtlety and right performance. But if you're
Speaker 1: also if you're saying, look at how one civilized these are,
Speaker 1: and then turning around to the people, be like really
Speaker 1: kind of like play up the shouting thing. Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1: Well they wanted to sell tickets or at least drive people,
Speaker 1: you know, drive people's attention there. I don't know if
Speaker 1: they were selling tickets, yes, said this one specifically. I
Speaker 1: believe they were to the Paris colonial um. So the
Speaker 1: other thing you have to remember is they weren't just
Speaker 1: sort of like, uh, it was sort of like they
Speaker 1: were carneys, they weren't treated well, they had terrible living conditions.
Speaker 1: They would get sick, they would get disease, they would
Speaker 1: be left in the cold, and if they died, they
Speaker 1: would be buried in a mass grave, whether unceremoniously. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's another thing, Like because the humans zoos are
Speaker 1: horrific enough, just the idea that that they put on
Speaker 1: these things, and then even worse than that that people
Speaker 1: came to see and like throw money in bananas at
Speaker 1: people and like mock them in jeer at them. Um,
Speaker 1: that's bad enough, But then the idea that these people
Speaker 1: lost their lives as a result of coming over to
Speaker 1: Europe to put on these performances or whatever, and we're
Speaker 1: just buried in unmarked graves. That just takes it down
Speaker 1: just the darkest path there is, you know, like that
Speaker 1: that you go to Belgium to to be in this
Speaker 1: exhibition and end up buried in an unmarked grave. You
Speaker 1: lost your life because you went to a place you
Speaker 1: otherwise wouldn't have gone had Belgium not colonized Congo, you know,
Speaker 1: in in eighteen seventy six, right, Yeah, I mean Belgium.
Speaker 1: We can get into that a little bit what was
Speaker 1: their exhibit called Congo Rama. Well that was the last
Speaker 1: one of all of them, but sure, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: the first one they were just something. It was France Belgium. Uh,
Speaker 1: like I said, it was going on all over the
Speaker 1: place and they had congo rama spelled with the K
Speaker 1: even well I think this's Belgian, is it? I think?
Speaker 1: So okay? Or maybe they're just trying to sell more tickets. Um,
Speaker 1: who knows. Uh. These were men, women and children once
Speaker 1: again put in these basically shows that show uh what
Speaker 1: they're a ley life was like like these living exhibits
Speaker 1: where white Europeans would be behind defense. It was always important.
Speaker 1: There was always huge offense there to sort of trump
Speaker 1: up the idea that like beware of what you're close to,
Speaker 1: not just that chuck. It also reinforces a sense of
Speaker 1: separateness and otherness too. Oh yeah, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like there's no mingling. You weren't meeting the people, like
Speaker 1: where you just didn't walk up to somebody and like
Speaker 1: introduce yourself to the person who was putting on the performance.
Speaker 1: There wasn't any co mingling. It was offense separated you
Speaker 1: from them, and you were there to observe and watch them,
Speaker 1: and they were there to perform for you. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: this uh, jumping back to King Leopold the Second brought
Speaker 1: over two hundred and sixty seven Congolese men, women and
Speaker 1: children to Brussels. Uh. And this was not even for
Speaker 1: the Congo rama exhibit. This was for his own palace basically, yeah,
Speaker 1: saying like put them in canoes and lakes and put
Speaker 1: them over here in the fields, and I just want
Speaker 1: sort of like this stuff going on all over the place. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He made it like a diversion. So this is a
Speaker 1: big deal for the Congo. And King Leopold also was
Speaker 1: just a straight up villain. If you are um fascinated
Speaker 1: by this kind of stuff and horrified by you should
Speaker 1: go check out behind the bastards. By our colleague Robert Evans,
Speaker 1: he's done some work on King Leopold the Second himself.
Speaker 1: But so Belgium gets the Congo during this this this
Speaker 1: U conference in Berlin in the eighteen seventies where basically
Speaker 1: Europe divided up Africa and so this is our colony.
Speaker 1: That's your calling, that's you're calling me. And the Congo
Speaker 1: went to Belgium and Belgium is like this little tiny
Speaker 1: country and the Congo is something like sixty or eighty
Speaker 1: times the size of Belgium. But Belgium went there and
Speaker 1: just ran rough shot over the people who were living there,
Speaker 1: to expla void it um for its rubber and to
Speaker 1: make money off of this this possession that it now had.
Speaker 1: But part of this also was for the king to
Speaker 1: show these people belong to us. I'm gonna have some
Speaker 1: come live in this in their primitive ways on the
Speaker 1: royal grounds, and all Belgians are welcome to come see
Speaker 1: our new possessions. And they did, like more than a
Speaker 1: quarter of Belgian residents citizens came to see this, this
Speaker 1: display the King put on. Yeah, and this was in
Speaker 1: seven but Belgium, like they had one of the last ones,
Speaker 1: like you said, in nineteen at the World's Fair in Brussels.
Speaker 1: That was a Congolese village there and uh, I believe
Speaker 1: they had almost six hundred people. Um. They were paid
Speaker 1: And a lot of people will point to that and say,
Speaker 1: like they didn't have to be there, they could leave.
Speaker 1: They were paid, But that's sort of I don't know,
Speaker 1: that's a bit of a whitewashing. I think so because
Speaker 1: a lot of them died as well because of the
Speaker 1: cold summer. And I think that's really important though to
Speaker 1: bring up Chuck, Like if you read a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff on this, like it's just like
Speaker 1: these people were victims and and nothing more, um, And
Speaker 1: there removes a lot of agency from a lot of
Speaker 1: the people who went there to make money, um, off
Speaker 1: of the the Westerners who were going to come gawk
Speaker 1: at them or whatever, and they went back home and
Speaker 1: they took their money with them. Um. There was there
Speaker 1: were people who were straight up like victims, who were
Speaker 1: straight up captives who were brought to you know, Europe
Speaker 1: in America virtually against their will or or they were
Speaker 1: um they were tricked or fooled into signing contracts whatever.
Speaker 1: But there were a lot of people who came on
Speaker 1: their own accord and did it because they wanted to,
Speaker 1: because they wanted to make money or whatever. And you
Speaker 1: have to like, the whole thing is more complex than that,
Speaker 1: and you have to recognize that fact so that the
Speaker 1: people do have agency still the agency that they did have.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, you can't point to and
Speaker 1: be like, see, that justifies everything the white Europeans did,
Speaker 1: because it really justifies basically nothing. Well yeah, and they
Speaker 1: talk about after nineteen fifty eight that was like kind
Speaker 1: of the last Um, well, we'll talk about some sort
Speaker 1: of modern versions of this, but like ecot no, no,
Speaker 1: we love our friends at Disney. We love our imagineer friends.
Speaker 1: You know what they're called. Yes, imagine you gotta earn
Speaker 1: that rank. I think it's a specific kind of job
Speaker 1: at Disney. Okay, I think, Um, I think you really
Speaker 1: know this, but you'd have to kill me if you
Speaker 1: really divulged. You've got the insider secrets. Um. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is one of the last ones. And they said
Speaker 1: that the advent of movies and motion pictures is what
Speaker 1: really stopped it, because it's not like it's not like
Speaker 1: they said we just shouldn't do this anymore. They were
Speaker 1: just like, well, now we're just gonna make degrading racist
Speaker 1: films portraying these people, like ten years later and have
Speaker 1: and have a lot widespread, more widespread release. What was
Speaker 1: that first documentary called like Mondo Kane or something like that.
Speaker 1: I've never known how to pronounce it, but it was
Speaker 1: like my sen I don't know, Yeah, that's right, that's
Speaker 1: how it spelled. But it was like the predecessor to
Speaker 1: things like faces of death or whatever. And it was
Speaker 1: just they just took their their camera and went around
Speaker 1: the world and looked at how savage and weird other
Speaker 1: people were who played up everything for the camera, just
Speaker 1: focused on weird rituals and stuff like that. But it
Speaker 1: was the exact same thing. It was a total extension
Speaker 1: and outgrowth of human zeus. Yeah, and this was this
Speaker 1: isn't us saying weird. Just clear that up, I think so.
Speaker 1: But we just gotta be careful. You want to take
Speaker 1: a break, Yeah, man, let's take a break, and uh,
Speaker 1: you want to come back and talk about Oda binga
Speaker 1: after that? Yeah? All right, all right. So I feel
Speaker 1: like we've kind of given like a good overview of
Speaker 1: human zuos, right like basically from the last quarter of
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century up to the middle of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: they had their heyday and then just became more more
Speaker 1: and more tasteless to Westerners over time as it became
Speaker 1: obvious like what was really going on. Um. But there's
Speaker 1: one guy who kind of like had the most tragic
Speaker 1: life I've ever encountered ever, and his name was Ode Banga. Yeah,
Speaker 1: who was the kid kept in a box. There's been
Speaker 1: most experience for that experiment. It's like his father too,
Speaker 1: wouldn't it. I don't. Oh, the skinner kids, I think
Speaker 1: so like these are the two people that come to
Speaker 1: mind when I think of like worst human existence. This
Speaker 1: is depressing. So ode Banga was um. He was a
Speaker 1: hundred three pounds. He was four ft eleven um. He
Speaker 1: was this this when you referenced before the break about
Speaker 1: people that were literally sort of captured and brought over,
Speaker 1: he fits that bill for sure. Uh. He was brought
Speaker 1: over to the United States by a man named Samuel
Speaker 1: Verner from South Carolina, Proud game Cock. He was an
Speaker 1: African missionary and was commissioned by the St. Louis World's Fair,
Speaker 1: which was what nineteen o four. So before that they said, hey,
Speaker 1: why don't you go over there and bring us back
Speaker 1: a bunch of pigmies and and he's like, all right,
Speaker 1: I know that we're using that word now and they
Speaker 1: probably won't in the future, but you shouldn't even like
Speaker 1: say that word anymore. I see it. I've seen it.
Speaker 1: I've seen both. Yeah, I've seen I've seen it used
Speaker 1: like it's just you know, like calling Native Americans Indians
Speaker 1: like some some Native Americans are like, it's well, we're
Speaker 1: used to I've seen the same thing with Pygmy's as well,
Speaker 1: although I've also seen it's extremely derogatory because it was
Speaker 1: also back in the nineteenth century used as a term
Speaker 1: for monkey. So like if you're calling uh an African
Speaker 1: um Congolese tribes person um pigmy, at the time, you
Speaker 1: were calling him a monkey. So yeah, I could see
Speaker 1: how that would be extremely derogatory too. Well, this is
Speaker 1: certainly the language they used back then. And they told
Speaker 1: him to go over there, and he was like great.
Speaker 1: He got letters from the U. S Secretary of State,
Speaker 1: the president of the American Anthropological Association, the governor of Missouri.
Speaker 1: That'll open some doors, and the Belgian Secretary of State.
Speaker 1: Uh great name Chevalier couvaliera Um because at the time
Speaker 1: Congo was still under the control of Belgium. And they
Speaker 1: were like, yeah, go get go, round up some people
Speaker 1: and let's bring him back for the World's Fair. And
Speaker 1: one of the gentlemen they brought back was ode Banka. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I want to give a little more background Odebanka
Speaker 1: because the fact that he was brought back to to
Speaker 1: be in a human zoo is pretty it's bad enough,
Speaker 1: like that's a that's a really dark chapter of anybody's life.
Speaker 1: Like everything about his life leading up to that point
Speaker 1: predicted that this was going to happen. Um When he
Speaker 1: was a little kid, he was born into a tribe
Speaker 1: Muti tribe in Congo in about three and one day
Speaker 1: he went off on an elephant hunt and came back
Speaker 1: and his entire family and village had been slaughtered by
Speaker 1: the Belgians. Because remember we said that the Belgians like
Speaker 1: came to Congo and just overran the place for rubber production. Well,
Speaker 1: the king held a private army called the Forced Publique,
Speaker 1: and they enforced rubber quotas. So if your village didn't meet,
Speaker 1: it's you know, rubber quotas for the day or the
Speaker 1: month or the week or whatever. The Force public might
Speaker 1: come in and kill everyone, or they might hold like
Speaker 1: some public amputation to make an example of somebody Um,
Speaker 1: or do basically any horrible thing you can do to
Speaker 1: another human being, all to keep people in line and
Speaker 1: to keep the rubber flowing for the king's coffers. Right,
Speaker 1: this happened to Oda Banga's family. So he finds himself
Speaker 1: Um a little hundred pound, like less than five ft
Speaker 1: tall oda banga Um basically wandering the congo alone, and
Speaker 1: he was in short order captured by by slave traders
Speaker 1: who enslaved him and sold him to a labor camp. Yeah.
Speaker 1: His uh if you see pictures of him, he has
Speaker 1: these fangs for teeth. His teeth were fied filed down
Speaker 1: per the you know Congolese um customs and traditions. So
Speaker 1: at first I thought that the Americans did that, but
Speaker 1: he had already did that. But they they were like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, this like plays into our narrative perfectly. It's
Speaker 1: gonna sell so many tickets. Yeah, so they they trot
Speaker 1: him out at the St. Louis World's Fair. Um. But
Speaker 1: that's not where his story is because he went from
Speaker 1: there to the Bronx Zoo in New York. Um on
Speaker 1: display in a literal cage with animals with with chimpanzees
Speaker 1: sometimes and orangutans, I think was his his most frequent companion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's really, I mean just devastating, like people would
Speaker 1: pokem and prod him and throw bananas at um. And
Speaker 1: the New York Times wrote about I mean, I think
Speaker 1: they're harold their headline was bushman shares a cage with
Speaker 1: Bronx park apes. Um, and the New York Times was
Speaker 1: just it's not like they were writing an article of outrage.
Speaker 1: They were saying, like, come check this out. They were
Speaker 1: actually responding to the outrage. So very short order. Um,
Speaker 1: the Colored Minister's Convention is what it was called. Um,
Speaker 1: the some of the black ministers around New York got together.
Speaker 1: We're like, dude, um, this has to end immediately. We like,
Speaker 1: there's a black guy in a zoo and he's being
Speaker 1: he's being held in a cage on public display with
Speaker 1: a monkey. Yeah, and this is like forty something years
Speaker 1: after the end of slavery, right, So um, they banded
Speaker 1: together and mounted protests and and eventually, in pretty quick
Speaker 1: short order, got um Odobanga released to their their custody
Speaker 1: and care. Um. But the New York Times like published editorials,
Speaker 1: at least one of them saying like, what's all the
Speaker 1: hubbub about? Like the guys on the low end of
Speaker 1: the spectrum, you know, Um, as far as this hierarchy
Speaker 1: of races is concerned, so why wouldn't we put him
Speaker 1: in a cage and study him and observe him like
Speaker 1: of course there's much to be learned, right, So that
Speaker 1: really kind of gets it at the heart of of
Speaker 1: what was driving this at the time, public curiosity, colonization,
Speaker 1: but also that completely racist science that would eventually lead
Speaker 1: to eugenics, the eugenics movement in the West in the
Speaker 1: United States. Yeah, he was turned over to um one
Speaker 1: of the leaders of the Colored Baptist Minister's Conference, Reverend
Speaker 1: James Gordon. Uh, he was a superintendent of the Howard
Speaker 1: Colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn. And his quote is like
Speaker 1: one of the saddest things I've ever read, he said,
Speaker 1: And this was like, this is how he tried to
Speaker 1: explain that it was bad. He said, our race, we
Speaker 1: think is depressed enough without exhibiting one of us with
Speaker 1: the apes. We think we are worthy of being considered
Speaker 1: human beings with souls. Like the very fact that he
Speaker 1: had to point out that fundamental, like so obvious thing
Speaker 1: is just so sad, you know. I mean, he had
Speaker 1: to actually make a press statement saying, by the way,
Speaker 1: he's a human, like you understand that, right, And we've
Speaker 1: got enough problems here trying to gain agency in this country. Uh,
Speaker 1: can you help us out here? And so they turned
Speaker 1: him over to him. Uh. He lived the rest of
Speaker 1: his life. He almost went back to Africa UH in
Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen, but World War one broke out and that
Speaker 1: stopped all. Like passengership. He he did go back to Africa,
Speaker 1: want he visited. He wanted to move back in nineteen fourteen.
Speaker 1: So this is what I understand that. Um. Samuel Verner,
Speaker 1: the guy who originally negotiated UM for Odobanga to come
Speaker 1: with him back to the World's Fair, negotiated well. He
Speaker 1: negotiated with the slaves traders. Um. He took Odebanga back
Speaker 1: to the Congo, and Odebanga, from what I read, said,
Speaker 1: there's no place here for me anymore. I'll come back
Speaker 1: with you. Came back to the States and didn't feel
Speaker 1: any more comfortable or at home in the States and
Speaker 1: decided he did want to go back to Africa and
Speaker 1: never made it back that last time. Yeah, thanks to
Speaker 1: World War One. Um. He lived in Virginia. He worked
Speaker 1: at a tobacco company. Um. Apparently it was a good
Speaker 1: worker and a good employee. Uh. And killed himself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: shot himself in the chest with a borrowed revolver somehow
Speaker 1: borrowed makes it even worse. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Does it? Yeah, something about it? I can't I put
Speaker 1: my finger on interesting. But Um during this time, so
Speaker 1: this is like think about this. His whole family and
Speaker 1: villages slaughtered. He's captured and sold into slave labor for years.
Speaker 1: Um taken away by an anthropologist who trades a pound
Speaker 1: assault in the bolt of cloth for him, is forced
Speaker 1: into a human zoo. Is forced into an actual zoo
Speaker 1: in a monkey cage. UM, and then he tries to
Speaker 1: go back home, doesn't feel at home at home, comes
Speaker 1: back to the States. It's just depressed for ten more years,
Speaker 1: and then takes his own life with the borrowed revolver
Speaker 1: that was the life of Oda Benga. For Gordon's part,
Speaker 1: he tried to help him have a life in the States.
Speaker 1: UM got him like, tried to integrate him with American clothing.
Speaker 1: He got his teeth capped. UM sent him to school.
Speaker 1: He was he was like he wanted to try and
Speaker 1: fit in, but he he was a man without a home.
Speaker 1: You know, he didn't fit in anywhere. Yeah, it's really
Speaker 1: really sad. Yeah, it's super sad. So he really kind
Speaker 1: of UM demonstrates like a mayor. Erica's involvement in this.
Speaker 1: He was, he was prominent in the nineteen o four St.
Speaker 1: Louis World's Fair, and he was put on display in
Speaker 1: the Bronx Zoo. And again, like you said, not just
Speaker 1: the New York Times was you know, arguing in favor
Speaker 1: of keeping him in there. The fact that he was
Speaker 1: in there, and that zoo attendants doubled over the previous
Speaker 1: year the month he was there, and that, um, the
Speaker 1: head of the Zoological Society in New York was like,
Speaker 1: let's bring some monkeys in and put him in with
Speaker 1: a cage, because apparently he was taken to the Bronx
Speaker 1: Zoo under the auspices that he would be caring for
Speaker 1: the animals, not that he was going to be put
Speaker 1: on display. And once he got there there like we
Speaker 1: have a different idea for you. Yeah, and he would
Speaker 1: I mean, if you read accounts at the time, he
Speaker 1: would basically just sort of sit there depressed. Eventually, after
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks he got a little obviously kg
Speaker 1: um like experiencing zukosis like an animal might. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then they start letting him out to like walk around
Speaker 1: the four some. He would shoot his bow and arrow some.
Speaker 1: But then when people saw that he was in the forest,
Speaker 1: they would come after him and he was quickly kind
Speaker 1: of ushered back into his cage. Yeah so um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: the fact that all this happened really kind of underscores
Speaker 1: the complicity of everybody alive at the time. I mean,
Speaker 1: there were people who protests protested against it. Obviously, the
Speaker 1: the Colored Baptist Minister's Conference was very vocal about it
Speaker 1: and were secured his release. But they were in the minority,
Speaker 1: and like everybody else was just tacitly approving this, just
Speaker 1: by allowing it to go on and not speaking out
Speaker 1: about it. And some people trace this um and the
Speaker 1: fact that human zoos ever existed directly to the undercurrent
Speaker 1: of racism prevalent in the West today. That like that
Speaker 1: is the basis of it, certainly part of it. So
Speaker 1: let's let's take another break. Then we'll come back and
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about St. Louis. So nineteen o four
Speaker 1: we talked a little bit about the St. Louis World's Fair,
Speaker 1: but they had more living exhibits than just Oda Banga.
Speaker 1: By the way, Odebanga made friends with Geronimo. Did you
Speaker 1: know that? I did not know that, So they're the
Speaker 1: enclosure for the Congolese and the enclosure for the Native
Speaker 1: Americans were beside one another. Geronimo and Odebank actually became
Speaker 1: pretty good friends. I'm hanging out. Is that a silver lining? Okay? Um?
Speaker 1: The Philippines play a large part in this. That was
Speaker 1: a forty seven acre area at the St. Louis World's
Speaker 1: Fair dedicated to more than a thousand uh Filipinos of
Speaker 1: various tribes UM specifically this uh one tribe in the
Speaker 1: mountains of the Philippines, um the Ergo Rot. They in
Speaker 1: fact that in means in Tagalog mountain people uh. And
Speaker 1: they were unique in the world. And then they successfully
Speaker 1: defended their land against colonization forever like they were never
Speaker 1: Spain never got to them, uh so Ergo they were,
Speaker 1: you know, left largely intact culturally, right, So they had
Speaker 1: a reputation UM by the time the St. Louis World's Fair,
Speaker 1: and I believe they were billed as such as being
Speaker 1: like the most savage tribe in the world, if not
Speaker 1: just the Philippines, but either way, which really means white
Speaker 1: people had not been able to get to them yet.
Speaker 1: So they're just slipping their nice peaceful life as they
Speaker 1: always have. One of the things that was like made
Speaker 1: like a lot of hay was made about the igar
Speaker 1: rots was that they would eat dog, and that um
Speaker 1: they would. They In reality that the rats did act
Speaker 1: really eat eat dog, but it was under very specific circumstances.
Speaker 1: And if a family sacrificed and ate their dog, their
Speaker 1: family dog, it was it was a really bad sign
Speaker 1: for the family. It told the rest of the village
Speaker 1: that they were in some dire straits because the family
Speaker 1: would sacrifice the dog basically like the dog was taking
Speaker 1: one for the team, um, to get this family out
Speaker 1: of whatever horrible streak of luck or whatever they had
Speaker 1: going on, and then they would eat the dog and
Speaker 1: that that ritual process will be done. It was very
Speaker 1: very rare. It was basically done as a last ditch
Speaker 1: attempt to reverse fortunes for this family that had fallen
Speaker 1: on hard times or was undergoing illness or whatever. But
Speaker 1: that did happen. It did exist. If you take the
Speaker 1: Igorante people and put them in the nineteen four St.
Speaker 1: Louis World's Fair, that happens every morning. Every morning, a
Speaker 1: dog would be sacrificed and eaten by the agats. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and not only that they would take like uh sacred
Speaker 1: ego rot rituals um like crowning a chief. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't enough just to put them on display and have
Speaker 1: people look at them. Is they took their traditions, their
Speaker 1: sacred rituals and use them as as dramatic fodder basically, Right,
Speaker 1: So it's becomes it's like a theme park schedule to
Speaker 1: come see these different quote unquote shows performed that were
Speaker 1: really these ego rot uh rituals that they had held
Speaker 1: dear and were untouched by white man until this point. Right.
Speaker 1: And then let's not forget the dogs that were sacrificed
Speaker 1: like every day because of this. Right. So here's the
Speaker 1: other thing too. You might say, well, that's crazy. They
Speaker 1: used to sacrifice and eat their dogs. That's that's weird.
Speaker 1: That's other, Right, they sacrifice and their dogs for every
Speaker 1: day for the um satisfaction of white crowds who came
Speaker 1: to see them. So the igorat Um Village was the
Speaker 1: most um successful and lucrative exhibit in the entire nineteen
Speaker 1: o four World's Fair. There were something like nineteen something
Speaker 1: million people who came to St. Louis for the World's
Speaker 1: Fair that year. Of them paid an extra nickel to
Speaker 1: go see the Igorott Village. Everybody went to see the
Speaker 1: Iggorott Village is because they wanted to go see someone
Speaker 1: half dressed sacrifice a dog and then eat it. That's
Speaker 1: what people paid to see. It had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with learning about their culture and nothing to do with anything.
Speaker 1: It was about seeing somebody do something horrific and weird
Speaker 1: for your edification. Yeah, and it was. Um. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are so many people that you could pluck out
Speaker 1: of history and sort of uh used as an example,
Speaker 1: whether it's Otta Binga or this woman uh Sarchy Bartman, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the hot and taught Venus. Yeah. She was South African
Speaker 1: and she was born somewhere around seventeen eighty and she
Speaker 1: was brought to London in the early eighteen hundreds and
Speaker 1: put on display. And she actually had a genetic characteristic
Speaker 1: um called stia tope stiatpagia. Is that right? I think
Speaker 1: so close enough, I should tell the audience. I'm nodding silently,
Speaker 1: but that is when you have a um. I mean
Speaker 1: the ways described here medically is a protuberant buttocks and
Speaker 1: elongated labia, right, not like like like genetically protuberant buttocks yeah,
Speaker 1: like like very very big. Yes, that's that's clear. Um.
Speaker 1: So they brought her over in London put her on display.
Speaker 1: Later on she went to Paris, she was described as
Speaker 1: having the buttocks of a mandril um. And then finally
Speaker 1: in two thousand two, her remains were repatriated to South Africa. Um.
Speaker 1: And we haven't even mentioned stuff like that. They would
Speaker 1: dress up Odabinga's cage with bones and things like anything
Speaker 1: just to make him seem more primitive, and he was
Speaker 1: probably like, one, are all these bones laying around? More primitive,
Speaker 1: more scary, more in need of civilization. Like if you
Speaker 1: think about it, that the Igorat exhibit, the Philippines exhibit,
Speaker 1: and the fact that it was even part of the
Speaker 1: nineteen o four World's Fair, that it's the same thing
Speaker 1: that was a colonial possession of America. The United States
Speaker 1: had gotten into colonizing itself, and the Philippines was one
Speaker 1: of its colonial possessions. So they were bringing the most
Speaker 1: savage of the savage from the Philippines over here to
Speaker 1: basically justify why America was there to civilize the Filipinos. Um.
Speaker 1: And it was this. It just followed the same script
Speaker 1: and apparently it always has. Anytime somebody goes and conquers
Speaker 1: another another land, they have to basically demonstrate how what
Speaker 1: they're doing is actually good for the people they're conquering,
Speaker 1: not that they're being exploited and murdered there. This is
Speaker 1: actually good for them. We're going to civilize them. And
Speaker 1: it continued all the way up until that nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: eight World's Fair in Belgium. Well, and some people say
Speaker 1: it continues today while they're not rounding people up and
Speaker 1: bringing them somewhere else. Um, you can go to what
Speaker 1: they call human safari's when they basically will put you
Speaker 1: on a bus or on a boat and drive you
Speaker 1: to these tribes people to let you gaulk at them
Speaker 1: from afar Uh, notably in India's on Deman Island, the
Speaker 1: Jarawa Jarhuahua. It sounds like I'm saying they're wrong, but
Speaker 1: it's totally right uh their tribe. Basically, there was a
Speaker 1: video from two thousand twelve that The Guardian dug up
Speaker 1: that showed these people just you know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: the same thing, except they weren't brought over and put
Speaker 1: in cages, but they're still gawked at. And this was
Speaker 1: what six years ago. It's amazing that this is still
Speaker 1: going on. I think it is so the Indian Supreme
Speaker 1: Court outlawed it, but it's still going on. Is of
Speaker 1: the most recent article as I was like two thousand seventeen.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's like a human humans of far Yeah.
Speaker 1: So um. And again, a lot of people directly trace
Speaker 1: this to the undercurrents of racism in the West today.
Speaker 1: Something like one point for billion people saw human zoos
Speaker 1: during their heyday from about eighteen sixty seven and ninety eight.
Speaker 1: One point for billion people. That's a lot of people,
Speaker 1: especially if you're considering that it was really just people
Speaker 1: in Europe and America, right, Um, and that that had
Speaker 1: to have had an effect. It clearly had an effect.
Speaker 1: The fact that people were like, oh, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: check this out and maybe throw a banana at somebody
Speaker 1: because I want him to dance. The fact that like
Speaker 1: that was a mindset clearly is still clinging to the
Speaker 1: to the international global psyche, at least in the West today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it definitely helped reinforce that idea of Western
Speaker 1: white superiority that's still so prevalent. So you got anything else, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we should talk real quick about this protest
Speaker 1: art in Oslo about four years ago, four or five
Speaker 1: years ago, there were these artists that did a recreation
Speaker 1: of and this was all to bring UM, to shed
Speaker 1: light on this. It was protest art, but they were
Speaker 1: recreating the World's Fair of nineteen fourteen UM. In this case,
Speaker 1: there were Senegalese environments that they were recreating UH and
Speaker 1: it sort of had mixed results. Like some people got
Speaker 1: it and we're on board and saying, yeah, I see
Speaker 1: what you guys are doing, sort of like this meta
Speaker 1: art approach. But then other people came out UM and said,
Speaker 1: like it's an abusive art and really we're highly critical
Speaker 1: of it, which is it didn't It didn't They didn't
Speaker 1: nail it, and it didn't. Yeah, go over very well
Speaker 1: in all quarters. Yeah, one more thing. Check that nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty eight World's Fair in Belgium. Like if if everything
Speaker 1: we've stayed up to this point seems like weird and
Speaker 1: far off and and just past and historical. Go look
Speaker 1: up the picture of the little girl from uh Congo
Speaker 1: at the World's Fair UM being fed by an older
Speaker 1: white woman leaning over a fence to theater. Like it
Speaker 1: drives home everything everything we just said doesn't even compare
Speaker 1: to this one picture. It just it's really tough to
Speaker 1: look at, but it drives the entire thing home because
Speaker 1: it's it's recent enough that it just feels like, oh,
Speaker 1: this just happened. Yeah, she's in a little little American dress. Yep,
Speaker 1: a little white dress. Okay, what about now? You got
Speaker 1: anything else? Nothing else? Well, if you want to know
Speaker 1: more about human zoos, just start looking them up around
Speaker 1: the the internet and prepared to get bummed out. Uh.
Speaker 1: And since I said that it's time for listener mail,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this we got another elephant adopted in
Speaker 1: our name. Yeah. If you remember a few weeks ago,
Speaker 1: we read one about somebody who adopted an elephant in
Speaker 1: her name and sent a little stuffed animal. Was very kind. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this one goes a little something like this. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: loyal listener going on about ten years And I couldn't
Speaker 1: have been happier. And to see your episode on elephants
Speaker 1: pop up. One of the best Christmas gifts I ever
Speaker 1: was given was the gift of fostering an orphan elephant
Speaker 1: at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Kenya. They're an
Speaker 1: incredible organization that rescues, rehabilitates UH, and reintegrates orphan elephants
Speaker 1: back into the wild in Kenya. And they also find
Speaker 1: anti poaching teams and mobile vet units that respond to
Speaker 1: entreat injured wild elephants, UH and other wildlife. UM a
Speaker 1: wood turner, and I donate of all my sales to
Speaker 1: d s w T. And I'm thrilled to be able
Speaker 1: to foster seven orphans right now. So as a massive
Speaker 1: thank you for raising awareness, I sent each of you
Speaker 1: something from my wood shop and donated what I would
Speaker 1: have made to the d s w T and foster
Speaker 1: to sweet little Jotto in your name. Jotto is pretty cute.
Speaker 1: Have you seen him? Oh? Yeah, he's an elephant. Thanks
Speaker 1: for brightening up my commutant, satisfying my insatiable thirst for
Speaker 1: new and interesting facts. Lowell Hutchinson parentheses, BT dubs, I'm
Speaker 1: a woman. Thanks a lot lot exclamation point. Well, everybody,
Speaker 1: if you want, you can go to the David Sheldrick
Speaker 1: Wildlife Trust and look up Jotto and see our adopted
Speaker 1: elephant that we're fostering now thanks to Lowell. They should
Speaker 1: call it Josh oh or can you get the name changed?
Speaker 1: Maybe it depends on how how much you give. I think, Um,
Speaker 1: there's only like five elephants that they just changed the
Speaker 1: name right, a different picture. Thanks again, Lowell and low
Speaker 1: didn't say where what her website is for wood turning,
Speaker 1: but if you need some wood turned, look up Lowell
Speaker 1: Hutchison and hopefully her site will come up. That's right.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh. If you want to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us like lolded or sponsor an elephant for us,
Speaker 1: that's great too. You can get in touch with us
Speaker 1: by going on to stuff you Should Know dot com
Speaker 1: and looking up our social links or sending a certain
Speaker 1: email to stuff podcast at i heart radio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's
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