For more than a hundred years -
from the mid 1800’s until the Second World War -they travelled
the world in search of people — human beings they classified as exotic
animals to be exhibited in human zoos. These exhibitions were a
worldwide phenomenon. Throughout the 19th and 20th
centuries some 35,000 human beings were exhibited, to one and a half
billion other human visitors. Human beings exhibited
by other human beings in zoos and circuses,
theaters and anatomy rooms. At colonial exhibitions
and world fairs. These men and women were placed
on the same level as animals. This was extremely disturbing. At the same time, there was
a degree of conditioning which was very difficult
to escape from. Children, women, and men were put
on display in order to support a hierarchy of ‘races’, and to
justify world-wide colonization. It was so successful because
people came to see the so-called 'savages’ from faraway lands, whose
exoticism had long fascinated them. Here, for the first time, they
could be marveled at in the flesh. They were supposed
to depict cannibals, although none of them
actually were cannibals. It was all just theater. Thanks to human zoos, racism
became accepted and commonplace. Visitors flocked to see the
ever more terrifying savages, which were marketed accordingly. Tambo - an Aborigine from Australia; Ota Benga -a Pygmy from Congo; Marius Kaloïe, a Kanak
from New Caledonia; and Moliko, a Kali'na from Guyana. They represent many thousands
of people who were exhibited, but whose names history has forgotten. Remembering is not about
attaching blame to people. Remembering is, above all, about
understanding what happened, and understanding the influence these
actions have had on all of us. Before they became mass entertainment, human exhibitions were
reserved for the elite. As early as the 16th Century,
Europeans imported ‘strange savages’ from far flung lands, for the enjoyment
of rich aristocrats at royal courts. But, by the beginning of the 19th
century, this fashion had spread to fairs, pubs and theaters, thereby
reaching a wider audience. In the United States the king of human
exhibitions was Phineas Taylor Barnum. From as early as 1841 his famous
‘Freak Shows’ had attracted huge crowds of people,
and had earned him a fortune. He wanted to put the strangest
people in the world on stage: dwarves, mermaids, conjoined
twins, a bearded lady, a giant — they were all assembled in a gallery
of the bizarre, where visitors could catch a glimpse
of an amazing and fantastic world. Hollywood didn’t yet exist, but
Barnum was responsible for establishing a fascination
for the strange. Barnum revolutionized
the American circus when he created the
"Greatest Show on Earth": a huge travelling
circus with 5,000 seats This was also where he presented
his "savages" to the public. He wrote to more than a hundred
American commercial agencies and consulates throughout the world asking
them to send him 'real wild savages' in order to increase his worldwide
troupe of what he called, "freaks." The Irishman Robert Cunningham was
able to satisfy Barnum’s wishes. When he heard about Barnum's letter
in 1883, he was in Australia, in north Queensland,
home to the Aborigines, the country's indigenous
people who had been oppressed by British settlers,
since the 18th century. Deprived of their most basic rights, victims of violence and
racial segregation, they were considered little more
than a part of the Fauna and Flora. Queensland wasn’t a state
then, but a colony. This was a turning point
for the Aboriginal people, who had been living there for
thousands and thousands of years and countless generations, because their
land was being taken by the Europeans. Aborigines were forced to live in
villages called, "black camps". Cunningham met Kukamunburra, a young
Aborigine man whom he re-named Tambo. Tambo’s companions were
also given new names: Toby, Jenny, and
their son Toby Junior. Billy, Susie, Jimmy and Bob. The prevailing pseudo-scientific
ideology ranked aborigines the lowest among the hierarchy
of human races, making them highly sought after
for human andfolk shows. They were considered unsuited to
modern life and facing extinction. I do know that not long
after Cunningham got them on the boat at Townsville they wanted
to go back to their communities, they wanted to go home. We know that the people
were not aware of what they were getting
themselves involved with. Cunningham actually had to remove all
their clothes so they wouldn’t run away. When they got into Sydney two
people actually still escaped. One of them actually
stabbed a policeman and the whole matter ended
up before the court. The judge still released
the two escapees into the care of
Cunningham through a bond. In the wake of this upset, the group
hastily boarded a ship in Sydney and after a long crossing, they joined the
Greatest Show on Earth in New York. Barnum had prepared
his new acquisitions to be the highlight of his show. He created a back story for each of
them, and gave them roles to play. “Cower before Billy the hunter
with his terrifying scars. Succumb to the charms of
Susie, Princess of Queensland! Experience the thrill as fierce
warrior Tambo performs his sensational war dance.” The tour travelled across
America at breakneck speed. The troupe’s appearance in more than
130 American and Canadian cities pushed them to exhaustion. While Barnum and
Cunningham made a fortune. I can only imagine, coming from a
remote island in north Queensland to be paraded in front
of 30 thousand people — the horror they were feeling
to be exhibited there. Over in a strange land, strange
people, strange noises, smells. God knows how that would be. In 1884, one year after
arriving in America and having travelled
the whole country, Tambo fell ill and died,
while still on tour. Cunningham had the body
mummified and sold his remains to a fairground
museum in Cleveland. More deaths followed
in quick succession; however — the show went on. Despite these losses Cunningham knew
his troupe could conquer Europe. He shipped them to London,
the capital of human zoos. In London they performed
nightly at the Crystal Palace which was constructed in 1851
for the Great Exhibition. I'm not sure whether the visitors
at that time had enough distance to say to themselves: "This is a business — it’s not
really real, but just acting". I don't think that the
distance was there - and that's the dangerous thing. After England, the aborigines
set out on an extensive tour through the old-world
theaters and music halls. Castans Panopticum in Berlin,
the Arcadia in St. Petersburg, the Folies Bergère in Paris, where
the last survivors were photographed: Jenny and Toby Junior, who would
both contract tuberculosis. The fate of Billy, Tambo’s
companion is unknown. The eyes of Billy are very sad. Just wondering where he is. Just
looking at him, he’s confused. It’s a depressed feeling. Low self-esteem. Going overseas into
another world, you know, he’s been stripped of his powers - in a sense of- he’s been humiliated, because he’s dominated by somebody
else who is telling him what to do. In our society, he was respected
as a law man, but now he’s not. I mean you see that. With the support of the
Australian government, Grand Dad Walter has brought home the
mortal remains of his ancestor Tambo, so that he can finally rest in peace
on Palm Island among his people. Tambo's mummified body had been
found in 1993 in the United States, in the basement of a funeral
home in Cleveland, Ohio. I feel strong because he is
back on his ancestral country. I feel his strength. His spirit is
back home and he is free. He’s free. This story needs to be told, purely because the mistakes of the
past don’t revisit us in the future. In this period when
exoticism was all the rage, show organizers were not the
only ones to grasp the interest that the exhibitions aroused. The colonial powers saw a ready
opportunity to introduce to their citizens both their colonies, as well as the validity of
their imperialist policies. At the end of the 19th century, a renewed impulse to colonize
developed in the West, that prompted the European powers — but also the U-S and Japan — — to freely divide among themselves
those territories still available, in particular Africa. The world was gradually
appropriated by those who saw themselves as uniquely civilized. At the same time human
zoos proliferated to justify colonial
domination of the world. Colonized people have to accept,
share, and promote their own myth. And that is exactly what
happened in colonial times - not only in Africa, but also
in Japan and elsewhere. In order for the ‘savage’ to exist,
those who are presumed to be savages must accept that, that is
indeed, exactly what they are. At the beginning of the 1890s, the
role of the human zoos was shifting, in response to political objectives which were masterly
staged and orchestrated. Moliko’s story is that of a survivor. After months of humiliation, she was able to return to
her village and her people. One hundred years later, her
descendants recall the suffering of the exhibited people, and
shed light on their trauma. Moliko and her companions
belong to the Kali'na people, natives of Guyana. In 1882, Moliko together with
other people in her village left the banks of the
Maroni river in Guyana accompanied by the sound of drums. She, and 32 others had volunteered
to undertake the journey to Europe. The old people told us that there
was a big party before departure. They still remember a
mast and that the ship gradually disappeared
over the horizon. Until then they could still
see what was happening. But when the ship was beyond the
horizon, there was silence. The French explorer François Laveau,
sent by the Ministry for Colonies, was able to convince the Kali'na
to head off into the unknown. He offered them money
and beautiful sights, and vouched that they
would be well treated. Moliko's travel companions
were men, women and children who came voluntarily,
but were locked up in cages. They were supposed to make pottery
in Paris and build dugouts. Instead they were forced to act
as savages for the audience and were doubly humiliated
in the process: they were not accepted
for who they were, and they quickly realized that they
are indeed, regarded as ‘savages’. Subjected to constant humiliation, the Kali'na, like all the other
people exhibited at the time, were subjected to racialist
scientific studies. The exhibition of the Kali'na
was a great success. The public flocked to the
Jardin d’Acclimatation. The Kali'na embodied to perfection what human savages
were meant to be like. The winter, disease
and exhaustion rapidly caused the deaths of some
members of the troupe in Paris. The show continued nonetheless. Of the original 32 Kali'na
who travelled to France, only 10 returned to their village. Moliko was one of them. This part of Kali'na history
is very distressing, because the people could
not mourn their loss. Grief is something very important
for the Kali'na people, and even a century later, it
is still impossible to mourn. Caroline and Lydia are
mother and daughter. They are direct
descendants of Moliko. They have never seen
these photos of Moliko and her fellowcompanions
of misfortune, taken by Roland Bonaparte. That’s Moliko. That was your great
grandmother’s first name. She was called Moliko. We don’t know who
the other one was. She said, they were afraid
when they reached France. That’s what she said when
she told me what happened. I feel a little bit
sorry for them, back then. I feel sad when I look at
these photos. My father never talked about
his grandmother leaving. I’ve never seen
these photos. But I can look at them now. This unspoken trauma is something the
descendants still struggle with today. I don't think it was right.
What was the point? The way the white people made
them do all this nonsense! What did they want with them? Such behavior is
mistreatment. If a white man takes them away,
he must treat them properly. Such treatment was
simply not correct. They wanted to force their will on the
Kali'na, but maybe they didn't obey. Maybe that's what happened. Nobody really knows what
happened back then. There is no textbook, or course
about indigenous history, and to date no historian has
dealt with this aspect. Yet it is part of our identity, but
also a facet of the history of France. That’s why we are
interested in it today. The exhibition of the Kali'na was
an important first step towards a state exploitation of the colonized
people, for propaganda purposes. The Ministry of Colonies took
control of human exhibitions. All private shows now
needed its authorization. The productions spread
across the Atlantic. America was now also
getting involved. Of all the peoples exhibited, one
stood out in terms of popularity. Six diminutive Africans
attracted everyone’s attention. They were Batwa pygmies
from the Belgian Congo. The Saint Louis
Anthropology Department had financed an African expedition
led by the explorer Samuel Verner to bring them to be presented
exclusively at the exhibition. Ota Benga was 1
meter 41 in height. This young man with
the enigmatic smile was soon to be become the
most popular among them. Samuel Verner was commissioned
explicitly to bring back pygmies, because it was believed at that time that they were the least
civilized people on the planet, and so the whole point of the
Saint Louis World's Fair was to map human progress from
the lowest to the highest, with the pygmies set to represent
the lowest form of humanity. Since 1885 The Congo
had been the property of the Belgian king Leopold ll. His authority was unchallenged and his rule was particularly
violent and harsh. Acts of brutality were common place. Samuel Verner himself, said
how he captured the pygmies; he wrote about how the
people were crying as he was like loading these people
onto ships and how some got away. He also indicated how he had
gone into villages with force — he was armed, and he had the
consent, and the support of a brutal regime to
exercise his mission. Of all the so-called "specimens"
presented at the exhibition, the pygmies aroused the greatest
curiosity among the visitors. They represented absolute savagery. Their small stature was due to a
morphological adaptation to living in the equatorial rainforest. But according to Westerners, it
signified that they were sub-human. They saw in them confirmation of
man’s descent from apes; proof of Darwin’s famous theory of the
‘missing link’ between man and animal. Day after day Ota Benga was treated to the
Americans' vulgarity and contempt. Ota Benga’s teeth were probably
most responsible for the horrendous experience he had in
the United States because of his teeth which were chipped to
points — a very common practice in The Congo. This imagery validated this idea
that he had been a cannibal. Of course, he was not. This deception consummated
Samuel Verner’s success: he received the Saint Louis gold
medal at the closing ceremony of the exhibition, , which had
attracted almost 20 million visitors. After travelling to the Congo again,
the explorer finally took Ota Benga to New York. His American adventure had
resumed, but behind bars. It was 1906, Samuel Verder was
unable to provide for his pygmy, so he loaned him to the
head of the Bronx zoo, who put him
in a monkey cage. He was made to play the savage —
with bow and arrows as props. In a few short years more than 40
thousand people came to see him in an enclosure he shared
with a chimpanzee — his new partner with whom
he performed small tricks. There’s an outcry in the press, and
not just the African American press, but increasingly in the mainstream
press, that this is so degrading and so contrary to what a
civilized nation should be doing, that zoo authorities together with
some of the ministers in New York work out an arrangement to have
Benga conveyed to an orphanage. Now free, and in the care of a
religious community, Ota Benga hoped finally to be able to
integrate into his adopted country. The black ministers who
took him in, in 1910 gave him a Western
Christian education. He went to primary school
and took English lessons. Subsequently he was sent to Lynchburg,
Virginia, where he got to know Anne Spencer, a respected African-American
poet and civil rights activist. She taught him to write. Protected and supported, Ota Benga
tried to live a normal life and to go to work. But as a Congo pygmy, he could not adapt to the
country of the Ku Klux Klan. The end of the story is the first
world war breaks out and it’s clear to Benga that it’s going to be
very difficult to get back to the Congo. And we don’t know exactly
what precipitated his action, but he takes his own life. He has a gun and
leaves his residence and shoots himself through the heart. At the time of his death, 12 years
after coming to the United States, he had become the most famous
savage in American show business. His body was never
claimed by The Congo. Ota Benga's story is
the story of racism. The thousands of people who stared at
Ota Benga failed to see a human being. We can see how throughout
history these men and women have been denied their humanity, in order to justify the alleged
superiority of white people. The first World War reset attitudes
towards exhibiting people, and to colonial operations. The two great powers —
Britain and France chose out of economic and
military opportunism, to enroll people from
their colonies from 1914. They now believe they can
be civilized and useful if they can be kept
under supervision. Yesterday’s savages were today’s brave
soldiers or indigenous workers. In the eyes of the countries they
fight for, they are now fighting an even more primitive
savage: the Germans. After victory was achieved,
Afro Caribbean, Hindu, African American, Kanak, African and
Asian soldiers from the French and the Allied armies paraded on the Champs
Ellysée to the cheers of the crowds. The human exhibitions
after 1918 are different. Now they are no
longer savages. Of course, they remain
natives and not our equals, but they no longer live in darkness. They are on the road to
civilization and are portrayed as being at the service of
the great colonial nations. The pacification of these territories
is staged - with the help of folklore, exoticism, even eroticism. The result is a world
that only functions due to the domination of the West. The message remains the same: we are the masters and
they are the natives. Marius Kaloïe was 21 years when
he agreed to leave his New Caledonian homeland to travel to
Paris with 100 fellow Kanaks. It was 1931. He trusted the French official
who suggested he and the others present their Kanak culture at
the Colonial exhibition in Paris They were to return in 8 months. Some 100 people agreed to
undertake the journey including teachers, students, customs
officers, waiters and seamen. Little did they know that they would
become the tragic heroes of one of the greatest humiliations
in French history. In the Jardin d’Acclimatation,
Marius was told he could not leave his enclosure unaccompanied
to rest or pray. None of the promises
made were kept. He had been tricked — it was as if he’d returned
to the 19th century. It was terrible, - they had to
perform from morning till night: the women had to
breastfeed in public. They had to build dugouts
and dance all day. They were slaves! I think
that violates human dignity. Even though nobody died, people should
not treat other people like that. Some of the troupe went to
Germany while twice a week the others performed at the
Colonial Exhibition in Paris. The organizers exhibited them as
natives from New Caledonia, as part of the colony’s
official presentation. Unlike in the Jardin d’Acclimatation,
they were not presented as savages, but as bold
natives of the empire. France wished to showcase the
scope of an empire, which was at its peak with a population of a
hundred million, and an area of twice that of the Roman Empire. The colonial exhibition was two
to three times the size of Disneyland in Paris - and it took
place not outside but in the center of Paris, in former
workers' districts, that had been completely redesigned. At that time, cinema was still in its
infancy, sound film had just been invented, and here an entire colonial
empire was now being recreated - it was like Hollywood. The exhibition was inaugurated by
the President Gaston Doumergue, and Marshal Lyautey, joined by the
Under Secretary of State for the colonies Blaise Diagne. In just a few months 33
million tickets were sold. I think 1931 was the peak. But that is not to say that a
real decline was starting. It was important to show that France’s
history, which had cost a lot of money and countless parliamentary
debates, had finally paid off; and that the promise of educating
inferior people to a level not too far removed from the nation’s
standards, had been achieved. All over the world voices were
beginning to denounce human zoos. For the first time an
enormous scandal erupted. In France the human rights
league, the communists, and even former colonists of
New Caledonia were protesting. All agreed that such
displays were unacceptable. You could not glorify the
civilizing mission of colonization, and at the same time
exhibit fake savages. The Kanaks being exhibited in
Germany also start rebelling and were less and less willing
to play the game. The protests prompted the Minister
of Colonies to order the Jardin d’Acclimatation to close the
exhibition, and to bring back the part of the troupe in
Germany at Hagenbeck. At stake was the honor of the
French Republic, which could not be seen to be condoning
such productions. The authorities decided
to repatriate the troupe. The Kanaks arrived home in July 1932. Marius Kaloïe did not wish to return. He saw his future in France
and refused to board the ship in Marseille, and returned
to the woman he loved. She was French, her name was
Juliette Gabrielle Favre. And meeting her was the only
good luck he’d had in France. A few weeks later, the
couple married in Bordeaux. What is surprising is that the
marriage contract here says: "The future wife wishes to
keep her French nationality". Because Kanaks were
considered to be foreigners, even though they came
from a French colony. Sylvette was born
one year later. She was only a few months old when
Marius died in a tram accident. Her family always hid the fact
that her father was a Kanak. Only in her old age did
she discover her origins, thanks to a journalist friend. Today Sylvette has returned
to the zoological gardens where her father was exhibited. It is a French, but also
a New Caledonian story. I am proud, because he was my father, but the way he was
treated is shocking. It’s not a very nice story, especially
as I never got to know him. This place touches me. I have the feeling that these
people are always present, here. In 2006, Sylvette arranged
for Marius’s remains to be returned to New Caledonia. Today, he rests among his
people in Nathalo cemetery, on the island of Lifou. We returned by ship and
took him to the tribe. They prepared food, the children sang,
everyone spoke about his story. He has returned.
He is back home. The exhibition of the Kanaks
was one of the last in Europe. The scandal was so great that such
shows were no longer possible. In the decade prior
to the 2nd World War, human zoos and colonial
exhibitions gradually ceased. The last of such exhibitions took
place at the end of the decade in Britain, Portugal, Germany and Italy. They were no longer profitable —
the public was tired of them. Only a few diehards hung on, but
their productions were so blatantly mediocre, that
visitors shunned them. The end of human zoos
marked the start of revolts heralding decolonization wars. To abandon the zoos was to
abandon colonial domination. A new era had begun, but one
of conflict and suffering. The next twenty years from 1940
to 1960 would be the darkest and most violent of the 20th
century; the second World War, decolonization,
the revolts against segregation in the United States — a wave of violent
struggle swept all over the world. This long chapter of history really
only concluded when the colonies won their independence from the mid
-1950s through the mid -1970s. From there onwards, the west will try by any means
to erase this shameful past. The history of the human zoos is
forgotten because it belongs to the history of folk culture, and
not to the great colonial history. The researchers of the 50s
to 80s found this phenomenon completely irrelevant. Today we are beginning
to rediscover all this, and ask ourselves the simple question: how could people in the West
believe that the human beings on the other side of the
oceans, were all savages? In the mid 1990’s, scie tists and
museum directors began to open the crates, search the archives,
and even to exhume remains. It is important to study the past
in order to understand what is happening in the present. For example, if you want to
understand why racism exists in our societies, you only have
to look at the human zoos, the history of
colonization and slavery. Only then will you understand
why there is still a claim for a superior
domination today. To lay this past to rest, the
bodies must rest in peace . Will we one day send home the
bodies of the exhibited, as we did in the past with Tambo? Will we one day write down Moliko’s
story into the history books of Guyana and also France? Or that of Marius Kaloie - to
overcome the conflicting memories that persist — not least
in New Caledonia? What can we do, so that one day the
body of Ota Benga is reclaimed by The Congo, and written
into his country’s history? It is now the duty of a generation to
rescue these stories from oblivion. Only by creating an enlightened
culture of remembrance can we finally close the
chapter on human zoos.
History has a way of reminding us that we probably need to treat each other way better than we do right now.
There was one a few miles from where I live..https://www.scotsman.com/regions/when-portobello-had-human-zoo-attraction-1490138
DW has really been cranking out some excellent documentaries. One of my favorite YouTube channels for sure.
Among those who were put into human zoos were over 1,000 Filipinos from 10 different ethnic groups displayed at the 1904 World's Fair. The "most popular" exhibit was the Igorot people, hailing from the northern highlands of the main island. They are known to be headhunters (only during battles, but no longer practiced) and dog eaters (only for ceremonial purposes), but the Igorot were forced to butcher and eat dog meat every day throughout the fair.
https://www.igorotage.com/blog/p/AZVQw/st-louis-exposition-1904-filipinos-dogs
Freak shows were also a thing. And this goes hand in hand with those colonial expositions ; it shows how messed up people were when looking at someone who wasn't well known
I read about some filipinos who were kept in a zoo in St. Louis I believe.
Yup.... Filipinos, Indonesians, Malaysians, Polynesians, Aboriginals and other Austronesian people have been treated like this by other races who refused to stay in their own country.
But this is also history. What’s done is done. We have to teach and learn from the past but also move towards the future.
They were used to justify the mistreatment of their kin so everyday citizens would preemptively lack empathy for them.
Kinda like ccp and their ethnic cleansing