ABSTRACT
Most Americans easily associate Africa with images of lions and elephants and with words such as safari and simba. Richard added that hunting has nothing whatever to do with the more popular photographic safaris or, for that matter, with American zoos, nature TV, or The Lion King. The African hunting safari is a thoroughly Western experience. The safari required hundreds of Africans—numbering 2,000 over the course of the year—who served as trackers, gun bearers, guides, porters, tent boys, horse boys, cooks, skinners, and soldiers. Whether conducted with British sportsmanship or American brute efficiency, the safari was more about colonialism and the subjugation of nature than about conserving or understanding nature. For Americans, Roosevelt's famous safari occurred in the context of similar stories of African adventure. The African safari became analogous to the conquest of the American West, in the sense that both demonstrated the Western urge to dominate other humans and nature.
