In his time and for years afterwards, Chiko was a single-name celebrity.  He attracted enormous crowds wherever he appeared and he was taken everywhere in the United States.  He was not an American, for he was born somewhere in Africa toward the end of the nineteenth century and was never naturalized.  From Africa he was taken to Portugal where his performances caught the eye of American entrepreneurs.  From Lisbon he was brought to the United States to launch a successful career, albeit, unfortunately, a short one.  During part of that career, Chiko enjoyed the company of Johanna, a partner also hailing from Africa by way of Lisbon.  When Chiko died suddenly, newspapers and magazines throughout the country ran news accounts of a life lived in the midst of an appreciative audience.
     Now Chiko was not married to Johanna, which, given their companionship, would have provided matter enough for public scandal, that is, had they been human beings.  Both Chiko (advertized as “the only specimen of his kind ever in the country”[1]) and Johanna were at first identified as gorillas when they appeared as the latest attraction of the Barnum & Bailey Circus, and only later did the experts decide that they were actually very large chimpanzees.  It was reported that Chiko was “5 feet 5½ inches in height when standing erect, and almost as tall when sitting down.  His head was as misshapen as that of a Flatfoot Indian.  His forehead was narrow, with a bulging occiput and a flat crown.  His mouth was like a cellar and his complexion was not nice.  The nose of the gorilla had no bridge to speak of, and was of the retroussé type.”[2]  
     There was an engaging back story.  Although accounts differ in details, the one in the New York Times can be taken as fairly typical in tone and substance.   
     Chiko arrived in this country on board the steamship Vega April 19, 1893.  He was captured in the interior of the Benguela jungle, in the Portuguese territory of Central Africa, eight years ago.  The gorilla took its name from its captor [“Xico”?], who sold him to Lieut. Serpa Pinto, the African explorer.
          Chiko subsequently found his way into the Lisbon Zoological Gardens.  He was very tame when first placed on exhibition there, but as he grew older he developed some traits which made him objectionable.  Therefore, when the Barnum agents made a bid for him, the keepers were glad to part with a brute whose temper had become so morose and vicious that it was dangerous to approach him.[3]
It was in Lisbon that Antonio Marcus was first selected to be his keeper, caring for him until his death in 1894.  It is said that “when Chiko first arrived in Lisbon he was very tame, and Marcus taught him many tricks,” but he soon became “so morose and vicious that it was dangerous to approach him.”[4]  This “Portuguese attendant,” who is “constantly with him,” is “the only person on earth of which Chiko is fond.”  “The gorilla will play with his attendant through the bars of his doubly strong cage, and when sufficiently amused will laugh after the manner of an ill-bred man.  Chiko is a wonder.  He brings to memory, among other things, the murder of the Rue Morgue.[5]  Then you shiver and go away.”[6]
     In October 1893, with the close of the season at Cumberland, Maryland, James Bailey, the surviving part-owner of the Barnum & Bailey Circus, arranged to have Chiko winter in Central Park where he would be on display before admiring crowds of New Yorkers.  It was at this time that the nine-year-old Johanna, who was “about 5 feet 10 inches tall,” was brought to the United States from Lisbon as a mate for Chiko.[7]  Chiko’s “widow” survived him by six years, taking over Chiko’s place as a Barnum & Bailey Circus attraction.[8]  Denied to Joanna, however, was the immortality granted Chiko immediately upon his death, which occurred at the fairgrounds in Dayton, Ohio, in late July 1894.   There was speculation that he had fallen victim to “the green Ohio apple, conveyed to him by some enthusiastic but indiscreet admirer.”[9]  Chiko’s body was “embalmed like that of a human being” before it was shipped to New York from Dayton.[10]  Upon its arrival at New York’s Museum of Natural History in Central Park, it was put on display.

          There were crowds of Sunday visitors to the park, and
          the great majority of them paid their respects to the dead
          man money of the jungles.  The embalming   fluid had done
          almost as much for Chiko as it does for a human being after
          death in the preservation of his features.  He looked almost
          as natural as when the blood was coursing actively through
          his veins, and his chimpanzee brain was alive to form the
          sounds which Prof. Garner[11]  declares are the distinct language
         of the chimpanzee race.

     This rare specimen on this rare occasion looked “more human in death than he did in life.”  “Laid out in his coffin, if he were dressed in coat and trousers and a cloth thrown over his head, everyone who looked upon the figure would declare it to be that of a man.”  But, the account continues, “there will be little of the dead chimpanzee to bury after the scientists are done with him.  Yesterday he was photographed.  Today the work of taking off his skin will begin and soon as the work is completed his bones will be scraped and cleaned and arranged as they were in life, so that his skeleton will be preserved.”[12]  Not to worry, though, for the powers at the Natural Museum of New York carried out their plan to mount Chiko “in a place of honor at6 the Museum of Natural History, in Central Park.  The taxidermist of the museum outlined what was to be done: “We shall take measurements and plaster casts of the face and hands as soon as the carcass arrives… Then we shall skin off the hide, which will take about a day, and prepare it for mounting.  The bones and skin will be mounted side by side, and they will make most interesting additions to our collection here.”[13]  Moreover, the Museum’s “Two Chikos” would help to make an important point.[14]  When alive, Chiko had made the people who looked at him “think a good deal about some of the vital theories of life.”  He had made them “think of Darwin and Huxley, and other people, who have theories about the origin of the human species from a type that was not nominally human.”[15]  With fulsome confidence, the Museum’s superintendent could now proclaim:  “Chiko’s figure will complete the Darwinian chain in the museum.”[16] 

George Monteiro is Professor Emeritus of English and Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, Brown University, and he continues as Adjunct Professor of Portuguese Studies at the same university.  He served as Fulbright lecturer in American Literature in Brazil–Sao Paulo and Bahia–Ecuador and Argentina; and as Visiting Professor in UFMG in Belo Horizonte.  In 2007 he served as Helio and Amelia Pedroso / Luso-American Foundation Professor of Portuguese, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.  Among his recent books are Stephen Crane’s Blue Badge of Courage, Fernando Pessoa and Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Literature, The Presence of Pessoa, The Presence of Camões, and Conversations with Elizabeth Bishop and Critical Essays on Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. Among his translations are  Iberian Poems by Miguel Torga, A Man Smiles at Death with Half a Face by José Rodrigues Miguéis, Self-Analysis and Thirty Other Poems by Fernando Pessoa, and In Crete, with the Minotaur, and Other Poems by Jorge de Sena.  He has also published two collections of poems, The Coffee Exchange and Double Weaver’s Knot.

[1] “Catching a Gorilla,” Worcester Daily Spy,  June 28, 1893, p. 2.
[2] “Chiko, the Gorilla, Dead,” New York Times,  July 28, 1894, p. 5.
[3] “Chiko, the Gorilla, Dead,” 5.
[4]“Death of Chiko,” New Haven Evening Register, July 28, 1894, p. 1.
[5] “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” Edgar Allan Poe’s celebrated story.
[6] “The Big Barnum Show,” Worcester Daily Spy, June 30, 1893, p. 1.
[7] “Chiko is Dead,” Springfield Daily Republican, July 29, 1894, p. 7.  Lisbon seems to have been the common source for circus and museum “gorillas.”  Besides Chiko and Johanna, there was also “Manoel, said to be the largest and strongest chimpanzee in captivity, arrived on the steamer Olinda.  Manoel is the brother of Chiko and comes direct from the zoological gardens of Lisbon to a Boston museum” (“A Giant From Monkeyland,” Trenton Times,  April 20, 1894, p. 2).   Renamed “Gumbo” by the proprietors of the Museum, he did not live out the single season of his rental.
[8] “Had Almost Human Sense,” Butte weekly Miner, Dec. 13, 1900, p. 12.
[9] “Chiko, Dead, to Receive Great Honor,” New York Times, July 29, 1894, p. 2.
[10] “Chiko, the Gorilla, Dead,” 5.
[11] Richard Lynch Garner published The Speech of Monkeys  in 1896.  It is reported, however, that “when Prof. Garner, the ape expert, attempted to interview Chiko in the Madison Square Garden, just before the beast went on the road with the circus, the chimpanzee responded by throwing dirt at the man and driving him away” (“Chiko is Dead,” 3).
[12] “Chiko Lay in State,” Kansas City Times, July 31, 1894, p. 1.
[13] “Chiko, Dead, to Receive Great Honor,” New York Times,  July 29, 1894, p. 2.
[14] “Museum Will Have Two Chikos,” New York Times,  July 31, 1894, p. 8.
[15] “The Big Barnum Show,” Worcester Daily Spy, June 30, 1893, p. 1.  Elsewhere it is written: “Assuredly the individual who may be hesitating in his acceptance of the Darwinian theory, will go clean over to the monkey idea of evolution after a brief interview with Chiko and his gallant companion Johanna.  If they haven’t got human instincts, both as regards look and action, then no other animal outside of man has” (“The Big Parade,” Wilkes-Barre Times,  May 23, 1894, p. 5).
[16] “Death of Chiko,” 1.