Sideshow 2: The Long Way Home

her braided hair and a big belly. At tens of thousands of years old, she became one of the oldest known Paleolithic artifacts, and she's not alone. In fact, she's one of dozens of similar figurines that archaeologists have found. But who was she really Maybe she was modeled after a living woman. Maybe she was a self portrait of the artist. Some have even suggested that her wide hips and large breasts suggest that she was a fertility fetish. It's hard to say. We can never really know. The

truth is. The archaeology is a discipline of best guesses. It has long been the purview of dominating cultures, who throughout history have taken their shovels, their dynamite and their packing crates, and helped themselves to whatever they wanted. This means that the interpretations of the objects and the stories we tell about them are always filtered through a contemporary lens.

So when archaeologists looked at this pint sized woman, they just couldn't help but project their ideas and beliefs about sexuality and beauty onto her. They gave her a name, the Venus of Willendorff, and that name Venus is a very specific choice. It was meant to evoke a particular image, the goddess of beauty and the white marble bodies so favored by the Greco, Roman, Elite and Renaissance painters. But our Venus, tiny, red and round, stands in stark relief

to this more contemporary Western idea of beauty. They are total opposites. We have to wonder what the archaeologists were hinting at. Because names hold power. They change how we see, They create our reality, and sometimes our name is something we don't get to choose for ourselves. I'm Aaron Manky, and welcome to this side show. Sarki Bartman looked back towards table mountain and thought of home. She had lived

in Cape Town for a decade. By ten it had become a booming city, situated at the meeting of two different oceans, and for her two different lives. She never had much time to herself. Her life as domestic servant kept her busy, but her personal life was rich. She spoke multiple languages, frequented taverns, laughed with friends, and fell in love. Standing on the boat's deck, Sarky took a moment to daydream. She touched the tortoise shell necklace around

her neck, and she closed her eyes. She thought of the storms barreling in off the eastern coast, and of her handsome father high on horseback. She pictured the faces of her family, her friends, all of whose land had been encroached upon, fought over, and stolen. The Dutch had been greedy, they had wanted everything. She pictured the chaos of the colonial frontier, the traders, the missionaries, the farmers,

the dissidents, the scientists, and the explorers. She thought about the gun smoke that lingered over the valleys, and about the bloody raids on her home. And then one day, amidst all of this, something happened that would forever change the course of her life. She met a trader named Peter Caesar's and he decided that she would join him. Sarki was probably purchased from the Dutch landholders she worked for. Slavery was common in the colonies, although it was against

the rules to enslave indigenous people. If Sarki was ever compensated for her labor, though, that's an unanswered question. She thought about the bleached human bones that she passed on her five hundred mile trek with Peter toward the colonial capital. They belonged to her neighbors in Cape Town. She moved from house to house, taking jobs in Peter's small network.

She was installed in the home of his brother Henrik, his wife Anna Catherine, and their baby, all of whom worked for a fellow by the name of Alexander Dunlop. Alexander was a crusty fifty one year old surgeon at a local hospital. He had once traveled the world, but today he had a problem. You see, this was the end of the line for him and he knew it. Retirement was looming and with it imminent poverty. He was

on the lookout for another way to make money. Another hustle if you will, and when he met Sarkee, his gears turned as an idea took shape. In that moment, rich, powerful countries were growing hungrier for foreign treasures they pillaged, plundered, and hoarded, and the general public wanted to see the fruits of their conquests and to visit museum's chock full of exotic wonders. And sometimes those wonders came in the

form of people. England's newly acquired Cape Colony was an object of much European fascination, and in Alexander's mind, Sarkee morphed into a living, breathing artifact in Cape Town. The tiny woman looked much like other members of her tribe, dubbed the hotten Tots, which was a Dutch slur that meant to stammer. But in London she would be an anomaly.

You see. By the end of the eighteenth century, European scientists had become fascinated with her people Careless Linnaeus, famous for his system of scientific classifications of genus and species, had categorized Sarkee's clan as Homo say Beans monstrous. According to him, her tribe, with their clicking language and striking physical features might be closer to animals than humans, the missing link, he suggested. Alexander wanted to take this idea

and run with it. He wanted to make Sarky a star and make himself money, so he spun up a deal with Henrik and sark They would go on tour to England for six years and split the profits along the way. Now we don't know if Sarkey had any say in the matter, but we can hope that this new endeavor felt promising to her, although certainly not without a complicated power dynamic. She wasn't free, but she knew that she was freer than some, and with that they

had a verbal agreement. The group would set sail in April of eighteen ten. The cold salt spray shook her from her day dream. The boat rocked beneath her, her sea legs held on table mountain. Now a mere speck in the distance was gone, dodging a tangle of sales and ropes. We can imagine her stretching out over the side of the ship and trying to catch a glimpse of what may lie ahead. Just out of you. She had left her home and poison arrived in Cape Town as a hot and tot and was leaving Cape Town

as Sarkey. But soon she would be something else. Entirely, she would become the venus. Sarky could hear the crowd murmuring from her place behind the curtains. This, she told herself, is what she came for. A pipe clenched between her teeth and her head held high. She pulled her shoulders back and stepped onto stage, a platform in front of a glass hut, and then she struck a pose. It was September and the first day of the rest of her life. She was illuminated by oil lamps and looked

like a golden goddess. She was draped in furs, beads, and feathers, a pint sized show girl dressed to the nines. Looking down from her stage, she met the audience with her firm stare. Some of them gocked, some of them winced. The crowd today had come to watch Sarkee pose, sing, and play her guitar. The room was packed with men in top hats and ladies with folded parasols. Human curiosities had become all the rage, and at two shillings ahead,

the price to come see. Sarkey was well within the means of many city dwellers, and after all, she was the newest show in town. Piccadilly Circus was London's entertainment district at the time. It was known for a cultural slurry of science and showmanship. Entertainers doled out their latest acts, while scientists and explorers enthusiastically shared their new discoveries. The general public didn't really care or know how to differentiate.

They just came to be entertained. Alexander had dubbed Sarkey the Hot and Taught venus the moniker, of course, being a reference to her figure. It denoted an explicit contradictory mixture of the savage ironic and the civilized beauty. Sure Londoners had seen Hot and Taught visitors before, but Alexander and Henrick were selling dreams of a natural wonder, a whole new species. They were playing to the imagination of the lowest common denominator. The audience was teased and tantalized.

What an impeccable specimen, they thought, What an extraordinary body, and they whispered? Were the rumors about the size and shape of Hot and Taught Genitalia true. Her slick body stocking and strategically placed for pelts insinuated that it might be, and their plan worked. London descended into a fever pitch.

The city loved her, and soon she went from being an unprotected, undocumented immigrant to a society darling seemingly overnight, the city was plastered with posters, cartoons of her, appeared in print papers, and published poetry about her. On briskfall Sunday afternoons, she began taking long carriage rides around the city to see and be seen. And two things happened that set a cascade of events in motion. First, a

few weeks in, Sarky got the flu, and second, someone laughed. Now, I can only speak for myself, but I hate working when I'm sick, and I don't have to see anyone for Sarkee. On the other hand, the show had to go on. According to the story, she was in the middle of a performance, filling, worn out and feverish when someone in the audience heckled her. She swung at him with her guitar and can you blame her? But here's

where it takes a turn. Henrick, who had modeled himself as her, agent in all of this seized the moment, declaring her to be wild as a beast. In fact, he reveled in her displeasure. After that, the audiences began watching more closely. She began to protest more, pushing back against Henrick and against irritating audience members as well. And then a few weeks into the show, a man by the name of Zachary Macauley showed up, adding a new level of conflict to her situation. Why because he was

an abolitionist with a bone to pick. You see, he had grown up a slaver in Jamaica, but somewhere along the way he had a change of heart. Now he ran with a very small, very wealthy group of people who were trying to do away with slavery in the British colonies. As you might imagine, what he saw before him on that London stage looked very much like slavery. Zachary was furious. He fired off a letter to the press,

wanting to prove that Sarky was enslaved. Alexander fired one back, though he wanted to know didn't she have as much right to show herself as an Irish giant or a dwarf. The ebolitionist Zachary questioned whether she could even consent to showing herself. He said that slavery was a matter of kind, not degree. So Alexander and Henrick quickly hired a lawyer to draft a written contract for Sarkey, and of course had it backdated to their departure from Cape Town months earlier.

But in all of this, if you can believe it, no one asked Sarky about the matter. That was until the case went to trial on November ten. Picture this cold, drafty, dimly lit halls, pale skin, white wigs, and equally white men, all fighting over this woman, who, should they ask her, might actually have an opinion on the matter. Zachary had assumed that Sarki wanted to go home. He had also very incorrectly assumed that no one else around could speak enough of her language to ask her. But then, of

course he figured he'd try. Right there in the courtroom, Sarki was read a translation of the contract twice. Then the prosecutors asked her if she'd preferred to stay in England or to return home. We can't know her body language, we don't know what sort of x sppression she wore, but the records do tell us what she said. She simply replied, stay here. Sarki later gave an interview to

the court. She spoke of life in South Africa, of her childhood, and of her situation in London, and it is one of the only places that history has committed her words to the record. But the interview was conducted in her language, then translated to Dutch and finally to English, so we can only imagine how with each step in the process more and more of the true meaning was lost. And we're also left with some questions how openly and

honestly could she actually speak? Did she live in fear of Alexander and Henrick or was she actually annoyed by the court for crimping her style during her shine Because remember, had she gone back to South Africa, she would have been classified as an imbecile, hot and taught by the government. There in London, she had the ability to earn money, fame and adoration. Clearly, freedom looked a lot different, pending

on where she lived. By the end of that October, sark and her crew had won their right to keep exhibiting. Months later, in May of eighteen eleven, they closed their show and hit the road, and then suddenly and quietly, Alexander passed away in July of eighteen twelve. With him gone, Sark's contract was null and void. Any assurance that she would be able to return home to South Africa was gone, and it's here that history lost track of her and Henrik.

When they finally resurfaced a while later in Paris, all was not well. Because Sarki was headed towards imminent danger. George Cuvier had a problem. He may have been a brilliant thinker, but he was also deeply flawed, deeply insecure, and deeply paranoid. His field was comparative biology, and while he may have helped Paris become the world center for the study of natural history, he wasn't resting on his laurels. He was competitive, and rather than seeing his colleagues as collaborators,

he often saw them as frenemies. He was always looking for the next best thing. So when a poster of the Hot and Taught Venus arrived in his mailbox, along with an invitation to meet Sarkey in person, well it was a surprise that he declined. Sarki and a man going by the name Henry Taylor, believed by some historians to beat Henrik Caesar's under a false name, shrugged off the rejection. Despite the setback, Sarky and Henry went about

setting up shop. Her appearance was announced in the Spectacles section of the newspaper, and in Paris, Sarki was exuberant. She initially took on the city with vigor and got to work, performing for up to ten hours a day. It was a busy schedule too. She performed in the theater, but also appeared in debaucherous late night salon's, elegant balls, and buzzing cafes and restaurants. But this energy wouldn't last for long. Sarki was burning out and she was sick

again with another bout of flu plus pneumonia. Nothing could help her sleep, and no amount of brandy could help her exhaustion. By the end of eighteen fourteen, Sarki was confined to bed. She was too ill to keep performing, and Henry was too cheap to get her medical care that she clearly needed. He realized that despite all her

hard work and hustle, his wallet was growing thin. She was becoming a liability, and after all this time, Henry realized that he was beholden to no one without Sark's knowledge. He sold his rights to the show, and then he slipped away, and just like that, her business partner and companion had vanished the sark It must have felt like a fever dream, a sickness induced hallucination, but it wasn't.

We don't know much about the man who stepped in, but history remembers him as row, part dandy, part animal trainer, and part time animal resurrectionist. He was familiar with the underground body economy. Roe was well connected to the scientific world, and he wanted to make good on something Henry has suggested to him. Perhaps he should cut a deal with the Natural History Museum and attempt another audience with George Cuvier. The scientist and his cronies might be interested in Sarke.

So Rowe approached him with his pitch, and this time George was all ears. We don't know what had changed since the first time, but it's clear that he had begun to see the possibilities that Sarki offered to the science of comparative anatomy, and so George made a visit to the newest iteration of her show. On stage, Sarky was caged. She appeared to be a held captive and was displayed alongside a baby rhino sitting standing lying down

on command row. It seems had positioned himself as her trainer, and clearly he was in charge now that spring, Sarky strolled into the Chardon Duplants, passed its maze of gardens, squawking flamingos and desert cacti. Roe had signed her up to pose for George and his team of scientists, a still life made of flesh. They were more accustomed to painting plants and animals, but to be honest, Sarki wasn't that much different to them. Sarki, accustomed to the eyes

of men, stood tall. They looked at her, and she looked back, but this time their eyes roamed in a way that suggested something a bit more sinister. The room glowed in that familiar lamplight, and the scratching of their charcoal captured her figure. And then they finally asked would she take off her clothes? Sarky felt the heat rise in her chest. How dare they? She had never once posed nude, and she wasn't about to start now. For all those years, her body Stocking merely gave the illusion

of nudity, but that was all it was. But what these men were asking for was something completely different. For over two hundred fifty years, colonial travelers had old tales about female hot and taught bodies think locker room talk for sailors. But suddenly scientists wanted to know if they could use this lore in search of fact. They wondered if her body held the key to finally proving that South Africa's indigenous people were a distinctly different species than

white Europeans. George's mind stirred as Sarky posed for him. He became obsessed with her, and he wanted to possess her body and all the secrets that had held Sarky resisted, though, and for three days she stood there still. They kept hounding her, hoping to wear her down. It didn't help that she was sick again. We can imagine the pressure cooker of her situation, the coercion, the fatigue, and the

obviously disgusting behavior on the part of the men. And while I can't speak for women, I have to imagine the pressure of just wanting to stop was horrific and sadly, Sarky did what most women who feel pressure do. She relented, deciding it might be easier to just give the ugly, hungry men what they want. She agreed to disrobe, but still retained her modesty by using a handkerchief as her fig leaf. We don't know if Sarki knew this while

standing there, but the truth was she was dying. She had never recovered from her illnesses that passed winter, and she was too worn down. She slipped from life in the early days of eighteen fifteen, the exact date unknown and the cause still debated by scholars. Like many of her stories, she took this one with her too. But then something really interesting happened, because although Sarki was gone, the venus lived on. You see what happened next was

nothing short of ghastly. It turns out that Roe and Cuvier had cut a deal, so when Sarki died, Roe quickly wrapped up her body, put her in a cart, and brought her back to the lab, and at his workstation, Cuvier and his team got to work. They pressed knives into her skin, lopping off the top of her skull and excavating her brain, they stripped flesh from muscle. They carved out her chest and belly, removing her internal organs. And after that, the moment Cuvier had been waiting for arrived.

He cut out Sark's genitalia. I'll spare you the most intimate details of this horrific violation, but when he was finished, he pickled her organs in a bell jar. He would take these pieces of her body, along with her reassembled skeleton, for his own possession. In fact, they would be displayed

outside the door of his room until he died. Shortly after the dissection, he announced to the world that from his study of her body, he was able to conclude that the hot and toots were indeed closer relatives to primates than people. It was simple. He had concocted a

confirmation to fit his hypothesis. It was all very convenient, and with this her body had become the example upon which the foundation for scientific racism was built, a theory from which eugenics appeared, a principle that fractured a great nation, and a rationalization from which the Nazis devised their final Lucian a school of thought that the world has never recovered from the soul of Sarkee was gone, and there are parts of her story that she took with her.

To sit here in the age of information and still have questions about the basics. Well, it feels unfathomable, but it does make sense. After all, we have to remember who throughout history has largely controlled how the details were written down. We may never know her childhood name, or her birthday, or for who or what she may have grieved.

Scholars have spent years trying to put together the missing pieces which have been spread across continents and across time, but the truth is those things might be gone forever, and for a long time after her death, Sarki was not allowed to rest. She had many visitors, of course, perhaps even more in death than in life. But even though the mortal Sarkee Bartman died, the specter of the

hot and taught Venus lived on. Between eighteen twenty two and the nineteen fifties, her skeleton, body, cast brain and genitals were all on display at the Parisian Museum of Natural History. She went in and out of storage at various points after that, but in nineteen two, museum officials finally removed her from public viewing. Suddenly her display seemed wrong. In nineteen four, South African President Nelson Mandela began his efforts to have her repatriated. At first, France was hesitant.

After all, if they sent Sarkee home, wouldn't it create a cascade of more and more repatriation requests. Would their museums even have artifacts left after it was all said and done. After a drawn out legal battle, the French Senate voted in two thousand to finally agree to Mandela's request.

Her remains were careful, The packed transported back to the African continent and handed over to the people who had waited nearly one nine years for her return, the descendants of her family, her neighbors, and the friends she had known in life. Sark had finally come home. Returning home is a wonderful thing, and I'm so glad that even after all that time, Sarki was welcome back with open arms. Sadly,

stories like hers aren't as rare as we'd like. And if you stick around through this brief sponsor break, my co producer Robin Minatur will share one more tale of bitter sweet homecoming. You can't please everyone, right, but this, well, this wasn't exactly the welcome that she had expected. It was Vienna, And as the ostrich pulling her carriage rounded the street corner, Josephine Baker knew this was going to be one tough audience. The faces waiting for her were

twisted up and grimaces and sneers. They spatted her. The cries of black devil tore through her. Their words rang in the air and landed like sucker punches to her gut. With the National Socialist Party gaining popularity in parts of Europe, the crowd made it clear that there would be no room for black beauty in their empire. The Party would rise to power on the wings of a new racial science that had a place for the people who looked

like her. She may have been the highest paid performer in all of Europe, but in that moment she felt like the small, scared servant girl she had once been under Jim Crow. And in that moment, in her carriage, she turned around and left. She went back to Paris and kept on dancing. Josephine had first shimmied onto the Parisian entertainment circuit as a nineteen year old, freshly arrived from New York City and in the bohemian city of

Lights of the Roaring twenties. She was magnificent. She shocked an odd shrieking audiences with her kinetic energy, and she did it all herself too. She booked her own shows, She sold out theaters, and she commanded standing ovations. She became so popular that it said she received thousands of marriage proposals and a mountain of love letters. The tricks of her trade were well, let's just say, a bit

different than most of ours. She had some rhinestones, some feather headdresses, a pet cheetah, and one very famous skirt made up of sixteen fake bananas. On stage, her body convulsed in a dizzying array of thrust and bucks and swivels and spins, and sometimes the set behind her was decked out as well, like a lush, green jungle paradise. It was said that she shook her backside as if it were an instrument, and of course to her it was.

Her costumes and movement were all a celebration of her body, a reclamation of all of the hurtful caricatures and judgments that had been impressed upon her skin, and it was during one of her most famous numbers, called the Donce Savage, the Savage dance that she paid homage to her forebearer, to a woman who, roughly a century before, had also

earned the love of Paris. The One and Only Sarki Bartman Sideshow was written by Robin Miniter, with production, narration and addie editing by me Aaron Mankey research for the series was done by Robin Minater, Taylor Haggerdorn, and Sam Alberty. Grim and Mild Presents was created in partnership with I Heart Radio. You can learn more about this show and everything else going on from Grim and mild over at grimm and mild dot com and, as always, thanks for listening.