North Pole Legacy

by S. Allen Counter

  Before hiring Henson, Peary had had little contact with black Americans. Like most European Americans of his time, he seems to have accepted common shibboleths about the “natural superiority” of the white race, views that found backing in much of the “scientific” literature of the period. Yet the state where he grew up had few African-American residents and no tradition of legalized racial slavery. Peary’s own understanding of the biological basis of racial difference is reflected in several of his writings. For example, in 1885 he wrote, “If colonization is to be a success in Polar regions, let white men take with them native wives, then from that union may spring a race combining the hardiness of the mothers with the intelligence and energy of the fathers.”2 Another writing refers to “the mixed race in South Greenland, which, in spite of the fostering care of the Danish Government, is still like most half-breed human products, inferior to the original stock.”3

  Some of Peary’s other writings, however, suggest that he believed that members of all races were human beings first and foremost. His upbringing had taught him to be charitable to his less-fortunate, though “inferior,” brethren. In a culture steeped in racism, Peary’s racial attitudes might thus be described as sympathetic, even “liberal,” if not truly enlightened.

  Whatever Peary may have thought about blacks in general, it is clear that he developed a sincere respect for Matthew Henson. During the year the two men worked together in the steamy jungles of Nicaragua, Henson’s multiple skills as a mechanic, carpenter, and navigator proved invaluable. Peary later lauded his assistant for his “intelligence, faithfulness, and better than average pluck and endurance”4—qualities usually attributed at the time exclusively to white males. Henson reciprocated by praising Lieutenant Peary’s fairness, noting that “it was with the instinct of my race that I recognized in him the qualities that made me willing to engage myself in his service.”5

  Although Peary and Henson went their separate ways after returning to the United States, their shared experience in Nicaragua forged a bond between them that would not be easily broken. In the context of the time, their relationship was as close to a friendship as one could imagine between a white boss and a black assistant. They also complemented each other. In Henson, Peary had found an experienced, multitalented aide willing to travel anywhere in support of his ventures. In Peary, Henson had found a well-disposed white sponsor, without whom he had no hope of satisfying his own thirst for travel. Of more immediate and practical importance to Henson, Peary also represented a potential source of continued employment. It was with this in mind that Henson wrote to the lieutenant soon after arriving back in Washington.

  West Washington D.C.

  Aug 1st 1888

  Mr. R.E. Peary

  Dear Sir

  I write you these few lines hoping that they may find you enjoying the best of health and that you are having a good time. I arrived in Washington all safe last Saturday at 11/30.

  Mr Peary please let me know when you are going back to Nicaragua, for I will be pleased to go with you again. I have not had any work yet. I now come to a close hoping to hear from you soon.

  M.A. Henson

  #3003 P Street. Georgetown D.C.6

  Still unable to find work, Henson wrote Peary a second letter some months later.

  Dear Sir

  I write you a few lines to let you know that all is well at this present time. As I had written to you before I am not doing any work yet and if you want me to go back with you when you go back to Nicaragua I will be pleased to go with you indeed sir. And if you want me I would like to know as soon as I can. And I would like to stay for a year or more or as long as you stay, if I pleased you with my work when I was with you before.

  And I hope to hear from you soon.

  From a friend,

  Matthew Henson

  When he did not hear anything from Peary, Henson returned to his old job at Stinemetz. Then, in early 1889, Peary wrote to ask if Henson would be interested in working as a “messenger” at the League Island Navy Yard in Philadelphia, where Peary had recently been reassigned. Though it was not the opportunity Henson had hoped for, he quickly accepted. What he did not yet know was that Peary had already begun making plans for his first polar expedition and intended to take Henson along.

  Peary moved to Philadelphia soon after his marriage in 1889 to Josephine Diebitsch, the daughter of a prominent Washington professor. Henson followed in the spring of 1890, taking up residence at 1524 Burton Street in the heart of the city’s black community.

  Philadelphia was widely regarded at the time as one of the better American cities for blacks. For much of the nineteenth century it had boasted the largest freeborn black population in the United States. Until they were displaced through the organized efforts of Irish and German immigrants, blacks dominated many of the city’s trades, including carpentry, masonry, and blacksmithing. As a result, many black Philadelphians had achieved a level of economic prosperity and social respectability uncommon, if not altogether unknown, among African Americans elsewhere.

  Yet as young Matthew Henson discovered, gaining entry into the city’s black community was not easy. Despite his wide-ranging experience and respectable position as an employee at the navy yard, he was still considered an outsider. He had little in the way of formal education and did not belong to any of the trade organizations that served as the main source of employment for many black men.

  Hoping to gain acceptance and get ahead, Henson joined a local church and began attending Sunday outings in the influential Juniper Street area of the black community. It was on one such occasion in late September 1890 that he met Eva Helen Flint, a twenty-two-year-old sales assistant in a local store. Henson was charmed by the attractive Eva, and she by him. He began to frequent the store where she worked, bringing her small gifts to show his affection. From time to time, he would see her strolling through the park on Sunday evenings with the other young African-American Philadelphia ladies. Eva was a fabulous dresser whose passion for fine clothes complemented Henson’s own dapper style. The two seemed made for each other. After a month of secret meetings, Eva invited Matthew home to meet her family.

  The Flints were a large, educated, and conservative family that had moved to Philadelphia from Washington, D.C., to work in the thriving trades. Although inclined to be skeptical of a young man pursuing the hand of any of the Flint women, they were thoroughly charmed by the twenty-three-year-old Henson. The men, especially, were captivated by his tales of travel and adventure. In addition, his position at the navy yard was considered auspicious, since government jobs often carried pensions that could guarantee a family a modicum of economic security for a lifetime.

  Matthew and Eva courted for several months, seeing each other as often as possible after work and on Sundays. By now, they were very much in love and seriously considering marriage. But Henson wanted to wait until he had saved enough money to purchase a home, ideally in the Juniper Street community. He also worried about his ability to support Eva’s love of material things. Perhaps most important, his desire to settle down with Eva conflicted with his lust for adventure, and he knew that it would be difficult to reconcile these two impulses. Eva, on the other hand, was convinced she had found the right man and was eager to get away from the rigid control of her parents and brothers at home.

  The issue of marriage was still unresolved when Robert Peary summoned Henson to his office in late February 1891. Peary had just received a letter from the navy granting him a long-sought leave of absence for the purpose of exploring northwest Greenland. He asked Henson to come along as his personal assistant. Flattered by the invitation, Henson immediately accepted. This was, after all, the opportunity Henson had been waiting for, a chance not only to resume his travels but to distinguish himself and his race in the process. Perhaps no less than Peary, Henson sought recognition, although in Henson’s case the goal was not so much fame as social acceptance. He had always admired the educated, successful blacks of Washington and
Philadelphia but never felt their equal. Now, given the opportunity to go where no one, black or white, had ever gone before, he could surpass them in achievement. At the same time, he could disprove once and for all the widely held theory that black-skinned people could not survive in the Arctic, thus providing further proof of racial equality.

  Acceptance of Peary’s offer did present certain problems, however. In the first place, Henson could not obtain a leave of absence from his own position at the navy yard. If he gave up his job, there was no guarantee that he would get it back upon his return. In addition, he would have to give up his regular, fifteen-dollar weekly wage in exchange for an annual salary of fifty dollars. This meant that if he did get married, it would be difficult to support his wife back home.

  Not surprisingly, Eva tried to persuade Henson to decline Peary’s offer and stay on at the navy yard. Henson in turn tried to convince Eva that if he made the journey with this ambitious young white man, not only would he achieve personal fame, but Peary would take care of him in the future, as well. Such were the arrangements that white men had with their loyal “colored” assistants in those days. Eva was skeptical; her family, even more so. They urged Eva to refuse to marry Henson, at least until he returned.

  But Eva and Matthew were in love, and they both thought it was time to make a decision. Henson consulted Peary and his wife, Josephine, and they were encouraging. Peary felt that marriage would give Henson stability, although he was privately concerned about its impact on Henson’s flexibility. Already, it seems, he had special plans for young Henson on future Arctic expeditions.

  On April 13, 1891, Eva Helen Flint and Matthew Alexander Henson filled out an application for marriage before the clerk of Orphan’s Court in Philadelphia. Three days later they were joined in marriage in the presence of a few friends and family members. During the next two months they lived with Eva’s family, drawing up plans for the future and awaiting the departure of Peary’s expedition.

  In early June, Henson bade his wife farewell and traveled to Brooklyn, where he boarded the barkentine Kite and assumed his duties as Peary’s assistant. In the late afternoon of June 6, 1891, the Kite set sail from Brooklyn. Throngs of well-wishers stood on the docks, waving white handkerchiefs, as the ship moved out to sea via the East River, en route to northwest Greenland.

  In addition to Henson, the hand-picked expeditionary team included four other assistants, each selected on the basis of his “mental and physical well-being” as well as for the particular skill he offered: Frederick A. Cook, an affable young physician from New York; Eivind Astrup, an experienced Norwegian Arctic traveler; Langdon Gibson, an ornithologist from Long Island; and John M. Verhoeff, a mineralogist from Kentucky. Also among the passengers was Josephine Peary. As far as the American public was concerned, the presence of “the woman,” as Mrs. Peary was commonly referred to, was no less unusual than that of Peary’s black “manservant.”

  Henson, of course, was no mere servant. In addition to his skills as a carpenter and mechanic, he had more experience at sea than any other member of the expedition, including naval lieutenant Peary. He loved sailing in the open sea, and the 280-ton Kite, with its vast white sails and seven-knot steam engines, was his kind of ship. During the seven-week voyage, Henson spent most of his time doing inventories of the expedition’s equipment and supplies, preparing for the landing.

  After struggling through the frozen waters of Disco Bay and Baffin Bay, the Kite reached Wolstenholm Sound near the area of Itilleq. On July 26, Peary’s party went ashore with pickaxes, shovels, and lumber and began to set up camp at the base of red-brown cliffs near the mouth of an inlet. The burden of work fell chiefly to Henson, whose carpentry skills were called upon to build a spacious two-room house that would serve as the expedition’s headquarters. Henson and the other assistants labored long and hard to erect the large rectangular dwelling before the winter set in. Incapacitated by a broken ankle, Peary could only observe and supervise the construction of “Red Cliff House,” as it came to be called.

  Completion of construction happened to coincide with Matthew Henson’s twenty-fifth birthday on August 8. In commemoration of both events, Josephine Peary threw a party at which Henson was the guest of honor. For his present, he was permitted to select the dinner menu from their stores and to eat as much as he wished. In A Negro Explorer at the North Pole, Henson later described the occasion as among the most memorable of his life.

  The group spent the fall and winter acclimating themselves to Arctic conditions and exploring the surrounding area, in the vicinity of present-day Thule. In the spring of 1892, Peary and his men, including Henson, set out to accomplish the principal mission of the expedition, a crossing of northern Greenland from west to east. Though the ostensible goal was to locate the northernmost terminus of Greenland, in actuality Peary wanted to determine the shortest route to the North Pole.

  Josephine Peary remained behind at Red Cliff House, as did John Verhoeff, whom Robert Peary considered to be insubordinate and undependable in the field. Verhoeff, in fact, had been trouble from the start, not only for Peary but also for Matthew Henson. A Kentuckian unaccustomed to interacting with blacks as equals, he resented the respect and relatively impartial treatment that the Pearys accorded their “manservant.” He repeatedly harassed Henson, calling him by the most vulgar of American racial epithets and occasionally threatening him.7 Friction between the two men came to a head after Henson hurt his heel during the early stages of the trans-Greenland crossing and was forced to return to Red Cliff. At one point Verhoeff attacked Henson for resting his injured foot on a table. On another occasion Verhoeff became infuriated when he discovered, after oversleeping, that Henson had taken over one of his duties. So frequently did the two men clash that the otherwise placid Mrs. Peary eventually ordered them out of the house to “fight it out.”

  In the meantime Gibson and Cook also returned to the camp, leaving only Peary and Astrup to complete the crossing. Both Gibson and Cook seemed to share Verhoeff’s sentiments about Henson, even if they didn’t imitate his tactics. When Henson asserted in their presence that black Americans should have the right to vote, for example, they were quick to remind him of his proper “place.” Similarly, they joined Verhoeff in deriding Henson’s efforts to befriend the Eskimos and learn their skills.

  None of this deterred Henson from standing up for his beliefs, however, or from learning as much as he could about Polar Eskimo culture. He hunted with the Eskimos, visited their villages, and eventually became the only member of any of Peary’s expeditionary teams to master their language.

  By contrast, the other men at Red Cliff seemed to have no interest in the Eskimos beyond taking advantage of the women. According to Verhoeff’s diary, Cook and Gibson regularly flirted with the Eskimo women, at times engaging in the practice of “cooney,” which involved “putting their faces to the women’s faces and smelling them.” This intimate behavior apparently offended the local Eskimo men, some to the point of threatening violence. On one occasion Cook and Gibson cited such a threat to convince Henson to take Mrs. Peary farther inland for a few days to a safe, remote location that Lieutenant Peary had arranged for her in case of danger. While she and Henson were away, Cook and Gibson gave a “dinner party” for four Eskimo women, during which they engaged in “cooney,” according to Verhoeff, who claimed he was a reluctant participant in the dinner and that he did not take part in the other activities.8

  Yet in spite of his differences with the other men, Henson enjoyed life in the Arctic. In many ways, he was freer and more independent there than his fellow African Americans were back home. So unusual was Henson’s position in Peary’s Arctic work that T. S. Dedrick, a white assistant on a later expedition, felt compelled to voice his outrage at Henson’s “freedom and insolence” and Peary’s apparent “indifference” to it.9

  The truth of the matter was that Henson had time and again proven his worth and earned Peary’s admiration and respect. Henson even managed to
win over Frederick Cook, who would later become Peary’s archenemy. After their return to the United States, Cook invited Henson to live in his mother’s New York apartment while an eye injury suffered during the expedition healed satisfactorily. Ironically, Henson’s own chief nemesis, John Verhoeff, never made it back from Greenland. He was said to have been killed in an accident while exploring a glacier just a few days before Kite set sail for America.

  Henson spent the better part of the next eighteen years of his life exploring the Arctic with Robert Peary. He returned to Greenland with Peary in 1893 and remained there with him for another year after the other members of the team abandoned the mission and went home. He marched across the entire ice cap of Greenland with Peary and Hugh J. Lee in 1895 and joined in the discovery of the island’s northern terminus. He also participated in the 1896 and 1897 expeditions, when Peary removed some of the Eskimos’ sacred meteorites and only source of metal, which he later sold to the American Museum of Natural History in New York to finance his subsequent explorations.

  Henson also helped raise money between expeditions by donning his Eskimo regalia and accompanying Peary on cross-country lecture tours. He even toured the United States alone in a play of Peary’s creation titled Under the Polar Star. This latter work proved so physically and psychologically exhausting that on November 7, 1896, Henson wrote Peary complaining of the difficulty in managing the dogs onstage and of poor health. “Mr. Peary,” he pleaded, “. . . I don’t think that I could stand going around this winter, I have been sick ever since I have been in Chicago and now I am hardly able to get to the theater—but I have to do it, or walk home. Will you please let me know if you can get me a place at the American Museum [of Natural History], for I am afraid that I have to give this job up.”

  Understandably, Henson’s travels put a severe strain on his marriage. Unwilling to play the classic role of the sailor’s wife, Eva Henson refused to tolerate her husband’s long absences. Henson tried to mollify her, chiefly by requesting more money from Peary “to send home to my wife.” But he had no intention of changing his ways. Having established himself as a permanent member of Peary’s expeditionary team and, in the process, having acquired a degree of personal fame, he was determined to share in the achievement of Peary’s ultimate goal—the conquest of the North Pole. To put it another way, his love for his work eventually surpassed his love of his domestic life in Philadelphia and, apparently, Eva. By 1896, the couple was on the verge of a divorce.