In Brightest Africa

by Carl Ethan Akeley

Mr. J. P. Morgan came to the Museum to talk over African Hall. I explained the whole plan, showed him the model of the hall and incidentally The Wounded Comrade. He liked the scheme. As he left he said that he was convinced. "And," he added, "I don't mind saying," pointing to the little bronze of The Wounded Comrade, "that it is what did it." I shall always be indebted to Mr. Morgan for that sentence. It gave me an extraordinary amount of contentment. A. Phimister Proctor, the animal sculptor, also came to see The Wounded Comrade in my studio. He spent a long time in silence, carefully studying the little model. I knew that Mr. Proctor never gave praise lightly, but that he never hesitated to express admiration when in his opinion the work had merit. I felt that much depended on his praise or blame. And when he finally spoke, his enthusiasm was keen. I did not realize how keen until an order came for a bronze of The Wounded Comrade from Mr. George Pratt, a friend of Mr. Proctor, whose only impression of the piece was gained from Mr. Proctor's description. Throughout my career as a sculptor nothing has meant so much to me as the encouragement and appreciation of the man who first declared The Wounded Comrade a success.

In recognition of this first bronze, I was made a member of the American Sculpture Society. Inasmuch as such a cordial reception was accorded to The Wounded Comrade by artists as well as by the general public, I felt justified in devoting more attention to sculpture. I felt that I had many stories to tell about elephants and that I could tell these stories more effectively by the work of my hands than in any other way. One chapter is told in the group of mounted elephants now in the American Museum of Natural History. Many others can be told in small bronzes. I want to tell these stories, and in the time I have on earth I could not record many elephant stories in taxidermy, for one group really done well takes years—but I can tell these stories in bronze.

After The Wounded Comrade had made a success, many of my friends came to my studio (where I did taxidermy) in the Museum and advised me to keep on making bronzes. "Here's your opportunity," they said. "You have a market. Fortune favours you. Don't neglect the fickle lady."

But I did not follow this advice and make many bronzes. It may have been because I was lazy or busy with other things, but I like to think that it was because I had decided not to make bronzes unless I had a real story to tell. I wanted to do justice if I could to my friend, the elephant. And, also, I wanted to do what I did well enough to prove that a taxidermist could be, as he ought to be, an artist.

So I progressed with sculpture very slowly. In the nine years since The Wounded Comrade was made I have made only six bronzes.

In my second piece I have pictured a scene that will always remain very vivid in my memory—a charging herd. I had been following a large herd of elephants, two hundred or more, in the Budongo Forest for two days. They had broken up into small bands and the particular band which I was following had got near the edge of the forest. Nevertheless, I was having a hard time to get a look at them. Finally, I had recourse to the somewhat hazardous experiment of beating on the tree trunks with sticks in the hope of scaring them into the open. This was successful. I followed them, but the grass was so high that I couldn't see over it. I was in the act of climbing a tree for better observation when they came rolling along, grunting and squealing, back to the forest. They passed me within twenty-five yards. They were irritated sufficiently to convince me that it was time to let them alone and go to camp. I started along the edge of the forest. As I was pushing along through the high grass a few minutes later I heard another band coming out of the forest. As I couldn't see over the grass I ran to an ant-hill. This ant-hill was six or seven feet high. As I got on top it I saw, about one hundred yards away, eleven great animals pass one by one over a little rise. I had as good a view of this majestic march as a man will ever get. When they had gone two or three hundred yards, they suddenly stopped. They had got down wind and had smelt me. Then they began to talk. There was grumbling and rumbling. Conversation of this kind meant trouble. It was an old story to me. And trouble came. They came back squealing and roaring. I had to wait the first two hundred yards of the charge without shooting for they were behind the ridge. Then they loomed up over it, led by an old cow with her trunk up and her great ears cocked. As the leader lost the scent and slowed a little, they jammed into a solid mass. Then the old cow saw me perched on my ant-hill. Changing course, they came toward me, falling apart as they came.

That picture stays in my memory. And as I saw it I have put it in bronze. The bronze shows the first seven elephants of the herd jammed together in that moment of hesitation just after the old cow saw me and turned in my direction. Her trunk is curled up tight, her ears back and all cleared for action. The elephant on her left is following her example. The others still have their trunks extended, feeling for my scent.

The next elephant story that I told in bronze grew out of another experience of mine. I was following a herd of elephants in bush country. I was some distance behind them and they knew nothing of me. Suddenly I heard a great commotion, squealing and beating of bushes. A few minutes later the herd moved on. When I came to the spot where the commotion had been I found the bushes all trampled down and, at one side of the area of destruction in the sand, the remains of a big green tree snake that had been stamped into the ground. I followed after the herd but was soon deflected from the main body by noises in a little glade off at one side of the main trail. I went to the edge of this glade and saw a young bull elephant smashing about in the forest alone, breaking down trees, squealing, and in general acting like a small boy who had been stung on the nose by a hornet. After a while he quieted down and went along after the others, grumbling and protesting. I came to the conclusion that while feeding in the bushes he had thrust his trunk too close to a poisonous tree snake and had been stung; that he had beaten the snake on to the ground with his trunk and stamped it to death. In the bronze I pictured the snake alive on the ground and the elephant in the act of trampling it to death.

In addition to these elephant bronzes I have done one other bronze of a combat between a lion and a buffalo, and I have two other elephant subjects started in clay. I have never seen a lion and a buffalo fight nor do I know of any one else who has. But I know at least two authentic records of the dead bodies of a lion and a buffalo together—mute evidence of a fight to a finish and death to both. And I have seen dead buffalo carcasses from which one could tell pretty well how the lion had killed his prey. The lion tries to throw the buffalo in much the same manner as a cowboy "bulldogs" a steer—that is, he throws him by jerking the buffalo's head down. In the bronze I have represented the lion as having "bulldogged" the buffalo by catching his nose with a front paw and bending his head to the ground in his effort to throw him. The buffalo has saved himself from a fall by bracing himself with one front foot and the scene is set for a battle royal unless the lion bolts.

One of the bronzes that will soon be published records a scene that will always be a pleasant memory to me. I was watching an elephant herd on the march through an open grass country. The elders moved along sedately enough, but at one side of the herd several babies were squealing and pushing each other—having a fine time at play. Sometimes they were ahead of the herd and sometimes behind it, but all the time in a very gay mood. There seemed to be something that they were playing with, but the grass was too high and I was too far off to make out what it was. However, where the trail of the herd finally went into the forest, I discovered the babies' plaything. It was a big dirt ball about two and one half feet in diameter, a fragment of an ant-hill. These ant-hills are made of a mixture of saliva and sand which when baked by the African sun gets almost as hard as brick. A steel-jacketed bullet will be cut all to pieces before penetrating the surface of an ant-hill at all. In some way the baby elephants had got a fragment of an old ant-hill that was nearly round and this they had used as a ball to roll along in their play. It is not so surprising, therefore, that an elephant can be made to do tricks with a ball in the circus!