shameful moments of hıstory
trıbe exhıbıted ın a ''human zoo'' ın USA
Ä°n the year 1905, humanity has witnessed one of the most asshaming acts in the history. This was about exhibiting human in their own habitats in a place arranged as a ''Human Zoo''.
A band of headhunters from Igorrete tribe from phikipinnes were transplanted to New York's famous Coney Island amusement park in 1905. They were asked to peretend living in their own habitats and live their daily lives and perform mock tribal ceremonies. The ceremonies also included eating dog meat for millions of curious and horrified Americans.
the man called as Truman Hunt went to the Philippines at the outbreak of the 1898 Spanish-American War. He was trained as a medical doctor, and he stayed on in the country after the war ended. He was later sent to Bontoc as lieutenant governor. There, he got to knowthe Igorrate tribe who were living in Bontoc.
In 1904, the American government spent $1.5 million to bring 1,300 Filipinos from various different tribes to the St. Louis Exposition in order to demonstrate that the people of the islands were far from ready for self-government. they were looking after support for expansionist approch. Truman Hunt was made the manager of the Igorrote Village, which drew the largest crowds of all in the Philippine
The popularity of the life style of Igorrotes gave Hunt the idea to return to Bontoc and gather another Igorrote group. He offered $15 a month to each Igorrote who volunteered to go to America with him and put on a show of their culture and customs. He planned to begin their tour at Coney Island and then move on to other amusement parks across the country.
The Irrogates were hardly in clothes. Their bodies had tattoos all over them. They had hunted heads in their home etc. For them, dogs were brought from the New York pound, chopped up, and put in a pot, and then people watched the Igorrotes eat the stew. This behavior both scandalized Americans and also captured their imagination.
But the zoo quickly came to be seen as a source of national shame which Americans didn't want to remember. There were other examples where people were coerced, cultures were distorted, but in this case, the U.S. government was the one which gave permissionfor such a shame.
The U.S. government's Bureau of Insular Affairs, which was a part of the War Department, received an information which says Truman Hunt was not taking adequate care of the Igorrotes, he had stolen their wages, two men in the group had died on the road and he had failed to have them buried.
The government sent an agent to investigate the claims, and Hunt went on the run, taking a group of Igorrotes with him. The Pinkerton Detective Agency was hired to help track him down. Eventually, he was accused of embezzling around $10,000 in wages from the Igorrotes and of using physical force to steal hundreds of dollars which they had earned selling handmade souvenirs.
Finally, after a manhunt across the U.S. and Canada, the government arrested him in October 1906. He was sentenced to 18 months in the workhouse after an incredible trial in Memphis.
In late July 1906, a couple of months after their contracts with Hunt expired, the government stepped in and sent home all of the Filipinos. Fiof them stayed on as witnesses in Hunt's trial. On March 20, they too returned to the Philippines.
