Cynthia Crossen tells the sad story of How Pygmy Ota Benga Ended Up in the Bronx Zoo As Darwinism Dawned:
For a few yards of cloth and some salt, Samuel Verner, an American missionary and explorer, bought a young man named Ota Benga in the Belgian Congo in 1903. Ota Benga was a Pygmy who had been enslaved by another tribe. Mr. Verner was working under a contract to the St. Louis World’s Fair. He was supposed to bring several Pygmies to America for a living display of the stages of evolution, and then return them to Africa.Three years later, with the World’s Fair over and Mr. Verner in financial straits, Ota Benga was placed in a new home: the monkey house at the Bronx Zoo.