Page 50 - The Disasters Darwinism Brought To Humanity

50 T T H E D I S A S T E R S D A R W I N I S M B R O U G H T T O H U M A N I T Y Y
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Fair and exhibited him as "the nearest link to man." Two years later they
took him to Bronx Zoo in New York and displayed him with a few chim-
panzees, a gorilla called Dinah and an orang-utan called Dohung as
"man's oldest ancestors." The evolutionist director of the zoo, Dr. William
T. Horniday, gave long talks about the pride it gave him to have the "miss-
ing link," and visitors treated Ota Benga in his cage just like an animal. An
edition of the New York Times printed at the time described the visitors'
attitudes:
There were 40,000 visitors to the park on Sunday. Nearly every man woman
and child of this crowd made for the monkey house to see the star attraction
in the park–the wild man from Africa. They chased him about the grounds
all day, howling, jeering, and yelling. Some of them poked him in the ribs,
other tripped him up, all laughed at him. 37
The 17 September 1906 edition of the New York Journal said that this
was being done to prove evolution, but attacked it as a great injustice and
cruelty in these words:
These men, without thought and intelligence have been exhibiting in a cage
of monkeys, a small human dwarf from Africa. Their idea, probably, was to
inculcate some profound lesson in evolution.
As a matter of fact, the only result achieved has been to hold up to scorn the
African race, which deserves at least sympathy and kindness from the
whites of this country, after all the brutality it has suffered here…
It is shameful and disgusting that the misfortune, the physical deficiency, of
a human being, created by the same Force that puts us all here and endowed
with the same feelings and the same soul, should be locked in a cage with
monkeys and be made a public mockery. 38
The New York Daily Tribune also gave space to the subject of Ota
Benga's being exhibited in the zoo for the purposes of demonstrating evo-
lution. The Darwinist zoo director's defence was completely unscrupulous:
The exhibition of an African pygmy in the same cage with an orang outang
at the New York Zoological Park last week stirred up considerable criticism.
Some persons declared it was an attempt on the part of Director Hornaday
to demonstrate a close relationship between Negroes and monkeys. Dr.
Hornaday denied this. "If the little fellow is in a cage," said Dr. Hornaday, "it