A story of man's inhumanity to man that will haunt you: African pygmy they kept caged in a zoo with monkeys: It happened it 20th century 'civilised' New York

Today, New York’s Bronx Zoo — the biggest in America — boasts an exceptional collection of Congo Gorillas, kept in a generous enclosure.

Back in 1906, the zoo had another ape enclosure, which also contained an exhibit from the Congo.

But the staggering, shocking thing was that, in the early 20th century, the authorities had placed a human being alongside an orang-utan in their ape cage. 

Ota Benga, a 4ft 11in Congolese pygmy, was kept in a cage in the Bronx Zoo in 1906, teased and taunted by visitors who often burned him with cigars

They then littered the cage with bones to suggest — completely wrongly — that he was a cannibal.

That human being was Ota Benga, a 7st 5lb Congolese pygmy, 4ft 11in tall and thought to be about 23 years old. 

Behind his iron bars, he wore a khaki coat and white trousers, with bare feet. Back in Africa, in a tribal ritual, his teeth had been filed to sharpened points.

And soon this poor, melancholy man — the subject of a major new book, published next month — became the talk of the town.

Five hundred New Yorkers at a time gathered round to gawp and laugh at Benga and his orangutan companion. A quarter of a million people visited the zoo, just north of Manhattan, when his ‘exhibit’ opened in the September of 1906 — double the normal figure.

The New York Times even published a poem about the city’s latest celebrity: ‘Wee little Ota Benga / Dwarfed, benighted, without guile / Scarcely more than ape or monkey / Yet a man the while!’

Just like the orang-utan who shared his captivity, Benga had a room to retire to from the cage. 

But, just like the orang-utan, he was controlled by the zookeepers, who determined when he went on show. 

And, just like the orang-utan, he spent the baking hot, late summer afternoons in a cage reeking of ape excrement and urine.

At 2pm every day, Benga was ushered out of his room into the cage, handed a bow and arrow, and a pet parrot, and given a clay target to aim at. 

Moments later, Dohong, the orang-utan, would join him, sometimes crouching on his shoulder, other times playing ball with him.

Benga usually joined in the humiliating routine. But, occasionally, he just sat gloomily on a stool, gazing through the bars at the cackling crowd. 

Once, when a boy shouted: ‘Shoot, shoot,’ at Benga to get him to shoot an arrow, Benga bellowed back: ‘Shoot, shoot.’

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