North Pole Legacy

by S. Allen Counter

  The Peary-Stafford family’s designated “representative” was no less cold and guarded than the first person I had spoken with. I introduced myself, this time mentioning my work at Harvard in an effort to convey credibility. I told him I was calling at the suggestion of one of his relatives. He seemed to have been expecting to hear from me. He began by raising the same question I had encountered before: “Why are you bringing this out before the public now?”

  I repeated my story to him.

  He told me that his family already knew about Peary’s Eskimo offspring and that his “Uncle Bob,” the explorer’s son, had met one of his relatives on a trip to Greenland in the 1920s. I told him that I found this rather odd because Kali had said that he’d never met any of his American relatives.

  “Maybe,” I suggested, “your uncle met Kali’s brother Anaukaq who, the Eskimos say, was also Peary’s son.”

  “Don’t believe everything the Eskimos tell you,” he responded brusquely.

  I was surprised to learn that the American Pearys already knew something about the admiral’s Amer-Eskimo progeny. But I was equally intrigued to learn that Robert Peary, Jr., was still alive. My quick calculations told me that he must be around eighty-three years old. The family representative confirmed this and informed me that Robert Jr. was currently living in Augusta, Maine.

  Wouldn’t it be great, I thought to myself, if Kali and Robert Jr., half brothers who had been separated throughout their lives, were at last brought together? I shared the thought of a brother-to-brother meeting with the family representative.

  “I will speak to him about it,” he promised, adding that he personally believed “such a meeting is out of the question. We’re not interested.”

  I decided to press the issue. “Why is your family so opposed to meeting this kindly old man who does not have many years left and who simply wants to meet some of his American relatives? Why are you and your family reacting this way?”

  “Dr. Counter, you don’t understand,” the family representative said. “Let me share a story with you.” He proceeded to tell me a long story about a film on the North Pole discovery that had appeared on American television some years ago, featuring Rod Steiger as Robert Peary and Richard Chamberlain as Frederick Cook. (He never mentioned Matthew Henson or who played his role.) “When we saw that Richard Chamberlain was playing the role of Cook, we knew the film was going to do our grandfather in,” he said. The film had “totally distorted my grandfather’s image and discredited his name,” he continued, leaving his family “greatly disturbed.” He then drew an analogy between the film and my own efforts to bring Kali and Anaukaq to the United States. While he understood that “these Eskimos would welcome a free ticket to America,” he also believed that the publicity attending their return would tarnish the Peary family image.

  When he finished his story, I told him in a conciliatory tone that I was sorry the television show had been so negative in its portrayal of his grandfather’s achievements. “I am in no way trying to discredit that legacy,” I assured him, “but to validate it. And I appeal to you and your family not to view me or Kali in the same light as this movie. I would simply like for you to see Kali as a human being who has a genuine desire to meet his American relatives before he dies. He has said that to me.”

  Apparently unmoved by my words, the family representative reaffirmed that the Peary-Staffords had no interest in meeting with Kali and his family. He again reminded me of the still-extant “supporters of Peary’s adversary Frederick Cook, who liked this kind of information and who would use it as ammunition against Peary’s credibility as the discoverer of the North Pole.”

  I made further appeals, but to no avail. No matter what I said, I could not break the link in his mind between my own motives and the machinations of those who sought to discredit Admiral Peary. Frustrated as I was, I became even more unsettled when the suggestion was made that Kali might not actually be Robert Peary’s son, but rather the son of some other member of his expeditionary team. I was convinced that if the Pearys would only agree to meet the man, to see his face and listen to his story, any doubts they might have about his paternity would quickly be erased. Additional evidence could be found in the testimony of those older Eskimos who knew about the relationship between Peary and Ahlikahsingwah.

  “Well,” the family representative groaned, “we can’t be sure of this or just what all went on up there.”

  “If you have such strong doubts about the validity of Kali Peary’s claims, sir, we can easily settle this question beyond a shadow of a doubt with a relatively simple new blood test called a DNA fragmentation analysis—that is, if Kali and his half brother would agree to such a test.”

  “No,” he answered. “Such a test would be demeaning for both men.”

  The family representative then fell back on another argument, claiming that Peary had been forced by local custom to engage in sexual relations with the indigenous women, including Ahlikahsingwah. “That was a condition of Peary’s association with the Eskimo villagers who served his expeditionary interest. He had to have sex with the women before he could gain their confidence.”

  This contention was based on a long-standing myth about polar Eskimo culture, the notion that men routinely offered their wives to outsiders. This was not the case. Within the Eskimo community, men and women alike exchanged spouses with one another for reasons of fertility and, in some cases, pleasure. But non-Eskimo men who engaged in sex with Eskimo women usually exchanged Western material goods for favors. At times the women’s husbands also derived some material benefit from such relationships, such as a gun or a hatchet or cooking utensils. Existing records of such liaisons further suggest that the women who consorted with outsiders, and especially with Westerners, were often criticized for their behavior by other members of the community.

  Robert Peary’s relationship with Kali’s mother, Ahlikahsingwah, seems to have fit this pattern. Peary had known Ahlikahsingwah since she was a child and may have developed an intimate relationship with her when she was a teenager. Peary employed his mistress as his laundress and bodyservant and hired her husband, Peeahwahto, as a hunter, supplying him with a rifle. According to Kali, his mother subsequently fell into disrepute within the Eskimo community because of her relationship with Peary.

  As my conversation with the Peary family representative came to a close, I asked him to find out whether any of his relatives felt differently from him about meeting Kali. I was especially interested in talking with Robert Peary, Jr., although I was also concerned about the emotional impact such a discussion might have on him. The spokesperson said he would pass along my request and even agreed to send me the names of some family members so that I could contact them myself. I suspected that his willingness to provide such information reflected his certainty that all the Pearys shared his views.

  In the weeks that followed, I spoke with many more members of the Henson family, all of whom seemed delighted to learn of their Amer-Eskimo relatives. Like Cousin Olive, they wanted to send gifts to Greenland and to help in any way they could to bring about a reunion in the United States.

  Meanwhile, I called various members of the Peary family and told them of my plans for another visit to northern Greenland. I wanted to know if I could take Kali some word or letter or anything that would indicate that his American relatives were now aware of him and that they cared about him. Some of those I contacted refused to discuss the matter, while others made it clear that they were not interested in communicating with Kali.

  During the same period, I received a discouraging letter from someone claiming to be related to a member of one of Peary’s early expeditionary teams. Hostile in tone, the letter stated baldly that I was off the mark in my efforts to “exalt” Henson and to “question” Peary. The writer accused me of using “bastardy” as a way of discrediting Peary.

  A short time later, a letter from one of the Peary family members similarly charged me with exalting Henson at the expense of Peary
. This second letter arrived soon after I gave a lecture at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Marine Biological Laboratories for scientists and local citizens. After the lecture, I was interviewed on a local radio program about the significance of Matthew Henson’s contribution to Peary’s Arctic successes. My comments had apparently been reported to the Peary-Staffords. The same letter once again tried to explain away Peary’s sexual relations with Eskimos as cultural rituals in which he had reluctantly engaged in order to advance his nobler mission.

  Despite such criticism, I still hoped to persuade the Pearys that they were wrong about me and, more important, wrong in refusing to get in touch with Kali. After learning that Robert Peary, Jr., had a son who lived with him in Augusta, Maine, I decided that I would broach the subject of a reunion with him. When I reached Robert Peary III by telephone, I found him pleasant and soft-spoken. He expressed the now familiar concern about the effects of media reports of Kali on his grandfather’s image and reminded me that the designated Peary-Stafford representative spoke for him, too. Yet unlike the family representative, he seemed willing to consider my point of view and showed some sensitivity to what I was trying to do. Nevertheless, he was still opposed to any further publicity about the “so-called” Peary Eskimo offspring and unwilling to arrange a meeting between Kali and his father.

  As I prepared to set out again for the Arctic, I wrestled with the question of what I would tell Kali. I knew that telling him the truth would hurt him deeply. Yet I could not conceive of lying to him either. I could certainly leave out parts of the story in good conscience. He did not need to know, for instance, that some of the Pearys had apparently known about him for years but had never seen any reason to contact him or even to acknowledge his existence. But I would have to tell him that I had spoken with some of his American relatives and that they had expressed no interest in meeting him, at least not in public. I would try to explain why they reacted as they did, and I would continue to hold out hope that they might eventually change their minds. Finally, if I could arrange for the Amer-Eskimo Hensons to visit the United States, I would give him the opportunity to accompany them so that he could at least visit the grave of his father. Beyond that, there was little that I could offer Kali other than the knowledge I had gained through my own research into the lives of Robert E. Peary and Matthew A. Henson, the fathers that he and his “cousin” Anaukaq had never known.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Black and White Partners

  Matthew Henson was born on August 8, 1866,1 in Charles County, Maryland, the son of freeborn sharecroppers who worked on a large farm near what is today the town of Nanjemoy. When he was about four years old, his parents moved the family some thirty miles north to Washington, D.C., where jobs for blacks as servants and technical workers were available. Within a few years, however, both of his parents died, and Matthew and several of his siblings were taken in by an uncle who also resided in Washington.

  In 1879, at the age of thirteen, Henson left school and went to Baltimore, hoping to land a job on one of the many ships leaving port. Throughout his young life he had been fascinated by stories of life at sea and had marveled at the men who worked the steamboats on the Potomac. He later told a biographer that he was fortunate enough to meet an elderly sea captain in Baltimore who was looking for a cabin boy to assist him. Given the job, Henson set out on voyages that would take him around the world in the years that followed. Bright, eager to learn, hardworking, and exceptionally strong for his age, he became “an able-bodied seaman” and sailed to such exotic venues as China, Japan, North Africa, and the Black Sea. During his years at sea he continued his education, studying geography, mathematics, history, the classics, and the Bible under the captain’s tutelage. He also displayed a knack for learning foreign languages, a talent that would serve him well throughout his life.

  When the captain of the ship died in 1884, Henson, now eighteen years old, gave up seafaring for a time and returned to the United States. During the next two years he traveled up and down the eastern seaboard, taking on whatever odd jobs might be available to a young black man in need of work.

  In 1886, Henson returned to Washington, D.C., and moved in with his sister Eliza and her family at 3003 West P Street in the northwest section of the city. Soon thereafter he found a job as a clerk at F. W. Stinemetz & Sons, an exclusive capital furrier. Charged with responsibility for storing furs, recording sales, and keeping an accurate inventory of goods in the warehouse, Henson quickly earned the trust and respect of his employers.

  Yet while he continued to work diligently at his job, he was in fact biding his time. Already a seasoned world traveler, he longed to resume the adventurous life he had known. All that was needed was the right opportunity.

  The man who would afford Matthew Henson that opportunity had led a far different life. Born on May 6, 1856, in Cresson, Pennsylvania, Robert Edwin Peary was the only child of Mary Webster Wiley and Charles Nutter Peary. Following his father’s death in 1858, Peary and his mother had moved back to the family’s home state of Maine. It was there that Robert Peary was raised and educated.

  A bright and physically active child, Peary performed superbly in school and soon developed a reputation as a dedicated achiever. His academic successes eventually earned him a scholarship to Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, where he majored in civil engineering and also participated in a variety of sports and social organizations. He graduated from Bowdoin second in his class, with a Phi Beta Kappa key, in 1877.

  No matter how much he accomplished, however, Peary always seemed to aspire to more. From an early age he had made it clear that he intended to make his mother proud of him. He wanted to achieve great things. He wanted the world to know his name.

  Grand as his ambitions were, Peary’s professional career began modestly enough. After graduating from Bowdoin he moved to Washington, D.C., to work for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey Office. In the next two years he came to be regarded as one of that agency’s best draftsmen, enabling him to become an officer with the rank of lieutenant in the U.S. Navy Corps of Civil Engineers. Both of these jobs gave him access to the resources of the government’s civil engineering offices and the opportunity to travel widely.

  It is difficult to say just when Peary developed an interest in Arctic exploration. Some believe that it was a long-standing interest that can be traced back to a childhood fascination with the adventurous accounts of the Arctic explorer Elisha Kent Kane. Others contend that it was Baron Nordenskjold’s book on Greenland that initially aroused Peary’s curiosity about the far north. In any case, the first clear expression of Peary’s interest in the Arctic occurred in 1886, when he requested and received a six-month leave of absence from the U.S. Navy to reconnoiter the Greenland ice cap east of Disco Bay.

  That summer Peary sailed to an area of Greenland some two hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle to determine the feasibility of reaching the North Pole by an overland route. Braving constant danger and surviving a series of narrow escapes, Peary and a Danish assistant made the first recorded journey to the interior ice cap of lower Arctic Greenland, reaching a record altitude of 7,525 feet above sea level on July 15, 1886.

  Upon returning to Washington, Peary formally presented his findings, which included excellent maps of the Greenlandic interior. Praised by scientists and laypeople alike, these reports gave him his first taste of popular recognition. Invitations to lecture poured in and he was soon elected to the American Society for the Advancement of Science.

  Although the success of the Greenland expedition reinforced Peary’s belief that he could reach the North Pole, his naval obligations forced him to postpone his quest indefinitely. During the next two years he worked on several inland waterways projects, performing admirably in each instance. Then, in 1888, he was assigned to an ambitious new government-sponsored project in Nicaragua. The project involved a study of the feasibility of cutting a shipping canal through lower Nicaragua that would connect the Atlantic and P
acific oceans. Mindful of the strategic and commercial significance of the venture, Peary regarded the assignment as another opportunity to win the renown he so eagerly sought.

  In preparation for his departure, Peary took a collection of valuable furs he had acquired in Greenland to Stinemetz & Sons for storage. It was not the first time he had visited the firm. On several previous occasions he had brought other Arctic furs, which he eventually planned to sell. Each time, in addition to meeting with the proprietors, he had encountered a young black man who seemed to share his passion for exploration. Intelligent, articulate, forthright, and courteous, Matthew Henson had made a strong impression on Lieutenant Peary. The two men had exchanged travel stories and perhaps talked of future journeys. Now, as Peary readied himself for his new mission, he decided to offer Henson a job as his “personal assistant” in Nicaragua. Henson accepted.