July 30, 2021 • 20 mins
Before Robert Peary claimed to have reached the North Pole, he led several expeditions to northern Greenland. But they were more than just scouting trips. He brought back three legendary meteorites from the Arctic, which are still on display in the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Peary also brought people—six Inughuit who had helped him retrieve the meteorites, including a young boy named Minik.
In this special bonus episode of The Quest for the North Pole, host Kat Long speaks with Kenn Harper, author of Minik: The New York Eskimo, about the boy’s experience with the museum, how he came to feel betrayed by those he trusted, and how his fate intertwines with the legacy of Arctic exploration.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
The Quest for the North Pole is a production of
I Heart Radio and Mental Floss. As you pass through
the main entrance of the American Museum of Natural History
in New York City, you meet a statue of Theodore
Roosevelt and enter a hall crowded with tourists and dinosaur skeletons.
(00:24):
You walk past a herd of taxi, der meat, elephants,
Native American artifacts, and the New Gallery of Gems and
Minerals before reaching a small room dominated by a giant meteorite.
It weighs about thirty four tons, but it's just a
fragment of the colossal rock that crashed into Northwest Greenland
(00:44):
as much as ten thousand years ago. Scientists estimate it's
about four point five billion years old, roughly the same
age as the Sun. It's about iron and so heavy
that the apparatus supporting it had to be drilled right
into the Manhattan bedrock. Two other pieces of the meteorite
(01:05):
are in the same room. Before White explorers arrived in Greenland,
bringing with them metal tools, these meteorites were the only
sources of metal for the in white people. How did
these massive, heavy meteorites make their way from the Arctic
to a museum in New York City. From Mental Floss
(01:33):
and I Heart Radio, you're listening to the Quest for
the North Pole. I'm your host, Cat Long, science editor
at Mental Floss, and this bonus episode is Minic and
the Meteorites. John Ross was the first White explorer to
(02:01):
learn about the meteorites. On his eighteen eighteen expedition to
the Northwest Passage, he met INU White, who described black
mountains some distance away, where they chipped off pieces of
iron for their knives. Though he was intrigued by this information,
Ross didn't have time to see them himself, and they
(02:22):
would remain an Arctic mystery until Robert Peary searched for
them in the eighteen nineties. By then, Peery had already
completed two expeditions to northern Greenland with the idea of
traversing its ice sheet. On his third trip, in his
goal shifted to conquering the North Pole. The expedition was
(02:43):
memorable for a few reasons. His pregnant wife Josephine, held
down the operations of their base camp and gave birth
to their daughter, Marie on a guito. There. Peery and
Matthew Henson made a death defying dash over the Greenland
ice sheet, looking four route to the north pole, and
Peery would be shown the valuable meteorites that the inuite
(03:06):
had described to John Ross seventy five years earlier. After
months of preparation, Peary and a small crew launched the
reconnaissance of the northern ice sheet in March, but a
little over a month after setting off, Pierry had to
admit failure. The weather was just too terrible and it
(03:27):
took weeks for everyone to recover. In May, Peery asked
the inuite assisting his expedition to lead him to the
Black Mountains. With his guide Telekotia. They drove dog sleds
over the treacherous spring Eyes to the edge of Melville Bay.
Telekotias spied a pile of stones poking through the snow
(03:47):
that he said were used to chip pieces from the mountains.
As Peery wrote in his book, northward over the great ice.
He then indicated a spot four or five ft distant
as the cation of the long sought object. Talakotia began
sawing away blocks of snow and three ft beneath the surface.
(04:09):
The brown mass rudely awakened from its winter sleep, found
for the first time in its cycles of existence the
eyes of a white man gazing upon it, Peery wrote.
Talakotia said that the boulder was thought of as a
female figure in a sitting position. They called it the Woman.
Peerie estimated it at roughly four ft long, three ft wide,
(04:33):
and two ft deep at its maximum points, and weighing
about six thousand pounds. Perry continued, I scratched a rough
pe on the surface of the metal as an indisputable
proof of my having found the meteorite, in case I
should not be able later on to reach it with
my ship. Because that was his plan. It wasn't enough
(04:57):
for Perry to find the legendary meteorites. He wanted to
excavate them and take them home as personal trophies. I
asked Ken Harper, author of the book Minic the New
York Eskimo, how the Inuite might have felt about that
the meteorites had been the only source of iron for
(05:19):
the Inohuite for a very long time. But it's also
true that by the time period took them, the Inuit
were no longer you know, chipping off iron to use
as as tools from from the meteorites. They would get
metal objects and knives and other metal trade goods from
(05:43):
the whalers and then from Peery. You know, people were
dependent on Pery. So if this is his mission in
certain years is to get these meteorites and get them
aboard ship and use Innuit labor to help to do that,
and pay in trade goods and the food stuffs for
(06:06):
that Innuit labor, then the innuity are going to help them.
But that still doesn't mean he should have taken They
weren't his right. He wasn't given permission. It was not
within Peri's character to ask Nuwit if he could do something.
He was there to do things, and in his view,
they were there to do his beating, so he didn't
(06:27):
ask for permission. He gave himself permission. The following spring,
Perry returned with his ship and crew to abscond with
the woman and another smaller meteorite that the Inuit called
the dog. An oval mass a little over two ft
long and weighing about nine pounds, the dog was rolled
(06:48):
onto a sledge made of spruce poles and dragged towards
the beach. The crew floated it towards the ship on
a cake of ice. The woman had to be transported
on iron rollers over a roadway paved with beach pebbles,
then ferried to the ship on ice. But before the
woman could be fully secured, the ice beneath it broke
(07:10):
and the meteorite began to sink, pulling the ship down
with it. By slowly hoisting the massive rock up on chains,
the men were able to swing it over the side
of the ship and into the hold. There was still
one more prize, the biggest meteorite of all, which the
(07:31):
Innuite dubbed the tent, a boulder so big and heavy
that Perry would need a stronger ship and all of
his experience as a civil engineer to extract it. He
settled for transporting the two smaller ones to New York
in the summer. He returned for the iron monster the
(07:51):
following year. Perry's crew and every able bodied man from
the nearby village began digging the meteorite out of the
frozen ground with picks and hydraulic lifts, while Peery supervised
as it rose slowly inch by inch. It grew upon
us as Niagara grows upon the observer, and there was
(08:13):
not one of us unimpressed by the enormousness of this
lump of metal, Terry wrote, the struggle to move the
huge meteorite proved to be a lesson in physics. Never
have I had the terrific majesty of the force of
gravity and the meaning of the terms momentum and inertia
so powerfully brought home to me, he recalled. After pausing
(08:38):
work during the winter, the crew built a sturdy bridge
from the shoreline to the ship. They mounted a railroad
like track, and then secured a rolling car to it.
The meteorite was lifted by Jack's into the car and
covered with the American flag, while Peery's four year old
daughter dashed a little bottle of wine over it and
(08:59):
named it Aguito. Perry wrote. Then the meteorite was slowly
pulled over the bridge and lowered into the hold for
its voyage to New York. In his book, Peery includes
several letters from eminent geologists asserting the scientific value of
the meteorites, as well as reports on their chemical composition
(09:20):
and physical appearance. But for all the attention Perry paid
to his precious rocks, he neglected to mention that he
also brought to New York, some of his in white
helpers and their families, including an eight year old boy
named Minic. Let's take a break here, We'll be right back.
(09:53):
Perry Ship the Hope arrived at the Brooklyn Navy Yard
in late septemb Twenty thousand people, each paying a quarter,
came to see the giant meteorite and the six inuite,
still wearing their fur clothing in the late summer heat.
In addition to Minic and his father Shook, there were Nootka,
(10:15):
his wife Attagona, their twelve year old daughter Avia, and
a young man named Wikasakak. Pierri had brought the inuite
to New York at the request of anthropologist Franz Boas,
then the museum's assistant curator for ethnology. Boaz pioneered the
theory of cultural relativism, a framework that argues that the
(10:37):
values of one culture should not be evaluated based on
the values of another. That went against the prevailing belief
that human cultures existed on a spectrum from primitive to advanced,
and implicitly that white Western cultures were the most advanced
in the world. Here's Ken Harper France. Boast is viewed
(11:00):
as the father of modern anthropology. Are very much remembered
today as an anti racism activist and did a lot
of good work. But the Inuit and the other people
are studied by most of these scientists were subjects. They
were subjects for study. The New York Times reported that
(11:22):
the Inuite would go to the Museum of Natural History,
where they will arrange the exhibit of their implements that
Perry had collected. They planned to return home on Perry's
next expedition. The museum held an informal reception for the Inuite,
who were by then living in the basement. Matthew Henson
acted as interpreter. When the throngs of visitors were told
(11:46):
the Inuite were not actually on exhibition, they had to
content themselves with a glimpse through a grating above the basement,
and many lay prone peering through the spaces and the
hopes of catching a glimpse. The Times wrote, between giggling
at their unfamiliar clothing and mimics quote unspellable and unpronounceable name.
(12:08):
The Times reporter mentioned that some of the six were
not well. The climate didn't agree with them, The paper said,
less than a month later, all six were rushed to
Bellevue Hospital at Taganhaw was so weak with pneumonia that
she had to be carried on a stretcher, while the
others appeared to have the flu. Franz Boas explained to
(12:31):
a reporter from the New York Sun that the inuite
had no immunity to urban diseases. When they come into
this climate, they are the prey of every germ that exists,
he said. Minics seemed to have a milder case, but
the five adults and the young girl never fully recovered,
despite moving out of the museum's basement and into the
(12:54):
Bronx home belonging to the museum's building Superintendent William Wallace.
In February, Menick's father, Heihuk died at Bellevue. Three others
died that spring, only with Kasakak returned home on Perio's
ship in July eight. Now an orphan, Menick continued to
(13:17):
live with the Wallace family. He missed his father dearly,
but his loss was alleviated somewhat by the funeral service
Wallace had arranged. The staff of the museum thought it
was important to bury casual and have a funeral for
the benefit of impressing young Munich. So they held this
(13:39):
ceremony on the grounds of the American Museum of Natural History,
where they conducted against the New York version of a
traditional Inothuid burial. As he grew up, Minick learned English,
rode his bicycle, and befriended the Wallace's son, Willie, who
was about his own age. He excelled in high school
(14:00):
and competed in an ice skating competition. Nine years went
by before Minnick learned of the deep betrayal that would
shatter his trust. The William Wallace and the museum had
held an elaborate ceremony for Hishook back in Franz Boas
never actually intended to bury him. Instead, he had planned
(14:25):
to add Hishook's body to the museum's collection all along.
At the funeral service, the museum staff had wrapped a
log in cloth and placed a mask at its head
to mimic his Shook's body. The ceremony was held at dusk,
and they kept Minnick well back from the casket. Wallace
(14:45):
later told a newspaper reporter the boy never suspected, so
where was his father's body? The museum had retrieved it
and brought it to Wallace's farm west of Albany, New York. Yeah,
little building that straddled the stream that went through the property,
and that was a de fleshing plant. Museum specimens were
(15:10):
sent there, and unfortunately Minick's father, Fratial, was sent there
and his body was de fleshed in this little building. Basically,
they ran water continually over the body to strip the
flesh from the bones, and then the bones were sent
(15:30):
back to the American Museum of Natural History. The three
other Inuits bones also ended up at the museum. The
newspaper reports had mentioned the museum's plans. Minick remained unaware
of what had happened until seven, when he somehow learned
his father was at the museum. He demanded that the
(15:54):
museum returned his father's remains so he could bury them
properly in Greenland. But Wallace, who might have been able
to help him convince museum officials, had been fired a
few years earlier for taking bribes. As for Robert Peery,
he had washed his hands of the inuite the moment
they arrived at the museum. He refused to take men
(16:17):
at home. Then Menick took his sad story to the media.
The bad publicity convinced the Periarctic Club that something had
to be done. Peery was at just that time on
his quest to reach the North Pole, and the public
relations nightmare that might greet him when he returned would
cost them all. Herbert Bridgeman, one of the founders of
(16:41):
the Periarctic Club, arranged for Menick to return to Greenland
on Pery's regularly scheduled supply ship in nine His father's
remains stayed at the museum. He arrived back with just
the clothes on his back, and he was like a
fish out of water. He had lost his son doing skills.
He had lost his language. He spoke only English. Manick
(17:06):
was eighteen or nineteen years old, the age when his
peers would already be starting families and providing for them
by hunting. He relearned his native language, and for a
while he worked as a guide and interpreter for Perry's
former assistant, Donald McMillan on an expedition north of Ellesmere Island.
But unfortunately for Munich, he was still neither fish nor foul.
(17:31):
When he had been in New York, he longed for
the Arctic the Arctic that he viewed as his home,
but which he did not understand. When he was back
in the Arctic, he longed for New York. Menck never
felt quite at home in Greenland following his return in
(17:52):
nineteen o nine. Several years later, restless and without prospects,
he decided to go back to the US and look
for employment. But by then the world had changed. World
War One was ripping Europe apart. Pierre's triumph at the
Pole and his bitter feud with his rival Frederick Cooke
(18:13):
seemed like a story from the distant past. Polar adventurers
turned towards Antarctica to claim their fame, a fact clearly
illustrated by Sir Ernest Shackleton's heroic rescue of his entire
crew from shipwreck. In nineteen six, Menck began working as
a lumberjack at a logging camp in northern New Hampshire.
(18:35):
There he befriended another worker named Afton Hall, and when
blogging season ended in spring, Menick stayed with Hall and
his parents at their farm. As Ken Harper writes, Menick
seemed to have finally found a home where he felt
loved and cared for a community where he felt like
he belonged, but it was not to last. Menick died
(18:59):
in nineteen eighteen in the influence of pandemic, but instead
of being buried in an unmarked mass grave, the fate
of many of the flu's victims, the Halls laid Menic
to rest in the local cemetery, where you can still
visit his grave. While the three Cape York meteorites remain
at the American Museum of Natural History, the bones of
(19:22):
Menic's father and his companions are no longer there. As
museums began to reckon with their unethical collection practices of
the past, officials repatriated the remains of the four Inhuite.
They were finally buried in their home village, which is
all Menic had wanted. The Quest for the North Pole
(19:58):
is hosted by Me cat Law. This episode was researched
and written by Me, with fact checking by Austin Thompson.
The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy and Tyler Clang. The
supervising producer is Dylan Fagan. The show is edited by
Dylan Fagan. For transcripts, a glossary, and to learn more
about this episode, visit Mental flaws dot com slash podcast,
(20:23):
The Quest for the North Pole is a production of
I heart Radio and Mental Flaws. For more podcasts from
my heart Radio, check out the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more
(20:47):
podcasts from my heart radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
The Quest for the North Pole is a production of
I Heart Radio and Mental Floss. As you pass through
the main entrance of the American Museum of Natural History
in New York City, you meet a statue of Theodore
Roosevelt and enter a hall crowded with tourists and dinosaur skeletons.
(00:24):
You walk past a herd of taxi, der meat, elephants,
Native American artifacts, and the New Gallery of Gems and
Minerals before reaching a small room dominated by a giant meteorite.
It weighs about thirty four tons, but it's just a
fragment of the colossal rock that crashed into Northwest Greenland
(00:44):
as much as ten thousand years ago. Scientists estimate it's
about four point five billion years old, roughly the same
age as the Sun. It's about iron and so heavy
that the apparatus supporting it had to be drilled right
into the Manhattan bedrock. Two other pieces of the meteorite
(01:05):
are in the same room. Before White explorers arrived in Greenland,
bringing with them metal tools, these meteorites were the only
sources of metal for the in white people. How did
these massive, heavy meteorites make their way from the Arctic
to a museum in New York City. From Mental Floss
(01:33):
and I Heart Radio, you're listening to the Quest for
the North Pole. I'm your host, Cat Long, science editor
at Mental Floss, and this bonus episode is Minic and
the Meteorites. John Ross was the first White explorer to
(02:01):
learn about the meteorites. On his eighteen eighteen expedition to
the Northwest Passage, he met INU White, who described black
mountains some distance away, where they chipped off pieces of
iron for their knives. Though he was intrigued by this information,
Ross didn't have time to see them himself, and they
(02:22):
would remain an Arctic mystery until Robert Peary searched for
them in the eighteen nineties. By then, Peery had already
completed two expeditions to northern Greenland with the idea of
traversing its ice sheet. On his third trip, in his
goal shifted to conquering the North Pole. The expedition was
(02:43):
memorable for a few reasons. His pregnant wife Josephine, held
down the operations of their base camp and gave birth
to their daughter, Marie on a guito. There. Peery and
Matthew Henson made a death defying dash over the Greenland
ice sheet, looking four route to the north pole, and
Peery would be shown the valuable meteorites that the inuite
(03:06):
had described to John Ross seventy five years earlier. After
months of preparation, Peary and a small crew launched the
reconnaissance of the northern ice sheet in March, but a
little over a month after setting off, Pierry had to
admit failure. The weather was just too terrible and it
(03:27):
took weeks for everyone to recover. In May, Peery asked
the inuite assisting his expedition to lead him to the
Black Mountains. With his guide Telekotia. They drove dog sleds
over the treacherous spring Eyes to the edge of Melville Bay.
Telekotias spied a pile of stones poking through the snow
(03:47):
that he said were used to chip pieces from the mountains.
As Peery wrote in his book, northward over the great ice.
He then indicated a spot four or five ft distant
as the cation of the long sought object. Talakotia began
sawing away blocks of snow and three ft beneath the surface.
(04:09):
The brown mass rudely awakened from its winter sleep, found
for the first time in its cycles of existence the
eyes of a white man gazing upon it, Peery wrote.
Talakotia said that the boulder was thought of as a
female figure in a sitting position. They called it the Woman.
Peerie estimated it at roughly four ft long, three ft wide,
(04:33):
and two ft deep at its maximum points, and weighing
about six thousand pounds. Perry continued, I scratched a rough
pe on the surface of the metal as an indisputable
proof of my having found the meteorite, in case I
should not be able later on to reach it with
my ship. Because that was his plan. It wasn't enough
(04:57):
for Perry to find the legendary meteorites. He wanted to
excavate them and take them home as personal trophies. I
asked Ken Harper, author of the book Minic the New
York Eskimo, how the Inuite might have felt about that
the meteorites had been the only source of iron for
(05:19):
the Inohuite for a very long time. But it's also
true that by the time period took them, the Inuit
were no longer you know, chipping off iron to use
as as tools from from the meteorites. They would get
metal objects and knives and other metal trade goods from
(05:43):
the whalers and then from Peery. You know, people were
dependent on Pery. So if this is his mission in
certain years is to get these meteorites and get them
aboard ship and use Innuit labor to help to do that,
and pay in trade goods and the food stuffs for
(06:06):
that Innuit labor, then the innuity are going to help them.
But that still doesn't mean he should have taken They
weren't his right. He wasn't given permission. It was not
within Peri's character to ask Nuwit if he could do something.
He was there to do things, and in his view,
they were there to do his beating, so he didn't
(06:27):
ask for permission. He gave himself permission. The following spring,
Perry returned with his ship and crew to abscond with
the woman and another smaller meteorite that the Inuit called
the dog. An oval mass a little over two ft
long and weighing about nine pounds, the dog was rolled
(06:48):
onto a sledge made of spruce poles and dragged towards
the beach. The crew floated it towards the ship on
a cake of ice. The woman had to be transported
on iron rollers over a roadway paved with beach pebbles,
then ferried to the ship on ice. But before the
woman could be fully secured, the ice beneath it broke
(07:10):
and the meteorite began to sink, pulling the ship down
with it. By slowly hoisting the massive rock up on chains,
the men were able to swing it over the side
of the ship and into the hold. There was still
one more prize, the biggest meteorite of all, which the
(07:31):
Innuite dubbed the tent, a boulder so big and heavy
that Perry would need a stronger ship and all of
his experience as a civil engineer to extract it. He
settled for transporting the two smaller ones to New York
in the summer. He returned for the iron monster the
(07:51):
following year. Perry's crew and every able bodied man from
the nearby village began digging the meteorite out of the
frozen ground with picks and hydraulic lifts, while Peery supervised
as it rose slowly inch by inch. It grew upon
us as Niagara grows upon the observer, and there was
(08:13):
not one of us unimpressed by the enormousness of this
lump of metal, Terry wrote, the struggle to move the
huge meteorite proved to be a lesson in physics. Never
have I had the terrific majesty of the force of
gravity and the meaning of the terms momentum and inertia
so powerfully brought home to me, he recalled. After pausing
(08:38):
work during the winter, the crew built a sturdy bridge
from the shoreline to the ship. They mounted a railroad
like track, and then secured a rolling car to it.
The meteorite was lifted by Jack's into the car and
covered with the American flag, while Peery's four year old
daughter dashed a little bottle of wine over it and
(08:59):
named it Aguito. Perry wrote. Then the meteorite was slowly
pulled over the bridge and lowered into the hold for
its voyage to New York. In his book, Peery includes
several letters from eminent geologists asserting the scientific value of
the meteorites, as well as reports on their chemical composition
(09:20):
and physical appearance. But for all the attention Perry paid
to his precious rocks, he neglected to mention that he
also brought to New York, some of his in white
helpers and their families, including an eight year old boy
named Minic. Let's take a break here, We'll be right back.
(09:53):
Perry Ship the Hope arrived at the Brooklyn Navy Yard
in late septemb Twenty thousand people, each paying a quarter,
came to see the giant meteorite and the six inuite,
still wearing their fur clothing in the late summer heat.
In addition to Minic and his father Shook, there were Nootka,
(10:15):
his wife Attagona, their twelve year old daughter Avia, and
a young man named Wikasakak. Pierri had brought the inuite
to New York at the request of anthropologist Franz Boas,
then the museum's assistant curator for ethnology. Boaz pioneered the
theory of cultural relativism, a framework that argues that the
(10:37):
values of one culture should not be evaluated based on
the values of another. That went against the prevailing belief
that human cultures existed on a spectrum from primitive to advanced,
and implicitly that white Western cultures were the most advanced
in the world. Here's Ken Harper France. Boast is viewed
(11:00):
as the father of modern anthropology. Are very much remembered
today as an anti racism activist and did a lot
of good work. But the Inuit and the other people
are studied by most of these scientists were subjects. They
were subjects for study. The New York Times reported that
(11:22):
the Inuite would go to the Museum of Natural History,
where they will arrange the exhibit of their implements that
Perry had collected. They planned to return home on Perry's
next expedition. The museum held an informal reception for the Inuite,
who were by then living in the basement. Matthew Henson
acted as interpreter. When the throngs of visitors were told
(11:46):
the Inuite were not actually on exhibition, they had to
content themselves with a glimpse through a grating above the basement,
and many lay prone peering through the spaces and the
hopes of catching a glimpse. The Times wrote, between giggling
at their unfamiliar clothing and mimics quote unspellable and unpronounceable name.
(12:08):
The Times reporter mentioned that some of the six were
not well. The climate didn't agree with them, The paper said,
less than a month later, all six were rushed to
Bellevue Hospital at Taganhaw was so weak with pneumonia that
she had to be carried on a stretcher, while the
others appeared to have the flu. Franz Boas explained to
(12:31):
a reporter from the New York Sun that the inuite
had no immunity to urban diseases. When they come into
this climate, they are the prey of every germ that exists,
he said. Minics seemed to have a milder case, but
the five adults and the young girl never fully recovered,
despite moving out of the museum's basement and into the
(12:54):
Bronx home belonging to the museum's building Superintendent William Wallace.
In February, Menick's father, Heihuk died at Bellevue. Three others
died that spring, only with Kasakak returned home on Perio's
ship in July eight. Now an orphan, Menick continued to
(13:17):
live with the Wallace family. He missed his father dearly,
but his loss was alleviated somewhat by the funeral service
Wallace had arranged. The staff of the museum thought it
was important to bury casual and have a funeral for
the benefit of impressing young Munich. So they held this
(13:39):
ceremony on the grounds of the American Museum of Natural History,
where they conducted against the New York version of a
traditional Inothuid burial. As he grew up, Minick learned English,
rode his bicycle, and befriended the Wallace's son, Willie, who
was about his own age. He excelled in high school
(14:00):
and competed in an ice skating competition. Nine years went
by before Minnick learned of the deep betrayal that would
shatter his trust. The William Wallace and the museum had
held an elaborate ceremony for Hishook back in Franz Boas
never actually intended to bury him. Instead, he had planned
(14:25):
to add Hishook's body to the museum's collection all along.
At the funeral service, the museum staff had wrapped a
log in cloth and placed a mask at its head
to mimic his Shook's body. The ceremony was held at dusk,
and they kept Minnick well back from the casket. Wallace
(14:45):
later told a newspaper reporter the boy never suspected, so
where was his father's body? The museum had retrieved it
and brought it to Wallace's farm west of Albany, New York. Yeah,
little building that straddled the stream that went through the property,
and that was a de fleshing plant. Museum specimens were
(15:10):
sent there, and unfortunately Minick's father, Fratial, was sent there
and his body was de fleshed in this little building. Basically,
they ran water continually over the body to strip the
flesh from the bones, and then the bones were sent
(15:30):
back to the American Museum of Natural History. The three
other Inuits bones also ended up at the museum. The
newspaper reports had mentioned the museum's plans. Minick remained unaware
of what had happened until seven, when he somehow learned
his father was at the museum. He demanded that the
(15:54):
museum returned his father's remains so he could bury them
properly in Greenland. But Wallace, who might have been able
to help him convince museum officials, had been fired a
few years earlier for taking bribes. As for Robert Peery,
he had washed his hands of the inuite the moment
they arrived at the museum. He refused to take men
(16:17):
at home. Then Menick took his sad story to the media.
The bad publicity convinced the Periarctic Club that something had
to be done. Peery was at just that time on
his quest to reach the North Pole, and the public
relations nightmare that might greet him when he returned would
cost them all. Herbert Bridgeman, one of the founders of
(16:41):
the Periarctic Club, arranged for Menick to return to Greenland
on Pery's regularly scheduled supply ship in nine His father's
remains stayed at the museum. He arrived back with just
the clothes on his back, and he was like a
fish out of water. He had lost his son doing skills.
He had lost his language. He spoke only English. Manick
(17:06):
was eighteen or nineteen years old, the age when his
peers would already be starting families and providing for them
by hunting. He relearned his native language, and for a
while he worked as a guide and interpreter for Perry's
former assistant, Donald McMillan on an expedition north of Ellesmere Island.
But unfortunately for Munich, he was still neither fish nor foul.
(17:31):
When he had been in New York, he longed for
the Arctic the Arctic that he viewed as his home,
but which he did not understand. When he was back
in the Arctic, he longed for New York. Menck never
felt quite at home in Greenland following his return in
(17:52):
nineteen o nine. Several years later, restless and without prospects,
he decided to go back to the US and look
for employment. But by then the world had changed. World
War One was ripping Europe apart. Pierre's triumph at the
Pole and his bitter feud with his rival Frederick Cooke
(18:13):
seemed like a story from the distant past. Polar adventurers
turned towards Antarctica to claim their fame, a fact clearly
illustrated by Sir Ernest Shackleton's heroic rescue of his entire
crew from shipwreck. In nineteen six, Menck began working as
a lumberjack at a logging camp in northern New Hampshire.
(18:35):
There he befriended another worker named Afton Hall, and when
blogging season ended in spring, Menick stayed with Hall and
his parents at their farm. As Ken Harper writes, Menick
seemed to have finally found a home where he felt
loved and cared for a community where he felt like
he belonged, but it was not to last. Menick died
(18:59):
in nineteen eighteen in the influence of pandemic, but instead
of being buried in an unmarked mass grave, the fate
of many of the flu's victims, the Halls laid Menic
to rest in the local cemetery, where you can still
visit his grave. While the three Cape York meteorites remain
at the American Museum of Natural History, the bones of
(19:22):
Menic's father and his companions are no longer there. As
museums began to reckon with their unethical collection practices of
the past, officials repatriated the remains of the four Inhuite.
They were finally buried in their home village, which is
all Menic had wanted. The Quest for the North Pole
(19:58):
is hosted by Me cat Law. This episode was researched
and written by Me, with fact checking by Austin Thompson.
The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy and Tyler Clang. The
supervising producer is Dylan Fagan. The show is edited by
Dylan Fagan. For transcripts, a glossary, and to learn more
about this episode, visit Mental flaws dot com slash podcast,
(20:23):
The Quest for the North Pole is a production of
I heart Radio and Mental Flaws. For more podcasts from
my heart Radio, check out the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more
(20:47):
podcasts from my heart radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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