All right, ask yourself, what would it be like to be kidnapped, brought to a completely foreign place, and put on public display like you're not even human?

It happened as recently as the early 1900s.

I'm Patty Steele, the human zoo.

Next on the backstory.

The backstory is back.

Imagine your life is in a small African village just over 100 years ago.

It's pretty idyllic.

All you know is family and tribal culture among the Mbuti people, like hunting, gathering

in the forest and living with nature in a sort of

isolated world until it all comes undone. That was a life of Otabanga in what was then called

the Congo Free State and later the Belgian Congo. It was brutally run by King Leopold of Belgium, who enslaved indigenous people into forced

labor, brutalizing them if production wasn't up to snuff, with death, torture, and even amputation.

Oda's tribe, the Mbudi people, were the smallest of the Pygmy tribes in Africa, with adults

averaging around four feet eight inches tall.

And so they were looked at as exotic by Westerners, as well as much of the rest of the world.

And that meant there was money to be made, above and beyond forced labor in the two big local industries, ivory and rubber.

Ota was just 20 years old and out on a hunting trip

when local slave traders attacked his village,

murdering his wife and two little children.

When he comes home, he's kidnapped and sold into slavery.

Now, around the same time, American businessman, adventurer, as they called

them, Samuel Phillips Werner, is asked to travel to Africa to find a group of pygmies to bring to the

...