Douglas K. Candland

Official Edgar Rice Burroughs Tribute and Weekly Webzine Site

Since 1996 ~ Over 5,000 Web Pages in Archive

Volume 1899

Presents

Tarzan and his Fellows:

“Fact, Fiction, Legend?”

by

Douglas K. Candland

Homer P. Rainey Professor of Psychology and Animal Behavior

Department of Psychology, Bucknell University

Lewisburg, PA 17837

dcandlan@bucknell.edu

 

When, in the mid-­eighteenth century,

Linnaeus was setting out the method of

nomenclature that we use yet today to

identify animals by genera and species, he

was puzzled by the variety of human beings.

There were, it was reported, people with tails

(Homo caudatus), the apes collected in his

employer's garden (Homo simia), mankind

who lived in the dark (troglodyte),

humankind who called siren-­like (Homo

marinus) -­-­-­ even human children reared by

wild creatures. These he chose to

characterize as members of the species ferus.

He knew of ten such children from the

literature then available. Today we can count

studies of over 400 reported feral children, and these are not to be

confused with children so raised and made prominent in fiction nor

those merely isolated and confined by human captors. The reports you

are seeing are concerned with re-­presenting these literary inventions by

recapturing the largely 19th century European literature that hatched, in

our times, the remarkable life of Tarzan.

"Fact, fiction or legend?" asks RudolphAltrocchi in his clever,

entertaining, and sophisticated history of the "ancestors of Tarzan"

published in 1944 and still an engaging read. Let us go forward a little in

time, say taking the number of years between Linnaeus's time and our

own and adding this to the present date. It is now, in our imagination,

2227 or so. There remain on our planet only a few libraries (this

following the great book burning and internet deconstruction in 2200)

and the libraries' books contain no information as to the former

classifications: nonfiction, fiction, reference -­-­-­ these once useful

designations are lost to us.  Readers of our imagined 23rd century

cannot know whether the Tarzan books are novels or authentic reports.

We may also find in our surviving library

Itard's two volumes describing his work

with Victor, the Wild Boy of Aveyron

(1800); or the Reverend Singh's attempts

to discover whether the human mind

naturally knows God, his aim in capturing

and rearing in the early 1920s Amala and

Kamala, known as the ‘wolf-­girls’. Fact, of

course, for these people surely existed.

Fiction, of course, because the observers

provided a narrative, one necessarily of

their choosing: legend, surely, for when

Itard took up work with Victor, a play

about a feral child was already on the

Paris stage, and Rousseau's romantic notions of nature were in the air.

Legend? A visit to any village in India will reveal a story about local

wolf-­children.

The wolf-­children were undoubtedly alive and in that limited sense,

they are 'fact', but that does not make the description of them so. The

Reverend Singh took to his study each evening after dinner to write the

day's events with the girls, but these he knew from the account of his

wife and the helpers in the orphanage. Mrs. Singh dealt with the girls’

cultivation, focusing, understandably on toilet training and matters of

cleanliness. Reverend Singh's diary and accounts came into the hands

of  Professor R. M. Zingg, who published them in 1939 along with

selections from Itard's reports on Victor coupled with accounts of

Kaspar Hauser, isolated as an infant, offered teaching and family, then

murdered. Zingg included photographs of the wolf girls made by the

Singhs with their Brownie. camera. (It appears that an additional 90 or

so photos existed which were made into 'lantern' slides: after Zingg's

death these were moved from Denver to Albuquerque, then to an

unknown place.) Perhaps they are to be rediscovered.

From existing photographs of the

wolf girls and Singh’s account, we

can see that the girls ran skillfully on

all fours, killed and ate birds. Singh

thought that the girls learned some

Hindi; others thought not. Were the

girls' skills constrained by their lack

of human culture, by their being

reared by wolves (assuming that

Singh was not merely duped, which

seems the more likely fact) or by

organically-­caused limited ability to

acquire new habits, skills, and

understandings?  Tarzan's learned

skills and linguistic abilities were not so hampered. He readily and

greedily learned at least two European languages (plus ape-­talk), but

curiously showed no great mathematical ability. It is curious that

teachers of these children and of apes think language to be of primary

importance, for language is the most ambiguous of skills. Researchers

rarely examine the most culture-­free of abilities; namely, arithmetic.

John, the Monkey Boy

John Ssebunya, the Ugandan Monkey Boy

I have first-­hand knowledge of two living feral children, John, the

monkey-­boy of Uganda and CauCau of Chile. Both have common

backgrounds and narratives: alcoholic and quarrelsome parents, the

child leaves home, taking to the neighbors’ garbage, then to the streets,

then the 'forest', more scrub than dense; some time away from human

civilization in this 'forest', and kind families who provide structure and

education. In John's case, he was supported (he says) by monkeys. Now

17, he has this narrative well in mind. I assume the monkeys to be

vervets because this common African monkey toss away half the food

they examine and would allow a nonaggressive human to hang around

the periphery of their active troops. As a cautionary lesson, I tell you

this: when I asked John his relationship with the monkeys, the translator

reported him to say "They fed me." When I asked him to show me

how, he got down on all fours and grabbed the air as if food was flying

through it, exactly what I would have expected from vervets tossing their

food about.  The sentence "They fed me." is equivocal: the lesson is

how easy it is for the observer to re-­interpret the meaning intended.

John is being educated in an English-­speaking school and he has been

there for perhaps ten years. My impression is that while he does not

speak this or another language readily, he understands more than is

apparent. John's story is a relatively happy one: adopted by foster

parents who have raised many other children, offered an education, he

is having  an active and  life. He is now acclimated to television

performance. 'Feral" does not describe him in either the Latin or

English meaning and, if one thinks that examination of abandoned

children illustrates the contrasting effects of nature and nurture, his

being comes down firmly on the side of nurture, all credit to his family.

CauCau, too, now in his 70s, now has a relatively happy life. Captured

when he was perhaps 12, he spent time in a place variously described as

a mental institution or a charity hospital. Two years later, he was

transferred and raised by his foster-­mother, Berta Riquelme, a specialist

in linguist education. He has learned to speak (or, perhaps, re-­learned),

he cares for himself, although members of his extended family from

time to time protect him from intrigued members of various media.

Both John and CauCau rank as adults with 'problematic childhoods,'

but surely they fall within the wide range called 'normal'. We may

attribute their success to kind individuals who composed family, or wemay decide that the abandonment had little effect; perhaps both aretrue. Their lives and those of Tarzan follow a now familiar narrative.

The presentation you now examine is an incunabula, the Latin word fora hatchery. The issue of how the ideas for Tarzan were hatched havebeen well explored. They vary from the assertion that Tarzan's creatorknew some ancient Greek and was influenced by his high schoolreading of Homer (evidence is presented that Burroughs used ancientGreek syntax more frequently than one would suppose) to Burroughs’sown assertion that he had no idea of any sources, but might have beeninfluenced by hearing or reading a tale of a shipwrecked sailor.

The essential elements of Tarzan are so powerfully attractive to thehuman mind that they appear, and reappear, in both fiction andputative scientific fact. Such is the evidence of the power of the wish toseparate the effect of civilization from humankind’s ‘natural’ (not tosay  ‘unnatural’ or uncivilized state). Fiction, after all, is only a term fora literary convention, not a statement of unreality: fiction is yet anotherexpression of the surely nonfictional human mind tries to understandthe worlds it perceives.

Three clearly nonfictional people come to mind, all of whom were infact removed from their natural state to that of western ideas ofcivilization. Like Tarzan, to western eyes, they were transfigured from anatural state to living in society and civilization. Each lived at the time ofBurroughs’s youth. There is no evidence that he knew of them, and itwould be immaterial if he did.

I speak of Ota Benga, whose later life was spent in the New YorkZoological Society, the Bronx Zoo; of Minik, an Eskimo from Laplandprocured by Admiral Peary and deposited with the American Museumof Natural History, and Ishi, last of his tribe, found in Oroville,California, and resident of the Anthropological Museum, then in SanFrancisco.

Born in 1881 (?), captured, enslaved, orliberated; kidnapped or a willing adventurer -­-­-­your choice -­-­-­ in the Congo (but a Bushman)somewhere between 1892 and 1904, some sayOta Benga was recruited willingly to be displayedat the Chicago Fair of 1893. The fair featuredexamples of cultures (and their proposed degreeof evolution) with group settings in which therepresentatives lived for the duration of the fair.We can guess that his presence fit the notion ofthe evolution of humankind then evident notmerely in the newspapers, but in the thought ofsenior scientists

After, Ota Benga lived at the Bronx zoo where -­-­-­ again, your choice -­-­-­he was either displayed or had a job. We know that Ota Bengaappeared at the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair, as well as before the NewYork Explorers’ Club. We also know that he tired of being chasedaround the zoo and poked at, so he wore a white suit while performinghis duties. He expressed his view of his position by chasing zoo visitorswith a knife, thereby ending his zoological value. We know that people

of sympathy tried to provide a theological education, but that OtaBenga preferred farming. We also know that he shot himself and diedin 1916. Of Ota Benga’s reactions to New York civilization we knowlittle more, certainly nothing first-­hand. Of Minik we know much more.

One of six Eskimo removed from Lapland by theUS Admiral Peary in 1897 for transfer to New York,at the request of a newspaper and AmericanMuseum of Natural History, he was one of two tosurvive the stay within the museum. (The other,older man, returned home within the year.)  Pearyreferred to Eskimos as ‘animals with speech’, acurious assessment from a man who fathered twochildren by an Eskimo woman. Minik was perhapsseven years-­old at the onset of his stay.  Befriendedby a museum administrator named (William)Wallace and his wife, a surname Minik took alongwith the middle name of Peary, Minik was reared fora time in their home where he was educated in

western ways and was a companion to their son, Willie. As a youngadult, Minik moved about, living for a time in a hotel on West 44thStreet in Manhattan, returning to Lapland, marrying, not happily, and returning to New York. Upon his return to Lapland (Peary droppedhim 800 miles from home), Minik could no longer be understoodwhen speaking his native dialect.

Minik had the advantage of schooling and some training in a college ofengineering. He charmed folk when a child, but in later adulthoodattracting widely different assessments of his personality. Always anonwhite to New Yorkers; yet a confused Eskimo to his perhapsenvious village-­mates, the former treating him, however kindly at times,as a pet, the latter as a confused teller of tall-­tales about New York,allows us to put away the idea that a change of culture carries with it nobaggage.

What white Tarzan and Eskimo share is the idea that the orphan raisedwithout culture becomes a stronger figure for the experience.  KennHarper, whose sharp and brilliant book on Minik, pieces together thedetail of Minik’s life and those who interacted with him, tells us that"The theme of the neglected orphan, mistreated by his own people andabandoned to find his food among the scraps left by the dogs, is acommon one in Eskimo mythology. In these myths, the orphaninvariably survives and grows into adulthood to become a mighty hunterwho ultimately wrecks his vengeance on those who had most badlymistreated him." (p. 161) One might consider that theme to beTarzanic.

Minik applied for US citizenship in 1916, verifying, as required, that hewas not a believer in anarchism or polygamy. But neither citizenshipnor vengeance was to be his. He died in 1918, probably of influenza,and is buried in New Hampshire.

Among the other Eskimo who did not survive the New Yorkexperience was Minik’s father. When an adult, Minik would complainto the frisson of New York newspapers that he had been deceived. Taken as a child to a ceremony he believed to be his father’s burial, helater found his father’s bones displayed in the museum. Of Minik’s

other reaction to western civilization we know little, although among hissympathetic observers was the anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, who wasdestined to be Ishi’s companion in San Francisco and Berkeley.

Ishi, a truly native Californian, appearedin Oroville in 1911 indicating that hewas the last of his tribe. His languageapproximated that of another triballanguage, one understood to somedegree by a Caucasian interpreter. Ishiexplained that all other members of histribe known to him were dead, somekilled by ‘whites’. Taken to the Museumof Anthropology, then in San Francisco,now on the Berkeley campus of theUniversity of California, Ishi showed thestaff how to make arrows, tools, andexplained something of his native

culture. The anthropologist Alfred Kroeber and his wife provided bothan introduction into civilized society and concern for Ishi. Both filmand slides remain of these activities. (Ishi had declined an offer fromthe US Bureau of Indian affairs to be resettled on a reservation.) Ishidid regular displays at the Museum, showing visitors the details ofNative-­American crafts. He visited the theatre in San Francisco andlater suggested to the interpreter that the purpose of applause was todrive the people off the stage. Alfred Kroeber’s publications and thelater books by his wife, Theodora, provide informative examples ofIshi’s reactions to society not unlike those of Tarzan’s orientations.

None of the three captives became proficient in English, but, then,none of their captors or rescuers became proficient in the captive’slanguage either. Minik did not settle in his new world, but came toprefer that of his childhood, Lapland. Ishi had no home or peoples toreturn to and died in the Museum after a few years. Ota Benga, it is fairto say, despaired.

To contrast, yet complement the lives of Ota Benga, Minik, and Ishi, Icompare those of two men who reversed the process, choosing to livefor a time away from their civilization. These are Joseph Knowles andRichard Lynch Garner whose adventures occur at approximately thesame period as those of Ota Benga, Minik, and Ishi, a timecorresponding roughly with the publication of the first Tarzanadventures.

On October 14, 1913, Joseph Knowles emerged

from the forest in Massachusetts clothed in animalskins (a foot length but sleeveless number), wasgreeted and photographed, and was far healthier(according to a Harvard physician) than when he hadentered the forest two months before. On that date,his forty-­fourth birthday, August 4, Joseph Knowleshad removed his clothes and set off to live unaidedin the Maine forest. Here he made fire and a bed ofleaves and branches, kept warm and healthy,engaged animals, made use of his artistic interests bydrawing on wood with the charcoaled-­fire, andsurvived. He reports that the difficulties in living theprimitive life were not physical, but mental. Feelingsof loneliness were his major challenge.

The circumstances of his return are more instructive to us than hisaccount of the tedious days and nights in the forest. From photographs,we can see that his return was that of a hero. Enormous crowds packedBoston to welcome and cheer. Would anyone today achieve such awelcome or acknowledgement for two months in the summer forest?My bet is that Knowles was fulfilling a dream of the time, one thattouched the public consciousness about nature and humankind’srelation to it. But the Heroes who overcame obstacles have beenreplaced by celebrities.

Garner in the 1890s, to his credit, had the idea of using the newlyinvented phonograph to record the vocalizations of animals, especiallyprimates, at the Washington Zoo with the support of the Smithsonian.From this experience came the idea of playing the recordings to theapes and monkeys to record and observe the animals’s reactions.Garner was well ahead of his time in  terms of scientific methodologyand reasoning. Nearly a century later, The New York Times woulddeem as front-­page news investigators doing exactly this, playing-­backrecorded sounds to decode animal language.

Garner’s reputation was at a point, toward the end of the 1890s, that hefound funds to advance his work significantly. He proposed to go toWest Africa, to live caged, and to record the animals’s responses tohim. The notion of man (or woman) alone in the jungle in the interestof ‘science’ is a powerful one, for the image can be spotted with ease inour own times. Garner returned from Gabon with several chimpanzees(they did not survive the trip) and wrote several books on the adventure.The scientific results were not thrilling, as the animals appeared to findthe idea of a human in a cage unattractive. His helper, named by him‘Native Boy’, became bored and left. The supply chain of bearerscarrying food and necessities was unreliable. (But someone, nameless,must have been available to take the pictures.)

Garner’s fame was now that of an adventurer, and little attention waspaid his early, imaginative studies of ape-­speech. The tales became‘taller’, the adventures more unbelievable, as Garner continued to writefor the next and last twenty years of his life. His books were the literaryequivalent of Rossini overtures. Each edition featured a new flourish,but sounded familiar. He could not reply to a devastating criticism ofhis African work provided by a young academic reflecting the academicand scientific establishment having tolerated enough.  For whateverreason, it would be almost a century before scientists returned to the

J. Allen St. John art fromJungle Tales of Tarzan

question of animal speech and the technique of playing-­back animalsounds. Celebrity-­status is an unhealthy mistress for some.

As Garner appears to have made littleif any attempt to understand thepeople who populated the area he wasin -­-­-­-­ after all, his mission was toconverse with the animals -­-­-­-­ we arenone the wiser about the ease oflearning a new culture. Garner was,however, in the geographic areagenerally believed to describeTarzan’s upbringing. The idea oflearning the culture and language wasin the air, seemingly part of the ethosof both popular and scientific culturein the decades surrounding the turninto the 20th century.

How much of Knowles and Garner’sreports were fiction, intentional orotherwise? The tales, even if

embellished, are believable, if just-­so.  Shall we put these books on ourshelf labeled fiction or labeled nonfiction? One arbiter is the UnitedStates Library of Congress who decides the appropriate call number forbooks. Richard Garner’s work is listed under “zoology: primates,general; Joseph Knowles’ under "wildlife-­related recreation, hunting,camping, outdoor-­life, and Maine." Both are nonfiction.

What is Fiction? Truth? Legend? It is time thatwe readers were allowed to visit the hatcheryprepared for us, the result of inspiredcollecting, impressive detective-­work, andcareful editing, in which the theme ofabandonment (whatever the reason) is joinedwith the archetypal narrative of facing an alienculture (or, alternately, being born into an alienculture and facing, in time, another culture.And that is precisely the opportunity that oureditor and compiler has planned for us. Peopleand libraries of now and the future are indebtedand thankful.

But, 'Fact, Fiction, or Legend '-­-­-­ the hatchery cares not which it warmsand sends forth. Tarzan and his fellow illustrate to us our uncertainty ofthe role of environment on species circumscribed by genes. That therelationship poses for us the most tangled of the mysteries of humanintellectual wanderings is the basis of our longstanding, never-­ending,and uncritical, in the literary sense, interest in what it would be like tobe alien to our culture. Tarzan and his fellows are hypotheses that weknow not how to test. That is their secret, their charm, and theircontinuing power.  

   ©Douglas K. Candland, 2007, All rights reserved

 

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Altrocchi, Rudolph. 1944. "Ancestors of Tarzan." p. 74-­124. In : Sleuthingin the Stacks. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, xiii + 279 pp.Bergman, J.  1994. Ota Benga: The man who was put on display in thezoo!  Creation Ex Nihilo  16 (1): 48-­50.Bradford, P.V., and Blume, H.  1992.  Ota Benga -­ The Pygmy in theZoo.  New York: St. Martin’s Press, 281 pp.Bridges, W.  1974.  Gathering of Animals: an Unconventional History ofthe New York Historical Society.  New York: Harper and Row, viii + 518pp.Broberg, G. "Homo sapiens, Linnaeus's classification of man" In: T.Frangsmyr (ed.) Linnaeus, The Man and His Work. Berkeley, CA: Univ ofCalifornia, xii + 202 pp.Candland, D.K.  1993.  Feral Children and Clever Animals : Reflectionson Human Nature. New York: Oxford Univ. Press,  xx + 411 pp.Harper, K.  1986.  Give Me My Father’s Body, the Life of Minik, the NewYork Eskimo.  Frobisher Bay, N.W.T., Canada (Iqaluit, Nunavut): Blacklead Books, 275 pp.Heizer, R.F., and Kroeber, T.  (Eds.).  1979.  Ishi, the Last Yahi, aDocumentary History.  Berkeley, CA: Univ. California Press, xiii + 242 pp.Herbert, W.  1989.  The Noose of Laurels, Robert E. Peary and the Raceto the North Pole.  New York: Atheneum, 395 pp.Holtsmark, E. B. 1981.  Tarzan and Tradition, Classical Myth in PopularLiterature. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, xv + 196 pItard, J.-­M.G. 1932.  The Wild boy of Aveyron. (Rapports et mémoires surle sauvage de l'Aveyron). G. Humphry and M. Humphry, transl. New York:Century, 104 pp.Knowles, J.  1913.  Alone in the Wilderness.  Boston: Small, Maynard,295 pp.Kroeber, T.  1961.  Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last WildIndian in North America.  Berkeley, CA:  Univ. California Press, 255 pp.Milner, R.  1990.  The Encyclopedia of Evolution.  Humanity’s Searchfor Its Origins.  New York: Facts on File, xii + 481 pp.Sifakis, C.  1984.  “Benga, Ota: The Zoo Man”  In: AmericanEccentrics.  New York: Facts on File, xiv + 317 pp.Singh, J.A.L. and and Zingg, R.M. 1939. Wolf-­children and Feral Man.New York, NY: Harper, xli + 379 pp.Ward, A. 2003.  http://www.feralchildren.com

George Dodds' The Ape-­Man, his Kith and Kin

Go directly to Index Chart of Texts1800: 1701-­1800 ContentsChrono

1801: 1801-­1900 Contents byTheme

1802 Dodds' Advent ProjectIntro 1803 Apeman Kith & Kin

1804 ERB: Tarzan of the Apes 1805 AJ Ogilvy: Ape-­Man 1806 Roland: Almost a Man 1807 Ducray-­Duminil: 2Children

1808 Anonymous: AutonousHistory

1809 Leroux: Balaoo | 2 | 3|  1810 Sargent: Beyond Banyans 1811 Purchas: Battell in

Angola

1812 Berthet: Wild Man | 2 | 3| 4 |

1813 Buel: Dark Continent | 2|

1814 Rickett: CalibanQuickening

1815 Lounsberry: GoldenCrater

1818 Gomez: Historia de

1816 Gracian: The Critick 1817 Court: Kingdom of Apes Dulcarnain 1819 Roland: Missing Link

1820 Hyne: New Eden 1821 Eldridge: Monkey Man 1822 Beaulieu: French CabinBoy

1823 Anon: Monkey-­LandMems

1824 Ballantine: GorillaHunters  | 2 |

1825 Anon: Gorilla Origin ofMan 1826 Gozlan: Monkey Island 1827 Granucci: Bella Favola

1828 Haggard: Allan's Wife 1829 d'Hampol: Missing Link 1830 Hauff: YoungEnglishman 1831 Dodillon: Hemo

1832 Longueville: The Hermit 1833 Constable: Intellect Curse 1834 Favenc: Jinkarras Haunt 1835 Gabriel: Jocko BrazilMonkey

1836 Graydon: Jungle Boy 1837 Kipling: Jungle Book | a|

1838 Kipling: Second JungleBook

1839 Kirkby: AutoMathesHistory

1840 Stacpoole: Blue Lagoon | 2|

1841 Davidson: LavenderMission 1842 LeRoy: Levrai Adventure 1843 Anon: Chevalier

Dreams

1844 Sheridan: Young Marooner| 2 | 1845 Marryat: Little Savage 1846 Standish: Gorilla Land

Link1847 JF Cooper: Monikins |2 |

1848 Moustache: Old Man &Ape

1849 Fogerty: Mr. Jocko | 2 |3 |

1850 Nye: Monkey LanguageExp. Georges Dodds Index

1851 Mallock: Positivism OnIsland 1852 Griffiths: Peters 1853 Pougens/Dodds: Jocko 1854 Robertson: Primordial

Laws

1855 Plutarch: Romulus 1856 Anon: SurprisingAdventures

1857 Mighels: CrystalScepter

1858: Alden: DarwinianSchooner

1859: Brookfield: Simiocracy 1860 Robinson: Soko Hunting 1861 Smile: Soong Sumatra 1862 Muddock: Sunless City  |2 |

1863 Cole: Humans with Tails 1864 Lermina: Goldslayer | 2| 3 |

1865 Morgan: Missing Link| 2 |

1866 Seriman: IncogniteAustrali

1867 Graydon: Africa White King| 2 | 1868 Tufail: Hayy Ibn Yaqzân 1869 Lugones/Dodds: Yzur 1870 Curwen: Zit & Xoe

1871 Lemon: Gorilla 1872 Period Reviews 1873 Postl: Mexico Nights 1874 Rice: Katie's ForestFriends

1875 Frankenstein: Boy &Elephant 1876 1877 1899 Candland: Fact, Fiction,

Legend

WILLIAM HILLMAN

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