February 15, 2021 • 49 mins
Matthew Henson is likely the first man to set foot on the north pole due to his deep curiosity, tenacity and unusal survival skills. The racism of the time may have robbed him of wide recognition but not the feat.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Personology is a production of I Heart Radio. Matthew Henson
was an American explorer and is best known for being
the first person to have reached the geographic North Pole.
He was a leader in seven expeditions to the Arctic.
(00:20):
My guest today is Cat Long, science editor at Mental
Flaws and host of the podcast The Quest for the
North Pole. Today we're going to talk about Matthew Henson,
who was born in August of eighteen sixty six in
Maryland to actually free black Americans before the Civil War,
(00:44):
which is already interesting and unusual in and of itself.
So maybe we could talk a little bit about what
we do know of his early family life. There are
actually some conflicting accounts, believe it or not. Henson wrote
a book about their achievement of reaching the North Pole
after they did that in nineteen o nine, and he
had a very brief discussion of his young life. He,
(01:07):
like you said, was born right after the Civil War
in Maryland and Charles County, Maryland, which during the Civil
War was a slave area. Maryland was a border state,
part of the state was free, part of the state
still held slaves. So he was born into a really
tumultuous time period. It's hard to say exactly how that
shaped him, but I think it must have, especially that
(01:29):
his parents were free. They were never enslaved people, and
I believe they were farmers or worked in kind of
a rural economy. But when he was really young, either
he ran away from home because he had a cruel stepmother,
or he and his family moved to Washington, d c.
(01:50):
And there he went to school for a period of time.
Important also to note that his mother died when he
was seven. I mean that is a significant and traumatic
loss for anyone, and even in those days when one
was more likely to die young, still a big loss,
and left the father to ultimately remarry and have a
(02:13):
stepmother to whom it seems he was not as close
or as comfortable with. He did have an older sister
and two younger sisters. And also important is to know
that while it was unusual and as you said, a
tumultuous time to be free and black and living in Maryland,
(02:35):
they were subjected to attacks by the Clue Klux Klan
and other white supremacist groups who were intent on terrorizing
people who were formerly free, and that must have also
been difficult and traumatic. That's a scene that we see
in a biography that was written with Matthew Henson by
(02:56):
Bradley Robinson UM in the sixties forties. There was one
in the sixties two that took heavily from that, but
I think it was maybe in the forties or fifties,
and that was not uncommon in Maryland. From what I understand,
it seems to me likely that he would want to
have gotten away from that kind of persecution, and so
(03:16):
he eventually made his way to Washington, D C. He
did say in his nineteen o nine twelve Sorry book
after he went to the North Pole that he attended
the m Street School, which was a really well known,
really respected school for African American students, and it was
run by a number of really progressive African American educators UM,
(03:41):
which is kind of exciting. It was a really good
thing for him to have gone to that school. Was
that school in Washington, d C. Or in Georgetown? At
the time, Georgetown was a separate part from Washington, D C.
The two cities were right next to each other, and
they were a bit separated, but they did eventually join together.
So I think it is in Washington d c though,
(04:02):
and do we know anything about the kind of student
that he was, I mean, realizing that he was only
able to stay in school limited time, but in this school.
I haven't been able to find any information about it.
I have looked into it, because he does speak at
times in his later writing about poetry, about Dickens, about
(04:22):
books that he really liked to read, which, again it's
hard to say for sure, but maybe he picked up
from one of these progressive educators at the m Street
School a love of reading or literature, or just an
interest in the world beyond his own life. So it's
hard to say what kind of student he was, but
he was at least very curious and at least very adventurous,
(04:43):
because he did then join the crew of a ship
called the Katie Hines. He made his way to Baltimore
and signed up as a cabin boy on this ship
to go back for one second, because so he's in school,
but his father dies and he has to actually go
live with an uncle. And that's important just because at
a young age he's cut loose, right. He doesn't have
(05:06):
parents anymore really officially, and the uncle did pay for
a few years of his education, but he also died,
so in a sense, I just think it's important to
understand that he had this childhood of frightening things going
on in terms of attacks on the family. Then he
loses his mother, then he loses his father, Then he
(05:26):
lives with his uncle, who also dies, and so he
doesn't have continued parental let's say, guidance or support. He's
forced at a pretty early age to leave education and
to strike out on his own. I think that is
part of his character. He was always a very kind
of going against the grain person. I mean, being a
(05:48):
polar explorer. To begin with this like pretty unusual, but
you know, when you think of like, what are these
early roots of independence to the level that you are
intent on being in some very difficult environment that no
one has ever gone to before. He came from a
difficult environment and at a pretty early age was jettisoned
(06:09):
into the world, and you could say forced to make
way on his own, to be an explorer of the
world on his own. But you could also say there
clearly was something about it that he easily adapted to
and even embraced that, as you said, went with his character,
went with his temperament, right, And one thing that kind
of struck me is that, as you mentioned, he did
(06:30):
not have a very stable family life when he was younger.
He lost his parents, he moved around, another uncle passed
away who was taking care of him, but he did
find this father figure. I think he was kind of
looking for father figures when he signed up on the
crew of the Katie Hinds with Captain child He describes
(06:51):
Captain Childs as someone who cared for him, who helped
teach him about the world, and really became like this
person and who he looked up to. So he was
on this ship and with Captain Childs four or five years.
This is during his teen years, correct, right. I believe
Captain Childs passed away in eighteen seventy eight, and that
(07:13):
would have made Matthew Henson about eighteen ish. That must
have been a huge blow to him because he had
spent his really formative years with him going where he
went on a ship, which is a very enclosed atmosphere
to begin with, and it really did kind of throw
him for a loop because after that he traveled around
(07:35):
a little bit. He wasn't really sure what he wanted
to do. He started working, I think for a ceiling
enterprise at Newfoundland. He kind of moved around, so he
was a little at loose ends. Although before we leave
his time on the boat, Captain Childs taught him to
read and write. I mean he had only had a
limited amount of education in school. Captain Childs also encouraged
(07:59):
him or worked with him on reading and writing, and
they went to ports all over the world, which, again
in terms of what drives someone to become an explorer, he,
as you said, in these formative years, he went to China, Japan,
and Africa and the Russian Arctic seas. This is a
form of exploring or seeing the world at a very
(08:22):
young and formative age with somebody who does take on
a father figure sort of role, and that seems likely
to be formative, also formative. To go back one more second,
it's reported that he or he reported, I think, at
age ten, going to a ceremony that honored Abraham Lincoln,
(08:43):
who was known at that point to have worked on
preserving the Union during the Civil War and had issued
the proclamation that freed slaves in the occupied Confederate States,
and he heard Frederick Douglas, an escaped slave and renowned
orator of the time. Time and a leading community member
for the black community, and that seems to have made
(09:05):
a real impression. There's no doubt that his time with
the ship must have broadened his horizons as well as
hearing these speakers. I've always kind of wondered, like how
much Captain Child's taught him to read and write if
he had been at school. I kind of have wondered
about that. There's a little bit of disagreement in the
(09:26):
historical sources, but there's no doubt that Henson learned from
Captain Childs, and he really became this person that guided
his life in a way that a parent would have.
And I think it was really formative for him during
his teenage years when he really didn't have any roots
anywhere else. He kind of was a little bit of
a rolling stone. I guess you could say, right right,
(09:48):
It's almost like learning a trade, which in those days
the idea of apprenticeship, and that is how you learned
to have the vocation that Captain Childs showed him, how
he sailed the world. Do we know anything more about
the ways in which you may have been affected by
hearing Frederick Douglas speak. To be honest with you, I'm
(10:09):
actually not familiar, just because I try to stick with
what I can verify from Henson's own writings, and there
aren't that many of them. And I feel that some
of his later biographers embellished a lot of the details
of his life. And that may have been because they
(10:30):
wanted to portray Henson as a unique and heroic figure,
which he was anyway, but they may have, you know,
larded it a bit. So it's hard for me to say,
we don't know for sure about that because he didn't
make reference to that. It's kind of the hard thing
we have about Henson's life, I feel is that he
didn't leave a lot of writing behind. I mean, he
only did write one book. One of the reasons he
(10:52):
wrote only one book is because, jumping ahead a little bit,
Robert Perry after their North Pole expedition prohibited members of
the expedition from writing books. Perry wanted to be the
only one who had the book deal and sort of
was the only one who was permitted to do a
lecture tour and kind of publicized the things. So we
(11:13):
don't have a lot of personal memoirs from Henson, although
I wish we did, because he had a fascinating life,
so shades of the suppression to come before we get there.
He is then working at a Washington, d C. Clothing
store in November eight when he meets Commander Robert Perry.
(11:34):
Can you tell us a little bit about that meeting
and how it would come to be that Perry would say, okay,
work with me. Yeah. I think this is one of
the most serendipitous meetings in the history of exploration because
it was totally unexpected. Because Henson, after he left the
Katie Hines and Captain Childs had passed away, he moved
(11:57):
in with his sister in Washington, d C. And started
working at this hat shop um or a furrier sort of.
The shop did a number of things, was kind of
a haberdasher, and he was a clerk there. And so
one day Robert Peary walked in and one story says
he was looking for a son helmet because he was
(12:18):
on his way to Nicaragua to scout for a canal,
which eventually became the Panama Canal. But at the time
the Navy was considering sites in Nicaragua, so Parry was
on his way because he was a civil engineer in
the Navy to do some scouting and he needed an
assistant of Valet. So the other clerk at bh Stein Medicine,
(12:38):
Son said, well, I have my coworker here, Matthew Henson.
He's been all around the world. He's a very capable man.
Why don't you talk to him? And so they seem
to have really hit it off, which is incredible. And
Henson must have impressed Perry with his resourcefulness, his practical
skills and things like carpentry, sailing, seamanship, things like that.
(13:00):
And I feel that they must have had kind of
a connection over being curious about the world, about being
ambitious and curious, and that combination really kind of colored
their relationship from then on. So Henson and Perry went
to Nicaragua. They you know, it was their only warm
weather expedition together. And when they got back, Perry again
(13:24):
was working for the navy, and Henson kind of did
a couple of odd jobs, but then Perry eventually got
him a job at the Naval Yard of Philadelphia. From
there they embarked on a number of polar expeditions. Because
Perry was pretty obsessed with making his mark in the world.
I mean, really, that was the driving thing in his life.
(13:46):
And he wanted fame. He wanted his name out there,
and polar exploration or some sort of feat in the
Arctic was his ticket to that um in his mind.
So by the time that Henson and Perry met, Arry
had already been in Greenland once and he did an expedition.
There was kind of a finding mission. He did a
little bit of exploring, but was kind of getting his
(14:08):
bearings and figuring out, like, Okay, now that I know
this about Greenland, what do I really want to do
here that's going to get me the fame that I crave.
So Henson, having proven his worth on his Nicaragua expedition,
went with Perry to Greenland, to the Arctic, to other
parts of the Arctic for the next twenty years on
(14:29):
seven expeditions. Perry had eight expeditions to the Arctic and
Henson was on the latter seven of them. They spent
eighteen years on expeditions together. Yeah, and in the most
brutal conditions you can imagine two and oftentimes it was
just that two of them. So it was a very
(14:50):
close working relationship. But at the same time, Perry was
quite driven again by his own sense of fame and accomplishment,
and I think that prevented him from being completely warm
and completely a friend to Henson. So it remains sort
of you work for me as the relationship, and I
(15:11):
am the leader director of this, and sometimes it was
the two of them. Sometimes he recruited people familiar with
the area. And what is amazing is that Henson really
learned the language and learned the ways, it sounds like
more so than Perry. Absolutely. Yeah, let's take a quick
(15:35):
break here. We'll be back in a moment. Perry often
hired the same Inuit people. He visited a particular village
frequently on subsequent expeditions and tended to hire the same
people since they knew each other they'd worked together, but
he never really became involved with them. He always looked
(15:56):
at them as servants, helpers, employees. They had specific and
very important jobs. They drove dogs, LEDs, which is extremely complicated,
and so Perry really relied on them, But he also
thought of himself as sort of they're kindly father slash
employer slash leader. Henson, on the other hand, really took
(16:18):
to their culture. It's exciting to kind of learn how
he was instructed by a lot of the indigenous hunters
and dog drivers in this particular village. They kind of
took Henson under their wing a little bit because I
think he showed that he was genuinely interested. His curiosity
(16:39):
went beyond place and mission. It went to the people
and the culture and a willingness to learn and absorb.
And he was the only one who learned how to
drive the dogs LEDs in the group that was not
intuit and how to train the dog teams in that way,
that really speaks to a curiosity dry of an empathy
(17:00):
in the direction of other people and other cultures, sort
of like an anthropologist in a way. He was definitely
interested in them and on a very genuine person to
person level, which is extremely uncommon between explorers who, for
lack of a better term, kind of parachute in to
do their mission and then leave. So for that reason,
(17:22):
Henson is unique and I think that makes him a
really interesting figure. And not only did he show that
he was genuinely interested in the folks there, but they
looked at him as a unique person. They gave him
a name, which is sort of their way of bringing
the person into their culture, into their lives, and in
(17:44):
English it means the kind one. They called him Matthew
the kind one, and they gave Perry a nickname two.
But it was basically like Perry the man, Perry the
leader kind of person, wasn't really wasn't really like indicative
of his his friendliness. But the other thing is like,
it takes a really long time to learn how to
drive dogs. Well, I mean, it is really hard, and
(18:06):
the dogs have their own minds. They just decide where
they want to go, and you have to just kind
of go with them and try to steer them in
the right way. And they're quite wild and they kind
of have to work out their own hierarchy among themselves.
And to be able to do this well as someone
who didn't grow up obviously having the skill or being
taught the skill over many years when he was younger,
(18:28):
is really an amazing feat. And so in addition to
the dog driving, like you said, he learned how to
speak Inuktitut, which is the native language in that area.
By doing so, I think ingratiated him even further into
the community, and it showed the new wheat there that
he was serious, he was someone who could be trusted,
(18:49):
someone who respected them, and of course it then gave
the native people they're more confidence in helping Perry. I mean,
Henson was really a liaise on between the Hinu wheat
and the white people on the expedition, and he performed
a really important role in that way. To speak for
a moment about his personal life before this, he did marry.
(19:13):
He married Eva flint In, but it sounds like his
being off and exploring basically dissolved the marriage because they
divorced In he later married. He later married Lucy Ross
in nineteen oh seven. But somewhere in here he's gone
for much of the time on these Arctic explorations. He
(19:35):
is not having children with either wife, and he takes
a Innuit wife or at least a partner, and does
have a child. He apparently had a relationship with the
new Wheat woman over a number of expeditions, so it
wasn't just, you know, a one and done scenario, for
lack of a better word. He really cared for her,
(19:58):
and I believe when I was speaking with the director
of the Perry McMillan Arctic Museum, she said, at some
point this woman died and Henson was just devastated. I
don't know much about her, but we do know more
about his son that he had with this woman. Did
she die when he was still with her? I thought
(20:19):
that basically when he left the region, that was it
and he never saw her again or the sun. But
I was unaware if she died while he was still there.
That was my inference, because he didn't go back to
the Arctic after they achieved what they went to achieve
in reaching the North Pole. Neither Perry nor Henson ever
(20:39):
returned to Greenland or that part of the Arctic. So
my impression was that she must have died while he
was there or during the period of years where he
was going there regularly. Both he and Robert Perry also
had an involvement with a woman. Both of them had sons.
Actually Perry had two sons, but one passed a way
(21:00):
I think when he was young. So Perry's son was
named Kelly and Henson's son was named a Knockock. And
they grew up in their community, but they looked a
little different from some of the other people in their community,
and so they wanted to know more about their biological fathers.
The people in the community were quite willing to share
(21:23):
stories about them. I mean it was no secret, but
they had never met any of their family from the
United States before, and so that became something that the
two sons really really wanted to do, or they really
really wanted to learn more about their families and their
fathers as well. So unfortunately, the two sons did not
(21:43):
meet their fathers when they were alive, but they did
go to the United States eventually thanks to the efforts
of Harvard neurologists named s Ellen Counter, who was a
really interesting polar explorer and figure, and he brought the
two wings of the Perry and Henson families together in
(22:04):
the nineteen eighties. And it was a really amazing story.
But it brings up a lot of questions about, you know,
what these kids were thinking in their lives, you know,
knowing that they had fathers but they were so far
away and that they may never meet them. But it
sounds like in some ways they were remembered by the people,
at least certainly Henson was as heroic and kind. Let's
(22:27):
talk about the expedition. I mean, there were many expeditions.
As you said, there were seven expeditions, but ultimately the
nineteen nineteen o nine expedition, which was Perry's eighth attempt
to reach the North Pole, and it was a large expedition.
This is the one, right, This is the one where
ultimately they did reach the North Pole. They got close
(22:47):
to the North Pole. Yeah, they thought they reached the
North Pole. They thought they did, right. That is an
important distinction, I guess. Yeah. In the expedition was the
Cherry on the Sun Day. Because Perry and Henson had
spent two decades getting to this point. I mean every
time they went to the Arctic, they learned something new,
they scouted new roots, they acquired the services of certain people,
(23:12):
and they set the groundwork for it each time. So
in nineteen o eight they had a pretty clear idea
of what they wanted to do. So they left New York.
They traveled north. They stopped off in Newfoundland to get
some supplies and um they eventually made their way to
this particular village called Eta in Greenland, where they picked
(23:32):
up their innuitae helpers. They had like a whole community
with them. They had like twenty two Innuite men, seventeen
Innuit women, ten children, two hundred forty six dogs, tons
of whale meat, tons of walrus meats. It sounds like
moving a village. It almost was, because Perry hired the
men to drive the dogs and scout the roots and
(23:55):
be the guides. But he also hired the men's wives too,
soak clothes to tan hides of the animals that they caught.
The men and the women seemed to have specific and
important roles and so each kind of fulfilled that role
in Perry's mission. And of course they wouldn't leave their
children behind, so of course the kids came along too,
So it really was like moving a whole community from
(24:19):
their home village to this totally barren seacoast. None of them,
I think, were too familiar with it, just because they
had no real reason to go there from their own village,
so it really was kind of this slightly unfamiliar territory.
But they did have enough animals to hunt, they had
plenty of food, and most of them stayed with the
(24:39):
ship when they eventually set up their base camp at
I believe Cape Sheridan, which is one of the northernmost
points in Canada, meaning like the nearest land to the
North Pole, which is still over four miles away, So
they set at their base camp there. They stayed the
winter and in the spring, Perry and a number of
(25:00):
his white crew members and Henson and the Inuhite guides
started doing what was called the Perry system, which was
this system of relays where a party that included like
one of the Americans and one of the Inuhite people,
and maybe like a couple of others, went out a
certain distance, built an igloo and set out a cache
(25:24):
of supplies and food, and they did so at like
certain intervals along the route that Perry had laid out
on his way to the North Pole. So this would
basically set the sort of stages of the push for
the pole, and so Perry didn't need to like spend
time building the houses. He didn't have to carry anything
with him, which was also really important because the more
(25:46):
weight you have on your sledge, the slower you go.
So he basically just marched several miles head, stopped for
the night, made camp at the cash of supplies and
the eggloo that was already there, and then moved ahead
and moved ahead. So they did so over a number
of weeks. They had to cross open water, and it
was extremely dangerous because they never really knew how thick
(26:07):
the ice was um when it was forming over these
areas of open water, and at one point Henson fell
in and it's death within just a few minutes because
the water is so cold, and it's very difficult to
get yourself out because your way down with these furs
and these kind of like heavy clothes. So the head
(26:27):
in wheat guide, who was named Utak, basically just reached
into the water and pulled Henson out with just his
bare hands and saved his life. And that happened a
couple of times. I think that happened to Perry once,
and it was not uncommon, but it was extremely scary
and dangerous when it did happen. I guess it's important
to remember that part of the I guess claim to
(26:47):
fame is that this whole thing is so dangerous all around,
and that it takes such physical ability and stamina to
even be part of a group that would do something
like this. Part of the ultimate conflict about who reached
the North Pole first was that Perry in fact had
(27:09):
a difficult time and wasn't doing well. Perry had actually
lost eight of his toes to frostbite on a previous expedition,
so ever since then he was not real fast on
his feet. I mean he would kind of shuffle a
little bit and hobble along. So at times he was
(27:29):
pulled on his sledge by the dogs while the guides
and Henson were kind of breaking the trail ahead of them.
So it was really dangerous. They had storms, obviously, it
was extremely cold. They you know, just kind of faced
a test of endurance. So when they got to what
they believed was the North Pole, it's kind of funny
that they went through so much hardship. It's hard to
(27:50):
fathom really over so many years, especially on this particular voyage.
It was just kind of like we just wanted to
accomplish what we came here to do. When Perry believed
he reached the North Pole, he said, it's just so
simple and commonplace. I can't bring myself to believe. It
just seems like any other day in the Arctic. But
(28:11):
they did get to the point where they believed they
needed to be, and then from that point on it
was like a race home. They had to go back
to the iglues that they had stayed in on the
way up, and by that point the food caches were
pretty much depleted, so they were in a race not
just against exhaustion and cold and everything, but they were
really running out of supplies. So part of the goal
(28:33):
was to live, to be able to enjoy the fruits
of your discovery. Absolutely. I mean, that's that's the key.
It's like I was speaking with a an adventurer and
mountaineer um for our podcast and he said, you know,
getting there is only like half of the struggle. In fact,
it's probably less than half the struggle, because getting back
is the harder part. Actually, before we before we get
(28:55):
to the way back, Henston is noted to be said
at some point that he was in the lead on
that ultimate trip. As we were pointing out that that
Perry was off and on a sled or and somewhat behind,
and that he'd overshot the mark by a couple of miles.
He quote went back then and could see footprints that
(29:16):
were his at the first spot. So it sounds like
he believed that he was the first man literally to
stand at the north pole. Yeah, he I believe, said
that in a newspaper interview many years after their expedition.
But yeah, I mean that essentially says like if being
first is the number one claim to fame here, that
(29:39):
we're all chasing. Henson is saying, I was the first
one there. And there is a photo of him with
the Inuit guides on this last stretch, and Perry is
not in it. No, Perry is taking the picture, which
is a little bit It's funny because I I noted
that too. I mean, there are no pictures at least
(30:00):
that I'm aware of, of Perry at the North Bowl,
but there are um a number of pictures that Perry
took with his Kodak camera of Henson and the four guides.
They're holding the flags of the expedition, the flags that
Perry brought with him to represent his various sponsors and
things like that. So then now they're running back and
(30:22):
it and it's even more difficult. Do they know yet
that another team that Frederick cooked team is saying no,
actually we got there first. They have no idea, um,
and in fact, they feel no pressure from anyone else.
I mean, they didn't see anybody else there, so right,
(30:42):
they figured to a team. Okay, no, they were figured
they were all alone, and uh, they had no idea
and so um, you know, they weren't really in a
huge hurry to like rush home and tell everybody. But
they they definitely like you know, kind of gathered up
all their equipment. They dropped off their innuite helpers at
(31:06):
their village, and they paid them with um various goods
like guns and ammunition and knives and needles and things
that are are rare in that part of the world.
And then they just steamed their way home. And their
first stop was in Newfoundland where the telegraph office was.
(31:27):
That was like the that was where they told the world.
But before they got there, they stopped in Eta, where
they dropped off the Inuit families, and there was a
hunter there that Perry had dropped off the year before,
an American hunter named Harry Whitney, who had spent the
whole winter there like hunting musk ox and polar bears.
(31:47):
And when Perry returned after having been on the North
Pole journey, Whitney said, well, there's this other guy here,
Frederick Cooke, who said he got to the North Pole
a year before you did. And he just left like
five days ago or a few days ago to go
to Europe to um the Shetland Islands where there was
(32:08):
a telegraph office, and he told the world that he
had gotten to the North Pole in April of but
he left all of his records with me, Perry Whitney,
and so Furry was like, well, I'm your only way
home and the only way you're going to get on
my ship is to leave all of Cook's records here.
(32:28):
So I'm, you know, summarizing the situation, but I think
that really is illuminating of Perry's sense of competitiveness and
his addiction to like being first, being the one who
earned the glory. And let me also add it perhaps
is a peek into his moral compass as well, that
(32:52):
what mattered more was being able to claim the victory
then actually have the victor jury In the words, he
understood at that point it might not be him, and
he was willing to do something underhanded to make sure
that other people didn't know that. He and Henson Um
(33:15):
and Donald McMillan, who was another person um in Perry's
expedition crew, spoke with the two in white men who
had been with Cook in their own language and so
there was no misinterpretation. And Um they asked him like
asked them, are you serious, Like did you actually get
(33:36):
to the north Pole? Like how how do you know
that you did that? And they said well, you know,
we went a pretty long ways, but um, we never
lost sight of land, and you cannot, you know, stay
withinside of land and still get to the North Pole
because it's so far away. So Henson, Perry, and McMillan
(33:57):
at that time were convinced that had not done it,
and so they really didn't They weren't worried about it.
They were like, well, you know, there's just no way.
There's plus, they all already knew Cook. Cook had been
on at least one of Perry's expeditions about twenty years ago,
and Henson and Perry were both like, this guy could
never make it. I mean he just as he's a
(34:19):
nice guy, he's charming, he's a good doctor, that's why
he was on the expedition to begin with. But he's
his wilderness skills are just really some far. So there's
just no way that he could have done it. So
they weren't really worried. And by the time they got
to Newfoundland to telegraph the fact that they had reached
the pole, they were quite confident that they were the
(34:39):
first ones at the poll because even though Cook had said,
you know, yeah, I got there a year before, they
were like, we have the eyewitness accounts from the guides
who were with you saying that it didn't happen. But
the world at large had already heard that Cook had
had been there, and so five days later, when Perry
(35:02):
telegraphed that he had been to the first at the poll,
people did not know what to think. And um it
quickly became like a huge battle between Perry's backers and
Cooks backers, and the media that supported them, and the
organizations that supported them and everything. And it became a
(35:22):
huge controversy that even as late as the eighties and
nineties was still being debated. Let's take a quick break here,
we'll be back in a moment. Sadly, it seems that,
as you alluded to earlier, Perry did what many white
(35:46):
men sadly did, which was to suppress all credit that
belonged to anyone else in his group. And he very much,
it seems, did that to Henson very much, made it
seem as though he it was only Perry and not
actually Henson. A sad and common historic tale which made
(36:09):
it difficult for Henson to be recognized for what he
did for decades. It's a really sad coda to their
triumph and to their relationship to Perry was so concerned
with making his name immortal as the first man to
have reached the North Pole. It really became his singular focus,
(36:31):
and he made sure that no one else that was
on the expedition could write a book or publish memoirs
or do a lecture tour, which was one of the
main ways that polar explorers made money was showing like
slides lantern slides of their photographs that they took while
they were there, and then doing a lecture tour about
(36:53):
um about their experiences. There was there was an incident
in which Henson said, I took a number of slides
there of lantern slides, and I, as directed, gave my
slides to Parry so he could choose the ones that
he wanted to use. But then he never paid me
for them and never gave them back to me, so
(37:16):
he then, you know, did not have the materials to
do a lecture tour, even though Henson did do one,
kind of against Perry's wishes, And when Perry found out,
he was quite angry and urged him to stop. And
I think that caused a big rift, not just from
(37:38):
Perry's point of view, but from Henson's Henson was like,
I need money more than you do. I have fewer
opportunities to make a living than you do. And I
was just as part, a big a part of this
mission as you were, even though I was not the leader.
And so I can't help but think that Henson felt
quite betrayed, having spent the better part of his life
(38:00):
helping Perry achieve his goals and then not being recognized
for that. Henson did publish a memoir in nineteen twelve.
That's right, Yes, he did publish a memoir in nineteen twelve,
after Perry had said, Okay, well enough time has passed
for me to reap the benefits, you can go ahead
and do yours. So he did. And it's actually a
(38:21):
really interesting book, you know. I feel like it's even
though it's not an autobiography as it's sometimes called, it's
really just a story of Henson and Perry getting to
the North Pole in nine nine. It does reveal their relationship,
I think pretty well. And even though Henson is extremely
(38:42):
loyal and I think doesn't want to bad mouth his
his boss, if you read between the lines a bit,
you can kind of see that Henson looks up to
Perry as as a father figure and is, like I said,
extremely loyal and will really do anything to help him
achieve periods goals, including at some level accepting something that sadly,
(39:09):
I mean really tragically was commonly done. In fact, you know,
in this in this podcast, I do know to repeatedly
how often I try to look at a story and
see a black person, a Hispanic person, a woman who
was involved in a discovery or creation that is has
(39:33):
tried to be removed from or sanitized from the credit
that has just been suppressed. And that seems to have
really been the case here. And it was really only
in later years that Henson was recognized for the work
that he did. It seems in many accounts every bit
(39:54):
at least as important, if not more in some ways
than what Perry did. But ironic Lee he wins an award,
that's the Perry award that he is, you know, a
late addition to various societies and organizations that he is
the first black man to be a part of or
recognized in that way, But well after the time that
(40:18):
it would have been expected he would be. I think
Henson was dismissed and erased from the white centered narrative
of their expedition and later on, and that was a
lot of Perry's doing. And also the backers of his
expedition wanted to avoid the questions of race, and they
(40:42):
called it the racial issue, and so like there was
a lot of there was a lot of questioning from
Perry's backers that was which was a group of philanthropists
called the Perry Arctic Club. Why Perry chose Henson and
not one of the white members of his expedi Asian
to go to the North Pole with him to go
(41:03):
that last leg to the actual North Pole. And Pierry said, well,
it's because he was the best qualified for the job.
I mean, he could do everything that I needed him
to do. And the white members of the crew backed
that up. They were like, we are not as good
as you know, We're not as good as Henson, So
it made sense for him to go. But because he
(41:25):
was African American, the philanthropists that we're backing Perry were like, well,
this is bad optics. I mean, this is not a
good look to have, you know, a black man at
the pole standing right next to you, you know, just
to be blunt about it, and I think they had
a role in erasing Henson from the narrative. However, I
(41:46):
will say that one thing I discovered, and I think
that is the general feeling, is that Henson has been
dismissed from this narrative. He was forgotten, and that is
true among you know, the dominant narrative. However, I realized
that Henson was never forgotten by the African American community,
especially in New York UM where he lived. He was
(42:09):
honored by the leading African American civic groups by you know,
religious leaders who were members of of these sort of organizations.
He was given a gold watch and um, these kinds
of tokens of their appreciation. He was talked about in
(42:31):
UM African American media like Essence magazine and the Amsterdam News.
And Henson was quite active in the community as well. Um,
he was really well known. He worked after the North
Pole expedition. He worked as a clerk in the U.
S Customs Office. So he lived in New York. He
lived in Harlem, he worked downtown in Lower Manhattan, and
(42:53):
by all accounts, he was a charming, charismatic, very friendly,
beloved person and someone who people really respected and really
thought was an incredible person and role model. And the
thing that kind of shows this clearly to me is
that when Perry died in he was given practically like
(43:18):
a state funeral. I mean it was like the Vice
President at the time was one of the Paul bearers.
I mean, every Supreme Court judges, all kinds of you know,
leading Washingtonians, because Perry lived in Washington, turned out for
the funeral. There was a big like procession and everything,
and he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery with a
gigantic headstone that had a big globe on top saying
(43:42):
like I got to the top of the world. Pretty much.
This was covered in all the papers. There were obituaries
and every paper there was, you know, first day, second day,
third day stories all about it. And in contrast to that,
when Henson died, he died in in New York. He
was eighty eight years old old, and he really barely
(44:04):
got to mention in the New York Times, his hometown paper,
or any other paper. However, the Amsterdam News, which was
an African American newspaper, had an account of the funeral,
which was at the Abbyssinian Baptist Church, which is like
the main Church in Harlem, and Adam Clayton pell Jr.
Who was a very prominent minister, did the service and
(44:28):
over a thousand people attended, and there was a huge
write up in this paper. And um, one of the
paul bearers was Peter Frikin, who was a Danish polar
explorer and one of Henson's closest exploration friends. And I
believe McMillan was there as well. Um, they were quite
close as well, because at that point he was a
(44:49):
member or admitted to the Explorers Club in New York
and Congress had awarded him the Perry Polar Expedition Medal.
He was honored and recognized, and you know, very late,
but but acknowledged in that way. And those people, we're
part of his community as well. Yes, yeah, and it's
(45:11):
it's hard for me to accept in a way, but
he was eventually honored. Um. The reason I say it's
hard for me to accept because I'm I'm looking at
the Explorers Club, which grew out of the Peri Arctic Club,
the very people who sent him up to the Arctic region,
and it didn't accept Henson as a member until nine
(45:36):
and he was their first African American member. That was
twenty years after he had been to the North Pole
with Perry. Reflection of the continued racial prejudice, right, Um,
but you know, just based on his own accomplishments and
his own his own merit, I mean, there should have
been no question. And similarly, as you're pointing out, though
(45:56):
he was recognized in the African American community for the
incredible accomplishments that he did, and in his as you said, burial,
he it was I think when he and his wife
were moved to Arlington National Cemetery where Perry is and
(46:19):
commemorated in that way that I mean, it's incredible that
the racial prejudice continued to in a way, you know,
long beyond his death, really deny Henson the kind of
recognition that he had deserved. Yeah, it was Henson's wish
that he would be buried next to Perry, and when
(46:42):
he died, I mean they really, the Henson's did not
have a lot of money and so when he passed away, Um,
he was buried in the same plot as his wife's
mother in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx and just didn't
have enough money to you know, get anything larger or
more prominent or whatever, although wood Lawn Cemetery was apparently
(47:02):
very happy to have him there, and we're kind of
upset that he got moved in the eighties, But it
was Henson's wish to be buried next to Perry, and
that eventually happened through the efforts of s Allen counter Um,
the Harvard neurologist and polar explorer who you know, wrote
to the Reggae Administration UM over several years to try
to get Henson the recognition that he deserved from the
(47:25):
government um in this way, and eventually that was successful,
and he is now there next to Perry. Amazing and
so curious, right that he would want to be next
to Perry after really what sounds like a conflicted ending
for their relationship. I think, yeah, it does, But I
also think it is kind of revealing of Henson's sense
(47:48):
of loyalty as well. I mean, when you kind of
take a step back, it's true that Henson had Perry
to thank for his life of adventure, because he was
hired by Perry and was his assistant for all of
those years, and perhaps he felt thankful for that, and
perhaps he appropriately wanted to go down in history ultimately
(48:10):
right as his partner. That's possible. Yeah, I mean that
wouldn't be out of out of the question, and I
think it is really fitting that he's there now. That
wraps things up for this episode. Thank you to my
guest cat Long. If you want to know more information
(48:33):
on Matthew Henson, listen to her podcast History Versus Season
two The Quest for the North Pole. If you'd like
to know more about the concepts and Personalogy, you can
check out my book The Power of Different The Link
Between Disorder and Genius For psychological advice me take a
listen to my podcast How Can I Help? And follow
(48:55):
me on Twitter at Dr Gail Saltz until next time.
Personalogy is a production of I Heart Radio. The executive
producers are doctor Gayl Saltz and Tyler Clang. The associate
producer is Lowell Berlante. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
Personology is a production of I Heart Radio. Matthew Henson
was an American explorer and is best known for being
the first person to have reached the geographic North Pole.
He was a leader in seven expeditions to the Arctic.
(00:20):
My guest today is Cat Long, science editor at Mental
Flaws and host of the podcast The Quest for the
North Pole. Today we're going to talk about Matthew Henson,
who was born in August of eighteen sixty six in
Maryland to actually free black Americans before the Civil War,
(00:44):
which is already interesting and unusual in and of itself.
So maybe we could talk a little bit about what
we do know of his early family life. There are
actually some conflicting accounts, believe it or not. Henson wrote
a book about their achievement of reaching the North Pole
after they did that in nineteen o nine, and he
had a very brief discussion of his young life. He,
(01:07):
like you said, was born right after the Civil War
in Maryland and Charles County, Maryland, which during the Civil
War was a slave area. Maryland was a border state,
part of the state was free, part of the state
still held slaves. So he was born into a really
tumultuous time period. It's hard to say exactly how that
shaped him, but I think it must have, especially that
(01:29):
his parents were free. They were never enslaved people, and
I believe they were farmers or worked in kind of
a rural economy. But when he was really young, either
he ran away from home because he had a cruel stepmother,
or he and his family moved to Washington, d c.
(01:50):
And there he went to school for a period of time.
Important also to note that his mother died when he
was seven. I mean that is a significant and traumatic
loss for anyone, and even in those days when one
was more likely to die young, still a big loss,
and left the father to ultimately remarry and have a
(02:13):
stepmother to whom it seems he was not as close
or as comfortable with. He did have an older sister
and two younger sisters. And also important is to know
that while it was unusual and as you said, a
tumultuous time to be free and black and living in Maryland,
(02:35):
they were subjected to attacks by the Clue Klux Klan
and other white supremacist groups who were intent on terrorizing
people who were formerly free, and that must have also
been difficult and traumatic. That's a scene that we see
in a biography that was written with Matthew Henson by
(02:56):
Bradley Robinson UM in the sixties forties. There was one
in the sixties two that took heavily from that, but
I think it was maybe in the forties or fifties,
and that was not uncommon in Maryland. From what I understand,
it seems to me likely that he would want to
have gotten away from that kind of persecution, and so
(03:16):
he eventually made his way to Washington, D C. He
did say in his nineteen o nine twelve Sorry book
after he went to the North Pole that he attended
the m Street School, which was a really well known,
really respected school for African American students, and it was
run by a number of really progressive African American educators UM,
(03:41):
which is kind of exciting. It was a really good
thing for him to have gone to that school. Was
that school in Washington, d C. Or in Georgetown? At
the time, Georgetown was a separate part from Washington, D C.
The two cities were right next to each other, and
they were a bit separated, but they did eventually join together.
So I think it is in Washington d c though,
(04:02):
and do we know anything about the kind of student
that he was, I mean, realizing that he was only
able to stay in school limited time, but in this school.
I haven't been able to find any information about it.
I have looked into it, because he does speak at
times in his later writing about poetry, about Dickens, about
(04:22):
books that he really liked to read, which, again it's
hard to say for sure, but maybe he picked up
from one of these progressive educators at the m Street
School a love of reading or literature, or just an
interest in the world beyond his own life. So it's
hard to say what kind of student he was, but
he was at least very curious and at least very adventurous,
(04:43):
because he did then join the crew of a ship
called the Katie Hines. He made his way to Baltimore
and signed up as a cabin boy on this ship
to go back for one second, because so he's in school,
but his father dies and he has to actually go
live with an uncle. And that's important just because at
a young age he's cut loose, right. He doesn't have
(05:06):
parents anymore really officially, and the uncle did pay for
a few years of his education, but he also died,
so in a sense, I just think it's important to
understand that he had this childhood of frightening things going
on in terms of attacks on the family. Then he
loses his mother, then he loses his father, Then he
(05:26):
lives with his uncle, who also dies, and so he
doesn't have continued parental let's say, guidance or support. He's
forced at a pretty early age to leave education and
to strike out on his own. I think that is
part of his character. He was always a very kind
of going against the grain person. I mean, being a
(05:48):
polar explorer. To begin with this like pretty unusual, but
you know, when you think of like, what are these
early roots of independence to the level that you are
intent on being in some very difficult environment that no
one has ever gone to before. He came from a
difficult environment and at a pretty early age was jettisoned
(06:09):
into the world, and you could say forced to make
way on his own, to be an explorer of the
world on his own. But you could also say there
clearly was something about it that he easily adapted to
and even embraced that, as you said, went with his character,
went with his temperament, right, And one thing that kind
of struck me is that, as you mentioned, he did
(06:30):
not have a very stable family life when he was younger.
He lost his parents, he moved around, another uncle passed
away who was taking care of him, but he did
find this father figure. I think he was kind of
looking for father figures when he signed up on the
crew of the Katie Hinds with Captain child He describes
(06:51):
Captain Childs as someone who cared for him, who helped
teach him about the world, and really became like this
person and who he looked up to. So he was
on this ship and with Captain Childs four or five years.
This is during his teen years, correct, right. I believe
Captain Childs passed away in eighteen seventy eight, and that
(07:13):
would have made Matthew Henson about eighteen ish. That must
have been a huge blow to him because he had
spent his really formative years with him going where he
went on a ship, which is a very enclosed atmosphere
to begin with, and it really did kind of throw
him for a loop because after that he traveled around
(07:35):
a little bit. He wasn't really sure what he wanted
to do. He started working, I think for a ceiling
enterprise at Newfoundland. He kind of moved around, so he
was a little at loose ends. Although before we leave
his time on the boat, Captain Childs taught him to
read and write. I mean he had only had a
limited amount of education in school. Captain Childs also encouraged
(07:59):
him or worked with him on reading and writing, and
they went to ports all over the world, which, again
in terms of what drives someone to become an explorer, he,
as you said, in these formative years, he went to China, Japan,
and Africa and the Russian Arctic seas. This is a
form of exploring or seeing the world at a very
(08:22):
young and formative age with somebody who does take on
a father figure sort of role, and that seems likely
to be formative, also formative. To go back one more second,
it's reported that he or he reported, I think, at
age ten, going to a ceremony that honored Abraham Lincoln,
(08:43):
who was known at that point to have worked on
preserving the Union during the Civil War and had issued
the proclamation that freed slaves in the occupied Confederate States,
and he heard Frederick Douglas, an escaped slave and renowned
orator of the time. Time and a leading community member
for the black community, and that seems to have made
(09:05):
a real impression. There's no doubt that his time with
the ship must have broadened his horizons as well as
hearing these speakers. I've always kind of wondered, like how
much Captain Child's taught him to read and write if
he had been at school. I kind of have wondered
about that. There's a little bit of disagreement in the
(09:26):
historical sources, but there's no doubt that Henson learned from
Captain Childs, and he really became this person that guided
his life in a way that a parent would have.
And I think it was really formative for him during
his teenage years when he really didn't have any roots
anywhere else. He kind of was a little bit of
a rolling stone. I guess you could say, right right,
(09:48):
It's almost like learning a trade, which in those days
the idea of apprenticeship, and that is how you learned
to have the vocation that Captain Childs showed him, how
he sailed the world. Do we know anything more about
the ways in which you may have been affected by
hearing Frederick Douglas speak. To be honest with you, I'm
(10:09):
actually not familiar, just because I try to stick with
what I can verify from Henson's own writings, and there
aren't that many of them. And I feel that some
of his later biographers embellished a lot of the details
of his life. And that may have been because they
(10:30):
wanted to portray Henson as a unique and heroic figure,
which he was anyway, but they may have, you know,
larded it a bit. So it's hard for me to say,
we don't know for sure about that because he didn't
make reference to that. It's kind of the hard thing
we have about Henson's life, I feel is that he
didn't leave a lot of writing behind. I mean, he
only did write one book. One of the reasons he
(10:52):
wrote only one book is because, jumping ahead a little bit,
Robert Perry after their North Pole expedition prohibited members of
the expedition from writing books. Perry wanted to be the
only one who had the book deal and sort of
was the only one who was permitted to do a
lecture tour and kind of publicized the things. So we
(11:13):
don't have a lot of personal memoirs from Henson, although
I wish we did, because he had a fascinating life,
so shades of the suppression to come before we get there.
He is then working at a Washington, d C. Clothing
store in November eight when he meets Commander Robert Perry.
(11:34):
Can you tell us a little bit about that meeting
and how it would come to be that Perry would say, okay,
work with me. Yeah. I think this is one of
the most serendipitous meetings in the history of exploration because
it was totally unexpected. Because Henson, after he left the
Katie Hines and Captain Childs had passed away, he moved
(11:57):
in with his sister in Washington, d C. And started
working at this hat shop um or a furrier sort of.
The shop did a number of things, was kind of
a haberdasher, and he was a clerk there. And so
one day Robert Peary walked in and one story says
he was looking for a son helmet because he was
(12:18):
on his way to Nicaragua to scout for a canal,
which eventually became the Panama Canal. But at the time
the Navy was considering sites in Nicaragua, so Parry was
on his way because he was a civil engineer in
the Navy to do some scouting and he needed an
assistant of Valet. So the other clerk at bh Stein Medicine,
(12:38):
Son said, well, I have my coworker here, Matthew Henson.
He's been all around the world. He's a very capable man.
Why don't you talk to him? And so they seem
to have really hit it off, which is incredible. And
Henson must have impressed Perry with his resourcefulness, his practical
skills and things like carpentry, sailing, seamanship, things like that.
(13:00):
And I feel that they must have had kind of
a connection over being curious about the world, about being
ambitious and curious, and that combination really kind of colored
their relationship from then on. So Henson and Perry went
to Nicaragua. They you know, it was their only warm
weather expedition together. And when they got back, Perry again
(13:24):
was working for the navy, and Henson kind of did
a couple of odd jobs, but then Perry eventually got
him a job at the Naval Yard of Philadelphia. From
there they embarked on a number of polar expeditions. Because
Perry was pretty obsessed with making his mark in the world.
I mean, really, that was the driving thing in his life.
(13:46):
And he wanted fame. He wanted his name out there,
and polar exploration or some sort of feat in the
Arctic was his ticket to that um in his mind.
So by the time that Henson and Perry met, Arry
had already been in Greenland once and he did an expedition.
There was kind of a finding mission. He did a
little bit of exploring, but was kind of getting his
(14:08):
bearings and figuring out, like, Okay, now that I know
this about Greenland, what do I really want to do
here that's going to get me the fame that I crave.
So Henson, having proven his worth on his Nicaragua expedition,
went with Perry to Greenland, to the Arctic, to other
parts of the Arctic for the next twenty years on
(14:29):
seven expeditions. Perry had eight expeditions to the Arctic and
Henson was on the latter seven of them. They spent
eighteen years on expeditions together. Yeah, and in the most
brutal conditions you can imagine two and oftentimes it was
just that two of them. So it was a very
(14:50):
close working relationship. But at the same time, Perry was
quite driven again by his own sense of fame and accomplishment,
and I think that prevented him from being completely warm
and completely a friend to Henson. So it remains sort
of you work for me as the relationship, and I
(15:11):
am the leader director of this, and sometimes it was
the two of them. Sometimes he recruited people familiar with
the area. And what is amazing is that Henson really
learned the language and learned the ways, it sounds like
more so than Perry. Absolutely. Yeah, let's take a quick
(15:35):
break here. We'll be back in a moment. Perry often
hired the same Inuit people. He visited a particular village
frequently on subsequent expeditions and tended to hire the same
people since they knew each other they'd worked together, but
he never really became involved with them. He always looked
(15:56):
at them as servants, helpers, employees. They had specific and
very important jobs. They drove dogs, LEDs, which is extremely complicated,
and so Perry really relied on them, But he also
thought of himself as sort of they're kindly father slash
employer slash leader. Henson, on the other hand, really took
(16:18):
to their culture. It's exciting to kind of learn how
he was instructed by a lot of the indigenous hunters
and dog drivers in this particular village. They kind of
took Henson under their wing a little bit because I
think he showed that he was genuinely interested. His curiosity
(16:39):
went beyond place and mission. It went to the people
and the culture and a willingness to learn and absorb.
And he was the only one who learned how to
drive the dogs LEDs in the group that was not
intuit and how to train the dog teams in that way,
that really speaks to a curiosity dry of an empathy
(17:00):
in the direction of other people and other cultures, sort
of like an anthropologist in a way. He was definitely
interested in them and on a very genuine person to
person level, which is extremely uncommon between explorers who, for
lack of a better term, kind of parachute in to
do their mission and then leave. So for that reason,
(17:22):
Henson is unique and I think that makes him a
really interesting figure. And not only did he show that
he was genuinely interested in the folks there, but they
looked at him as a unique person. They gave him
a name, which is sort of their way of bringing
the person into their culture, into their lives, and in
(17:44):
English it means the kind one. They called him Matthew
the kind one, and they gave Perry a nickname two.
But it was basically like Perry the man, Perry the
leader kind of person, wasn't really wasn't really like indicative
of his his friendliness. But the other thing is like,
it takes a really long time to learn how to
drive dogs. Well, I mean, it is really hard, and
(18:06):
the dogs have their own minds. They just decide where
they want to go, and you have to just kind
of go with them and try to steer them in
the right way. And they're quite wild and they kind
of have to work out their own hierarchy among themselves.
And to be able to do this well as someone
who didn't grow up obviously having the skill or being
taught the skill over many years when he was younger,
(18:28):
is really an amazing feat. And so in addition to
the dog driving, like you said, he learned how to
speak Inuktitut, which is the native language in that area.
By doing so, I think ingratiated him even further into
the community, and it showed the new wheat there that
he was serious, he was someone who could be trusted,
(18:49):
someone who respected them, and of course it then gave
the native people they're more confidence in helping Perry. I mean,
Henson was really a liaise on between the Hinu wheat
and the white people on the expedition, and he performed
a really important role in that way. To speak for
a moment about his personal life before this, he did marry.
(19:13):
He married Eva flint In, but it sounds like his
being off and exploring basically dissolved the marriage because they
divorced In he later married. He later married Lucy Ross
in nineteen oh seven. But somewhere in here he's gone
for much of the time on these Arctic explorations. He
(19:35):
is not having children with either wife, and he takes
a Innuit wife or at least a partner, and does
have a child. He apparently had a relationship with the
new Wheat woman over a number of expeditions, so it
wasn't just, you know, a one and done scenario, for
lack of a better word. He really cared for her,
(19:58):
and I believe when I was speaking with the director
of the Perry McMillan Arctic Museum, she said, at some
point this woman died and Henson was just devastated. I
don't know much about her, but we do know more
about his son that he had with this woman. Did
she die when he was still with her? I thought
(20:19):
that basically when he left the region, that was it
and he never saw her again or the sun. But
I was unaware if she died while he was still there.
That was my inference, because he didn't go back to
the Arctic after they achieved what they went to achieve
in reaching the North Pole. Neither Perry nor Henson ever
(20:39):
returned to Greenland or that part of the Arctic. So
my impression was that she must have died while he
was there or during the period of years where he
was going there regularly. Both he and Robert Perry also
had an involvement with a woman. Both of them had sons.
Actually Perry had two sons, but one passed a way
(21:00):
I think when he was young. So Perry's son was
named Kelly and Henson's son was named a Knockock. And
they grew up in their community, but they looked a
little different from some of the other people in their community,
and so they wanted to know more about their biological fathers.
The people in the community were quite willing to share
(21:23):
stories about them. I mean it was no secret, but
they had never met any of their family from the
United States before, and so that became something that the
two sons really really wanted to do, or they really
really wanted to learn more about their families and their
fathers as well. So unfortunately, the two sons did not
(21:43):
meet their fathers when they were alive, but they did
go to the United States eventually thanks to the efforts
of Harvard neurologists named s Ellen Counter, who was a
really interesting polar explorer and figure, and he brought the
two wings of the Perry and Henson families together in
(22:04):
the nineteen eighties. And it was a really amazing story.
But it brings up a lot of questions about, you know,
what these kids were thinking in their lives, you know,
knowing that they had fathers but they were so far
away and that they may never meet them. But it
sounds like in some ways they were remembered by the people,
at least certainly Henson was as heroic and kind. Let's
(22:27):
talk about the expedition. I mean, there were many expeditions.
As you said, there were seven expeditions, but ultimately the
nineteen nineteen o nine expedition, which was Perry's eighth attempt
to reach the North Pole, and it was a large expedition.
This is the one, right, This is the one where
ultimately they did reach the North Pole. They got close
(22:47):
to the North Pole. Yeah, they thought they reached the
North Pole. They thought they did, right. That is an
important distinction, I guess. Yeah. In the expedition was the
Cherry on the Sun Day. Because Perry and Henson had
spent two decades getting to this point. I mean every
time they went to the Arctic, they learned something new,
they scouted new roots, they acquired the services of certain people,
(23:12):
and they set the groundwork for it each time. So
in nineteen o eight they had a pretty clear idea
of what they wanted to do. So they left New York.
They traveled north. They stopped off in Newfoundland to get
some supplies and um they eventually made their way to
this particular village called Eta in Greenland, where they picked
(23:32):
up their innuitae helpers. They had like a whole community
with them. They had like twenty two Innuite men, seventeen
Innuit women, ten children, two hundred forty six dogs, tons
of whale meat, tons of walrus meats. It sounds like
moving a village. It almost was, because Perry hired the
men to drive the dogs and scout the roots and
(23:55):
be the guides. But he also hired the men's wives too,
soak clothes to tan hides of the animals that they caught.
The men and the women seemed to have specific and
important roles and so each kind of fulfilled that role
in Perry's mission. And of course they wouldn't leave their
children behind, so of course the kids came along too,
So it really was like moving a whole community from
(24:19):
their home village to this totally barren seacoast. None of them,
I think, were too familiar with it, just because they
had no real reason to go there from their own village,
so it really was kind of this slightly unfamiliar territory.
But they did have enough animals to hunt, they had
plenty of food, and most of them stayed with the
(24:39):
ship when they eventually set up their base camp at
I believe Cape Sheridan, which is one of the northernmost
points in Canada, meaning like the nearest land to the
North Pole, which is still over four miles away, So
they set at their base camp there. They stayed the
winter and in the spring, Perry and a number of
(25:00):
his white crew members and Henson and the Inuhite guides
started doing what was called the Perry system, which was
this system of relays where a party that included like
one of the Americans and one of the Inuhite people,
and maybe like a couple of others, went out a
certain distance, built an igloo and set out a cache
(25:24):
of supplies and food, and they did so at like
certain intervals along the route that Perry had laid out
on his way to the North Pole. So this would
basically set the sort of stages of the push for
the pole, and so Perry didn't need to like spend
time building the houses. He didn't have to carry anything
with him, which was also really important because the more
(25:46):
weight you have on your sledge, the slower you go.
So he basically just marched several miles head, stopped for
the night, made camp at the cash of supplies and
the eggloo that was already there, and then moved ahead
and moved ahead. So they did so over a number
of weeks. They had to cross open water, and it
was extremely dangerous because they never really knew how thick
(26:07):
the ice was um when it was forming over these
areas of open water, and at one point Henson fell
in and it's death within just a few minutes because
the water is so cold, and it's very difficult to
get yourself out because your way down with these furs
and these kind of like heavy clothes. So the head
(26:27):
in wheat guide, who was named Utak, basically just reached
into the water and pulled Henson out with just his
bare hands and saved his life. And that happened a
couple of times. I think that happened to Perry once,
and it was not uncommon, but it was extremely scary
and dangerous when it did happen. I guess it's important
to remember that part of the I guess claim to
(26:47):
fame is that this whole thing is so dangerous all around,
and that it takes such physical ability and stamina to
even be part of a group that would do something
like this. Part of the ultimate conflict about who reached
the North Pole first was that Perry in fact had
(27:09):
a difficult time and wasn't doing well. Perry had actually
lost eight of his toes to frostbite on a previous expedition,
so ever since then he was not real fast on
his feet. I mean he would kind of shuffle a
little bit and hobble along. So at times he was
(27:29):
pulled on his sledge by the dogs while the guides
and Henson were kind of breaking the trail ahead of them.
So it was really dangerous. They had storms, obviously, it
was extremely cold. They you know, just kind of faced
a test of endurance. So when they got to what
they believed was the North Pole, it's kind of funny
that they went through so much hardship. It's hard to
(27:50):
fathom really over so many years, especially on this particular voyage.
It was just kind of like we just wanted to
accomplish what we came here to do. When Perry believed
he reached the North Pole, he said, it's just so
simple and commonplace. I can't bring myself to believe. It
just seems like any other day in the Arctic. But
(28:11):
they did get to the point where they believed they
needed to be, and then from that point on it
was like a race home. They had to go back
to the iglues that they had stayed in on the
way up, and by that point the food caches were
pretty much depleted, so they were in a race not
just against exhaustion and cold and everything, but they were
really running out of supplies. So part of the goal
(28:33):
was to live, to be able to enjoy the fruits
of your discovery. Absolutely. I mean, that's that's the key.
It's like I was speaking with a an adventurer and
mountaineer um for our podcast and he said, you know,
getting there is only like half of the struggle. In fact,
it's probably less than half the struggle, because getting back
is the harder part. Actually, before we before we get
(28:55):
to the way back, Henston is noted to be said
at some point that he was in the lead on
that ultimate trip. As we were pointing out that that
Perry was off and on a sled or and somewhat behind,
and that he'd overshot the mark by a couple of miles.
He quote went back then and could see footprints that
(29:16):
were his at the first spot. So it sounds like
he believed that he was the first man literally to
stand at the north pole. Yeah, he I believe, said
that in a newspaper interview many years after their expedition.
But yeah, I mean that essentially says like if being
first is the number one claim to fame here, that
(29:39):
we're all chasing. Henson is saying, I was the first
one there. And there is a photo of him with
the Inuit guides on this last stretch, and Perry is
not in it. No, Perry is taking the picture, which
is a little bit It's funny because I I noted
that too. I mean, there are no pictures at least
(30:00):
that I'm aware of, of Perry at the North Bowl,
but there are um a number of pictures that Perry
took with his Kodak camera of Henson and the four guides.
They're holding the flags of the expedition, the flags that
Perry brought with him to represent his various sponsors and
things like that. So then now they're running back and
(30:22):
it and it's even more difficult. Do they know yet
that another team that Frederick cooked team is saying no,
actually we got there first. They have no idea, um,
and in fact, they feel no pressure from anyone else.
I mean, they didn't see anybody else there, so right,
(30:42):
they figured to a team. Okay, no, they were figured
they were all alone, and uh, they had no idea
and so um, you know, they weren't really in a
huge hurry to like rush home and tell everybody. But
they they definitely like you know, kind of gathered up
all their equipment. They dropped off their innuite helpers at
(31:06):
their village, and they paid them with um various goods
like guns and ammunition and knives and needles and things
that are are rare in that part of the world.
And then they just steamed their way home. And their
first stop was in Newfoundland where the telegraph office was.
(31:27):
That was like the that was where they told the world.
But before they got there, they stopped in Eta, where
they dropped off the Inuit families, and there was a
hunter there that Perry had dropped off the year before,
an American hunter named Harry Whitney, who had spent the
whole winter there like hunting musk ox and polar bears.
(31:47):
And when Perry returned after having been on the North
Pole journey, Whitney said, well, there's this other guy here,
Frederick Cooke, who said he got to the North Pole
a year before you did. And he just left like
five days ago or a few days ago to go
to Europe to um the Shetland Islands where there was
(32:08):
a telegraph office, and he told the world that he
had gotten to the North Pole in April of but
he left all of his records with me, Perry Whitney,
and so Furry was like, well, I'm your only way
home and the only way you're going to get on
my ship is to leave all of Cook's records here.
(32:28):
So I'm, you know, summarizing the situation, but I think
that really is illuminating of Perry's sense of competitiveness and
his addiction to like being first, being the one who
earned the glory. And let me also add it perhaps
is a peek into his moral compass as well, that
(32:52):
what mattered more was being able to claim the victory
then actually have the victor jury In the words, he
understood at that point it might not be him, and
he was willing to do something underhanded to make sure
that other people didn't know that. He and Henson Um
(33:15):
and Donald McMillan, who was another person um in Perry's
expedition crew, spoke with the two in white men who
had been with Cook in their own language and so
there was no misinterpretation. And Um they asked him like
asked them, are you serious, Like did you actually get
(33:36):
to the north Pole? Like how how do you know
that you did that? And they said well, you know,
we went a pretty long ways, but um, we never
lost sight of land, and you cannot, you know, stay
withinside of land and still get to the North Pole
because it's so far away. So Henson, Perry, and McMillan
(33:57):
at that time were convinced that had not done it,
and so they really didn't They weren't worried about it.
They were like, well, you know, there's just no way.
There's plus, they all already knew Cook. Cook had been
on at least one of Perry's expeditions about twenty years ago,
and Henson and Perry were both like, this guy could
never make it. I mean he just as he's a
(34:19):
nice guy, he's charming, he's a good doctor, that's why
he was on the expedition to begin with. But he's
his wilderness skills are just really some far. So there's
just no way that he could have done it. So
they weren't really worried. And by the time they got
to Newfoundland to telegraph the fact that they had reached
the pole, they were quite confident that they were the
(34:39):
first ones at the poll because even though Cook had said,
you know, yeah, I got there a year before, they
were like, we have the eyewitness accounts from the guides
who were with you saying that it didn't happen. But
the world at large had already heard that Cook had
had been there, and so five days later, when Perry
(35:02):
telegraphed that he had been to the first at the poll,
people did not know what to think. And um it
quickly became like a huge battle between Perry's backers and
Cooks backers, and the media that supported them, and the
organizations that supported them and everything. And it became a
(35:22):
huge controversy that even as late as the eighties and
nineties was still being debated. Let's take a quick break here,
we'll be back in a moment. Sadly, it seems that,
as you alluded to earlier, Perry did what many white
(35:46):
men sadly did, which was to suppress all credit that
belonged to anyone else in his group. And he very much,
it seems, did that to Henson very much, made it
seem as though he it was only Perry and not
actually Henson. A sad and common historic tale which made
(36:09):
it difficult for Henson to be recognized for what he
did for decades. It's a really sad coda to their
triumph and to their relationship to Perry was so concerned
with making his name immortal as the first man to
have reached the North Pole. It really became his singular focus,
(36:31):
and he made sure that no one else that was
on the expedition could write a book or publish memoirs
or do a lecture tour, which was one of the
main ways that polar explorers made money was showing like
slides lantern slides of their photographs that they took while
they were there, and then doing a lecture tour about
(36:53):
um about their experiences. There was there was an incident
in which Henson said, I took a number of slides
there of lantern slides, and I, as directed, gave my
slides to Parry so he could choose the ones that
he wanted to use. But then he never paid me
for them and never gave them back to me, so
(37:16):
he then, you know, did not have the materials to
do a lecture tour, even though Henson did do one,
kind of against Perry's wishes, And when Perry found out,
he was quite angry and urged him to stop. And
I think that caused a big rift, not just from
(37:38):
Perry's point of view, but from Henson's Henson was like,
I need money more than you do. I have fewer
opportunities to make a living than you do. And I
was just as part, a big a part of this
mission as you were, even though I was not the leader.
And so I can't help but think that Henson felt
quite betrayed, having spent the better part of his life
(38:00):
helping Perry achieve his goals and then not being recognized
for that. Henson did publish a memoir in nineteen twelve.
That's right, Yes, he did publish a memoir in nineteen twelve,
after Perry had said, Okay, well enough time has passed
for me to reap the benefits, you can go ahead
and do yours. So he did. And it's actually a
(38:21):
really interesting book, you know. I feel like it's even
though it's not an autobiography as it's sometimes called, it's
really just a story of Henson and Perry getting to
the North Pole in nine nine. It does reveal their relationship,
I think pretty well. And even though Henson is extremely
(38:42):
loyal and I think doesn't want to bad mouth his
his boss, if you read between the lines a bit,
you can kind of see that Henson looks up to
Perry as as a father figure and is, like I said,
extremely loyal and will really do anything to help him
achieve periods goals, including at some level accepting something that sadly,
(39:09):
I mean really tragically was commonly done. In fact, you know,
in this in this podcast, I do know to repeatedly
how often I try to look at a story and
see a black person, a Hispanic person, a woman who
was involved in a discovery or creation that is has
(39:33):
tried to be removed from or sanitized from the credit
that has just been suppressed. And that seems to have
really been the case here. And it was really only
in later years that Henson was recognized for the work
that he did. It seems in many accounts every bit
(39:54):
at least as important, if not more in some ways
than what Perry did. But ironic Lee he wins an award,
that's the Perry award that he is, you know, a
late addition to various societies and organizations that he is
the first black man to be a part of or
recognized in that way, But well after the time that
(40:18):
it would have been expected he would be. I think
Henson was dismissed and erased from the white centered narrative
of their expedition and later on, and that was a
lot of Perry's doing. And also the backers of his
expedition wanted to avoid the questions of race, and they
(40:42):
called it the racial issue, and so like there was
a lot of there was a lot of questioning from
Perry's backers that was which was a group of philanthropists
called the Perry Arctic Club. Why Perry chose Henson and
not one of the white members of his expedi Asian
to go to the North Pole with him to go
(41:03):
that last leg to the actual North Pole. And Pierry said, well,
it's because he was the best qualified for the job.
I mean, he could do everything that I needed him
to do. And the white members of the crew backed
that up. They were like, we are not as good
as you know, We're not as good as Henson, So
it made sense for him to go. But because he
(41:25):
was African American, the philanthropists that we're backing Perry were like, well,
this is bad optics. I mean, this is not a
good look to have, you know, a black man at
the pole standing right next to you, you know, just
to be blunt about it, and I think they had
a role in erasing Henson from the narrative. However, I
(41:46):
will say that one thing I discovered, and I think
that is the general feeling, is that Henson has been
dismissed from this narrative. He was forgotten, and that is
true among you know, the dominant narrative. However, I realized
that Henson was never forgotten by the African American community,
especially in New York UM where he lived. He was
(42:09):
honored by the leading African American civic groups by you know,
religious leaders who were members of of these sort of organizations.
He was given a gold watch and um, these kinds
of tokens of their appreciation. He was talked about in
(42:31):
UM African American media like Essence magazine and the Amsterdam News.
And Henson was quite active in the community as well. Um,
he was really well known. He worked after the North
Pole expedition. He worked as a clerk in the U.
S Customs Office. So he lived in New York. He
lived in Harlem, he worked downtown in Lower Manhattan, and
(42:53):
by all accounts, he was a charming, charismatic, very friendly,
beloved person and someone who people really respected and really
thought was an incredible person and role model. And the
thing that kind of shows this clearly to me is
that when Perry died in he was given practically like
(43:18):
a state funeral. I mean it was like the Vice
President at the time was one of the Paul bearers.
I mean, every Supreme Court judges, all kinds of you know,
leading Washingtonians, because Perry lived in Washington, turned out for
the funeral. There was a big like procession and everything,
and he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery with a
gigantic headstone that had a big globe on top saying
(43:42):
like I got to the top of the world. Pretty much.
This was covered in all the papers. There were obituaries
and every paper there was, you know, first day, second day,
third day stories all about it. And in contrast to that,
when Henson died, he died in in New York. He
was eighty eight years old old, and he really barely
(44:04):
got to mention in the New York Times, his hometown paper,
or any other paper. However, the Amsterdam News, which was
an African American newspaper, had an account of the funeral,
which was at the Abbyssinian Baptist Church, which is like
the main Church in Harlem, and Adam Clayton pell Jr.
Who was a very prominent minister, did the service and
(44:28):
over a thousand people attended, and there was a huge
write up in this paper. And um, one of the
paul bearers was Peter Frikin, who was a Danish polar
explorer and one of Henson's closest exploration friends. And I
believe McMillan was there as well. Um, they were quite
close as well, because at that point he was a
(44:49):
member or admitted to the Explorers Club in New York
and Congress had awarded him the Perry Polar Expedition Medal.
He was honored and recognized, and you know, very late,
but but acknowledged in that way. And those people, we're
part of his community as well. Yes, yeah, and it's
(45:11):
it's hard for me to accept in a way, but
he was eventually honored. Um. The reason I say it's
hard for me to accept because I'm I'm looking at
the Explorers Club, which grew out of the Peri Arctic Club,
the very people who sent him up to the Arctic region,
and it didn't accept Henson as a member until nine
(45:36):
and he was their first African American member. That was
twenty years after he had been to the North Pole
with Perry. Reflection of the continued racial prejudice, right, Um,
but you know, just based on his own accomplishments and
his own his own merit, I mean, there should have
been no question. And similarly, as you're pointing out, though
(45:56):
he was recognized in the African American community for the
incredible accomplishments that he did, and in his as you said, burial,
he it was I think when he and his wife
were moved to Arlington National Cemetery where Perry is and
(46:19):
commemorated in that way that I mean, it's incredible that
the racial prejudice continued to in a way, you know,
long beyond his death, really deny Henson the kind of
recognition that he had deserved. Yeah, it was Henson's wish
that he would be buried next to Perry, and when
(46:42):
he died, I mean they really, the Henson's did not
have a lot of money and so when he passed away, Um,
he was buried in the same plot as his wife's
mother in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx and just didn't
have enough money to you know, get anything larger or
more prominent or whatever, although wood Lawn Cemetery was apparently
(47:02):
very happy to have him there, and we're kind of
upset that he got moved in the eighties, But it
was Henson's wish to be buried next to Perry, and
that eventually happened through the efforts of s Allen counter Um,
the Harvard neurologist and polar explorer who you know, wrote
to the Reggae Administration UM over several years to try
to get Henson the recognition that he deserved from the
(47:25):
government um in this way, and eventually that was successful,
and he is now there next to Perry. Amazing and
so curious, right that he would want to be next
to Perry after really what sounds like a conflicted ending
for their relationship. I think, yeah, it does, But I
also think it is kind of revealing of Henson's sense
(47:48):
of loyalty as well. I mean, when you kind of
take a step back, it's true that Henson had Perry
to thank for his life of adventure, because he was
hired by Perry and was his assistant for all of
those years, and perhaps he felt thankful for that, and
perhaps he appropriately wanted to go down in history ultimately
(48:10):
right as his partner. That's possible. Yeah, I mean that
wouldn't be out of out of the question, and I
think it is really fitting that he's there now. That
wraps things up for this episode. Thank you to my
guest cat Long. If you want to know more information
(48:33):
on Matthew Henson, listen to her podcast History Versus Season
two The Quest for the North Pole. If you'd like
to know more about the concepts and Personalogy, you can
check out my book The Power of Different The Link
Between Disorder and Genius For psychological advice me take a
listen to my podcast How Can I Help? And follow
(48:55):
me on Twitter at Dr Gail Saltz until next time.
Personalogy is a production of I Heart Radio. The executive
producers are doctor Gayl Saltz and Tyler Clang. The associate
producer is Lowell Berlante. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.