IDNO

P.56902.

Description

Place

C Africa; N America; Democratic Republic of Congo; Republic of Congo; United States of America; St Louis; Louisaiana

Cultural Affliation

Batwa

Named Person

?Ota Benga

Photographer

Carpenter, Charles Henry

Collector / Expedition

1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis

Date

1904

Collection Name

Source

Format

Print Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

P.56897 to P.56906. were found inside the envelope now numbered C268/1/4/ which was inside C268/1/, or the first drawer of the entire green cabinet formerly numbered batch 144 and now numbered C268/.

The prints are perhaps a part of ACH2.

Place: The Place field was previously recorded as being “Africa ; Central Africa”, but the print is identifiable from its background as bieng taken by Charles H. Carpenter at the 1904 Louisaiana Purchase Exposition. The Place field has been amended accordingly. [JD 26/1/2010]

Named Person: Ota Benga (c. 1883[1] – March 20, 1916) was a Congolese pygmy who came to the United States through the action of businessman and missionary Samuel Phillips Verner, along with four other Congolese Pygmies.
“The group on the grounds comprises four Pygmies of the Batwa tribe, with representatives of the Bakuba, Badinga, and Balula tribes, besides a Batatele interpreter, one of the Bakuba being a prince of the Ndombe dynasty. Five distinct languages are spoken in the group; one member (sole representative of the Badinga or Congo cannibal tribe) neither spoke nor understood any tongue but his own when the journey began. With the living tribesmen came typical weapons, utensils, and clothing, with materials for habitations and some of the semi-domesticated parrots and monkeys with which they habitually associate; so that for the first time in the world's history ethnologists and other visitors have, at the Exposition, the opportunity of studying one of the least-developed peoples ever discovered by explorers.” [Source:
Buel, James W. (James William), 1849-1920, Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904 : Saint Louis, Mo.); ( St. Louis : World's Progress Publishing Co.), Full text available online at www.archive.org, JD 26/1/2010]