North Pole Legacy

by S. Allen Counter

  Dressed in his own polar bear pants, deerskin parka, and sealskin mittens trimmed with polar bear fur, Ajako chopped a hole about three feet in diameter in the ice using a spearlike metal tool. Puto stood beside him, dressed in native sealskin boots and an imported gray down-filled jumpsuit that she had purchased through the local trade cooperative. Ajako dunked the huge skin in the icehole, moving it up and down in the frigid water, much as one washes a shirt by hand in a tub. After a few minutes of washing, he took the pelt out of the water and spread it over the snow. He and Puto then threw some snow on top of the bearskin, after which they began stomping and dancing on it with their boots. They repeated the process several times until they were satisfied. Ajako then beat the skin repeatedly with a stick to remove the residual water, snow, and ice. “Daymah! [It is finished.]” He threw the limp skin over his shoulder, and we headed for home.

  Vittus, Anaukaq’s fifth son, lives a life much different from his older brothers. Trained as a machinist by the Danes, he works on various kinds of equipment now making its way into the Eskimo settlements. Forty years old, he is physically well built and about five feet nine inches tall, making him the tallest of Anaukaq’s five sons. “I am a black man,” he is fond of boasting, though in fact he looks more “pure Eskimo” or Asian than any other member of his immediate family. He is said to take after his mother more than his siblings, in temperament as well as physical appearance. He is very soft-spoken but at the same time friendly and outgoing. Vittus and his wife, Cecilie, have five children: three boys, David, Avatak, and Anaukaq; and two girls, Lila and Aviaq.

  When Anaukaq’s sixth and youngest son was born, he and his wife decided to name their new baby after the son they had loved and lost and the stepfather Anaukaq had so revered. Young Kitdlaq was raised in much the same way as the other children in the family, yet in some ways he was given special treatment. Ever conscious of the fate of their eldest child, Anaukaq and Aviaq were more protective of their youngest. He was not permitted to hunt alone, as the other boys were at his age. He was forbidden by his father to use a kayak until far beyond the age when most Eskimo boys learn to do so, and even then he was required to have a companion at all times.

  Kitdlaq succeeded in becoming a good hunter, but he also excelled in the Danish missionary school. Anaukaq and Aviaq moved the family from Savissivik to Moriussaq when Kitdlaq was ten so that he and the other children could get some schooling. Now thirty-eight, Kitdlaq is a part-time hunter and a teacher in the small elementary and junior high school in the Eskimo village of Qaanaaq. Kitdlaq is about five feet six inches tall; he is dark-complexioned and could easily pass for a black American. He and his wife, Kista, have three young daughters: Tina, Avortungiaq, and one-year-old Aviaq.

  “When we were growing up, we were a typical Eskimo hunter family,” Kitdlaq told me one day as he worked on his kayak. “We, all five sons, traveled from place to place with our parents in search of the good hunting grounds. We all slept together in one igloo. We ate together and sang together. We also played together as friends, and we learned hunting skills from each other and our father. My big brothers really took care of me. They treated me kind of special because I was the baby of the group. But they also taught me to be strong and to provide for myself.

  “When I was a child, some of the other children who wanted to be mean would occasionally taunt me by saying that my skin was dark and dirty. They would say, ‘Go wash your face.’ At first this hurt me very much. But my big brothers would tell me not to worry about the teasing. They would support me and tell me to be proud of my kulnocktooko heritage. My father too would say that we should be proud to be the descendants of Mahri-Pahluk.

  “As I grew older, I thought a lot about my grandfather. My family used to say that we must have relatives in America, but they never did anything about it. We couldn’t. Anaukaq, my father, used to say that he wanted more than anything to travel to Mahri-Pahluk’s homeland and meet his American relatives. He thought that he must have relatives in America, maybe some half brothers and half sisters. He would say to us children, ‘If I don’t live to meet Mahri-Pahluk’s American relatives, I want you to travel there one day to meet them.’ I always hoped we could fulfill his dream as a family, especially before my mother died.”

  Between the birth of Vittus and Kitdlaq, Anaukaq and Aviaq had a baby girl whom they named Akatingwah. She died at age six of unknown causes. Each brother told me of his profound sense of loss at the death of his only sister.

  Anaukaq enjoyed introducing me to the members of his family and instructing me in the ways of his people. But most of all, he enjoyed talking about the old days. As he reminisced, he mentioned another relative whom he referred to as “Cousin Kali.” He told me that Kali—pronounced “Karree” by many of the Eskimos—was the son of Robert Peary and his best childhood friend.

  Taken aback, I asked Anaukaq if he was certain that Kali was Peary’s son.

  “Oh, yes,” he said seriously, “Kali is the son of Peeuree and an Eskimo woman named Ahlikahsingwah.” He stretched out each syllable so that I would better understand the pronunciation.

  “Most Americans do not know that Peeuree fathered children in Greenland,” I said.

  Anaukaq chuckled. “Yes, Peeuree had two wives, a Peeuree wife in America and Ahlikahsingwah up here.” He laughed again and clapped his hands.

  “Did Peeuree have other children with Ahlikahsingwah?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes,” he replied. “He had another son with Ahlikahsingwah named Anaukaq, like me.”

  “Older or younger?”

  “Older. Oh, maybe five or six years older. But he is dead now.”

  Anaukaq said that Kali was also born aboard Peary’s ship, the Roosevelt, in 1906. In fact, Anaukaq and Kali were born within days of each other. Yet the reason they called each other “cousin” had less to do with the circumstances of their birth than with the fact that their mothers married two Eskimo brothers, Kitdlaq and Peeahwahto. Both men, he said, worked for Peary as hunters. Kitdlaq later adopted Mahri-Pahluk’s son, Anaukaq, while Peeahwahto adopted Kali and his older brother, also named Anaukaq. After Peary and Henson left Greenland for good in 1909, Kitdlaq and Peeahwahto took their wives and children to the island of Qeqertarsaaq, now Herbert Island, where they lived between hunting trips for about fifteen years.

  Young Anaukaq and Kali became the best of friends. They played together as children and hunted together as young men. According to Anaukaq, Kali was “a great seal hunter, and like a brother to me.” Although they had not spent any time together since becoming adults, they still referred to each other affectionately.

  Anaukaq said that Kali still lived on Qeqertarsaaq, about forty miles north of his settlement. When I expressed an interest in visiting him, Anaukaq implored me to do so, in part because Kali would be able to provide additional information about the North Pole legacy of Robert Peary and Matthew Henson.

  “You will like my cousin Kali,” he said. “Give him my best regards.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Cousin Kali

  Approached from the southeast, Qeqertarsaaq looks much like an ancient castle rising from the sea—an isolated, snowcapped mountain surrounded by barren white plains. Located some twenty-five miles off the coast of northwest Greenland, it is a well-known hunting ground for walrus and seals, just as it was when Robert Peary camped there in the late 1800s. Today it has few human inhabitants. The only settlement, if such it can be called, consists of a few scattered dwellings. It was there that I found the man Anaukaq called “Cousin Kali,” son of “Peeuree.”

  As I neared my destination, I saw a young man of about twenty years old bending over a freshly killed seal, methodically slicing it to pieces. Using a large hunter’s knife, he made a small incision just under the mouth and then cut the skin vertically in a single line from chin to tail flipper. He next peeled away the animal’s skin in one piece, much as one would remove a diver’s wet suit. He walked a few paces to a platform made of old timber and
placed the valuable pelt on a wooden rack, well beyond the reach of his dogs, tethered a few yards away. The pelt would be stretched later and made into boots, gloves, or possibly a woman’s hooded jacket or amaut.

  Returning to the skinless animal, the hunter began to flense its fleshy pink blubber, tossing some of the scraps to the dogs. The dogs caught the chunks in the air and gulped them down. He made sure that each dog got a piece, then stored the rest of the blubber on the rack. Another vertical incision, this one deep into the seal’s throat and down to the tail, spilled its innards over both sides of the carcass. He carefully removed the liver, stomach, intestines and other organs. The intestines would be dried and used for tubing or, perhaps, for a shirt. The undesirable innards would be fed to the dogs, the rest would be eaten by the hunter and his family.

  The young man then quartered the animal, saving every piece of flesh for food. Nothing was lost. With blood covering his hands and a few spots on his face, he turned and smiled at me as he passed on his way to store the meat. It was the first time he had acknowledged my presence. He had a round face with perfectly even white teeth. His skin was pale and only his eyes and high cheekbones suggested that he was Eskimo. His smile was difficult to interpret, at once friendly and cautious, warm yet reserved. Still, I smiled back and then moved

  Entering the tiny settlement, I spotted a rather fit-looking, slightly graying “white” man with animated eyes, standing in the entrance of a small wooden house. He was wearing a tan pile-and-wool turtleneck sweater, heavy dark trousers, and sealskin boots. Wanting to know who the visitors were, he came out of his house to meet me, smiling cheerfully, and graciously greeted my translator Navarana Qavigaq-Harper, the great niece of Ootah. He was lighter in complexion than the other Eskimos I had met but similar in stature. His eyes were more Asiatic than Anaukaq’s, and his gray-black hair much thinner.

  Before I left the United States, I had carefully studied photographs of all the men who accompanied Commander Peary on his various Arctic expeditions. Right away, I could see a striking resemblance between “Cousin Kali” and Robert Peary. Still, I could not be certain that the man who now stood before me was Peary’s son, since other white explorers in the region had reportedly fathered children with Eskimo women. By comparison, verification of Anaukaq’s identity had been much simpler because Matthew Henson was the only black explorer to visit northern Greenland in the early 1900s.

  Like Anaukaq, Kali assumed that I must be a Henson. Why else would the first black American he had ever seen have come so far to meet him? I explained to Kali that I was not myself a Henson but had come to the region in search of the progeny of Matthew Henson and Robert Peary.

  “I am Kali Peeuree,” he said.

  “Are you the son of Robert Peary, the explorer who came to this area many years ago to reach the North Pole?” I asked.

  “Yes, I am the son of Peeuree, the friend of Mahri-Pahluk,” he responded, with a smile and obvious pride. “You know, it was Mahri-Pahluk who took my father to the North Pole,” he said. “My father could not have reached the pole without Mahri-Pahluk.”

  Kali invited me into his igloo, where we sat down and talked over some tea I had brought along. “Don’t you have anything stronger?” he asked with a mischievous grin.

  “No, only tea and coffee,” I said.

  Kali laughed. “How are you going to tolerate the cold up here without some good whiskey to keep you warm?”

  I told him I shared his sentiments, but that the Danish government prohibited the transport or use of unauthorized alcoholic beverages in the area.

  Again he laughed. “What do they know? Every man needs a good drink once in a while.”

  Kali said that he was eighty years old. He did not know the exact date of his birth but knew that he was born in the late summer of 1906. I tried to get him to talk about his father but he seemed somewhat reluctant. He preferred to talk about other matters.

  “How is my cousin Anaukaq?” he asked.

  “He is very well, and he sends you his regards,” I replied.

  “I have not seen him in many years, but I have thought of him often,” Kali said. “I heard some years ago that he was very ill. Then later I learned that he had overcome this illness.”

  “Well, when I visited him, he was in good health and eating well,” I said. “In fact, a few days ago, he and I ate ahvuk together.”

  “You have eaten ahvuk?” Kali asked with apparent amazement. “Did you like it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It was tasty.”

  “That is wonderful. You should have brought me some. Did Anaukaq hunt this ahvuk?” he said, smiling as if he were teasing me.

  “No, his son Avataq killed the ahvuk, but I am sure that Anaukaq is still a great hunter, just as you are. Both of you could still hunt the ahvuk if you so desired.” This evoked a proud laugh. I had evidently said the right thing to flatter the old hunter.

  “Oh, maybe,” he said. “I try to shoot a seal now and then if I pass one on the ice, but I leave the hunting to my son, Talilanguaq, and my grandson Ole. They are both peeneeahktoe wah.”

  “Where do you come from?” Kali inquired.

  “The United States. Boston,” I said.

  “How far away from Qeqertarsaaq is that?” he asked.

  “Several thousand miles away. Here, I’ll show you.” I drew a rough map of Greenland and the United States on my interview notepad. “You are here, and Boston is here,” I said, pointing to marks on the map.

  “Mmmm, seems very far away. Is that where Mahri-Pahluk’s family lives?” Kali asked.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know. But I would think they might live in Maryland, about here on the map,” I said, pointing. “That is where Mahri-Pahluk was born.”

  “What about Peeuree. Where was he from?” Kali asked.

  “He was born in Pennsylvania, about here on the map, but he grew up in Maine—here, north of Boston.”

  “Is his family still there?” he asked.

  “I honestly don’t know where his family lives, but I can try to find out when I return to the United States,” I said.

  Kali said nothing. He just stared at the map for a while, expressionless.

  In subsequent conversations, Kali opened up to me and talked about his own family. Kali and his wife, Eqariusaq, had five children—two boys and three daughters. Like Anaukaq, Kali had suffered the loss of his first son. Peter (his Christianized name) had died some years earlier from a gunshot wound which the authorities ruled to be self-inflicted. Some family members and other local Eskimos suspected that Peter had been the victim of foul play following an alcohol-related argument with a close acquaintance. Whatever the truth of the matter, it was clear that his death remained a source of profound grief. “It hurts when I speak of him,” Kali said.

  Everyone I spoke with had nothing but praise for Peter, who is survived by his wife and three children. He was, by all accounts, handsome, charming, bright, and a natural leader. He was also a skilled hunter. As a young man he traveled throughout northwest Greenland with Ussarkaq Henson, Anaukaq’s third son, who eventually became his best friend. Peter and Ussarkaq hunted together and even courted their respective wives together. According to Ussarkaq, they often discussed their common dream of one day visiting America to search for their relatives, but Peter died before they could make any concrete plans.

  After Peter’s death, Kali’s second son, Talilanguaq, assumed responsibility for supplying the family with most of its food. Now forty-five years old, Talilanguaq bears a remarkable resemblance to photographs of young Robert Peary. He is reputed to be one of the best all-round hunters in the region, just as his father had been in his younger days. On occasion he has also worked as a guide for the European adventurers who regularly visit the area. Hoping to secure some niche in history or simply to live out their fantasies, these would-be explorers hire highly skilled Eskimo dogsled drivers such as Talilanguaq to take them to the North Pole. The Eskimos joke about their employers, many of whom
treat the journey as if it were a long taxi ride. Others end up traveling part of the distance by plane. Nevertheless, Talilanguaq himself seemed proud to have followed in his grandfather’s footsteps. I later learned that both his brother Peter and Avataq Henson had journeyed to the Pole at some point in their lives.

  Talilanguaq’s son Ole, who is nineteen years old, also works as a hunter, having chosen to follow the traditional Eskimo way of life rather than attend school and take a job with the Danes. It was Ole I had seen carving the seal when I first reached the settlement. Talilanguaq has one other son, Ossmus, and three daughters, Paulina, Tukumaq, and Om’ayekeycho.

  Talilanguaq’s eldest sister, also named Paulina, is a teacher in the village of Qaanaaq and a well-known figure in local Greenlandic politics. She is the mother of three sons, one of whom recently committed suicide. Another son, named Sip’soo, has worked around the American air base at Thule and speaks some English. Now in his thirties, he changed his name to Robert Peary II a few years back, ostensibly in defiance of taunts at school about his racial mixture.

  Kali’s other daughters, Marta and Mikissuk, are the wives of hunters and also live in Qaanaaq. Marta bore no children of her own but has adopted three Inuit orphans, while Mikissuk has five children.

  Although Kali clearly preferred to focus on the present, the longer we talked, the more he reminisced about the past. He retained especially fond memories of Anaukaq. “Cousin Anaukaq is one of the greatest men I have known,” he said. “Perhaps there has been no greater hunter in our country. Until he injured his eye in a hunting accident some years back, he was the best hunter around.”

  “We were the best of friends in our youth,” he continued. “We always felt that we belonged to the same family because our Eskimo fathers, Kitdlaq and Peeahwahto, were brothers, and we lived together as one family for most of our youth. As young boys, we always called each other’s father ‘uncle,’ and we called each other ‘cousin.’ “