“Gorilla Trails in Paradise”: Carl Akeley, Mary Bradley, and the American Search for the Missing Link

In 1881, Ward's Natural Science Bulletin published the anonymously authored poem "The Missing Link." Referencing decades-long debates over the relationship of man to ape, and the spiritual, intellectual, and moral capacities of apes, chimpanzees, and orangutans (Desmond 45, 141, 289), the poem recounts the following tale of a simian king ordered by his council to find a bride. When pressed by his "lords of state" to "mate," as the time arose for him to perform his royal duties, the simian regent replied with indignation that he would not make a "mesalliance" with a chimpanzee. Despite assurances that the female of the lesser simian species would suffice as royal consort, the gorilla king declared that he would wait for someone worthy of his royal bloodline. Suddenly, from his treetop viewpoint, the sight of "a vision of beauty" never seen before-"[a] maiden young and fair, [a]s the charcoal's ebon tint" surprised him. Her teeth were white as cowry shells, "[h]er locks of a crispy curl," and "[h]er feet of a mammoth size." The gorilla king felt so moved by this "bewitching dream" that he declared: "Now by my kingly troth, This maid shall be, I think, My royal bride, and supply beside Mr. Darwin's missing link." The African woman, "thoughtless" and "[sjuspicionless of guile" strayed beneath the trees where the simian court convened. When the "monarch spake his love" to her, "the lady smiled on him," at which point the gorilla king stuck "his great prehensile toes" in her hair and carried her off into his arboreal kingdom. "Thus was the monarch wed, [a]nd thus the race began, [w]hence, thro' various links, somewhat strange methinks, [c]ame the "Descent of Man!" (Ward's Natural Science Bulletin 8). The Bulletin, the official journal of Henry Ward's Natural Science Establishment in Rochester, New York, enjoyed a wide readership in America and a selective reading audience in Europe. Ward's, an emporium, cabinet of curios, and taxidermy studio, boasted a reputation as one of the premier American (and Western) purveyors of natural history specimens (Kohlstedt, 647-48). In another poem "To the Gorilla in The Rochester University," which appeared in the Bulletin in 1882, the narrator questions the existence and purpose of the gorilla. At one point in the imaginary conversation with the stuffed animal on display, the author asks: "Could you not serve upon a rice plantation-[r]aise sugar-cane, and cotton, for the masses, [a]nd carry burdens, as do mules and asses?" ("To the Gorilla" 9). Both poems reflected popular and scientific discourses concerning the relationship between man and the animal kingdom in light of the publication of "Mr. Darwin's" The Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871), and allude to the importance of the gorilla in those discussions. More specifically, the poems' authors speculated that Africans and African Americans were the key to unlocking the transition from ape to man, as popular and scientific thought configured "Negroes" closest to the simian in form and intellect. In this complex exposition of race and gender, popular thought imagined the female African body as the producer of "the missing link"-a half-man, half-beast creature that would reveal the key to the descent of man. Analogies drawn between Africans, African Americans, apes, and gorillas in "missing link" narratives assumed that African women submitted to animal couplings due in part to their perceived hyper and bestial sexuality (Collins 99). This discussion of possible couplings between African woman and gorilla reflected a broader American captivation with the missing link. "Gorilla Trails in Paradise" explores the American obsession with primates and evolution, as informed by notions of race and sexuality, as an important current in American cultural and intellectual history during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This preoccupation began with queries regarding the relationship between man and ape in light of evolutionary theories that predated the publication of Darwin's seminal treatises. …