By Patricia Pierce Erikson<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cYou will wish yourself back with your sleek, fat Eskimo woman after you have seen me. If you have succeeded everything will look rosy to you for a little while and you may even persuade yourself that I am not half bad.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Fast forward a century to a handsome, media-savvy Inuk named Hivshu, who has raised eyebrows and consciousness by embarking upon his own expedition to retrace the steps of Robert E. Peary\u2013his great-grandfather. The result is the 2007 award-winning documentary, Prize of the Pole<\/em>, which tracks Hivshu and his search for identity from Greenland to Manhattan. \u201cEven though Peary is associated with hard memories, I wanted to show it wasn\u2019t just shame,\u201d Hivshu says of his ancestor.<\/p>\n Extramarital trysts of national heroes no longer surprise Americans. From Monticello to the White House, our Founding Fathers, presidents, and sports celebrities have made their legacies more intricate by having children out of wedlock. These descendants present fascinating new opportunities to reconsider the faded photos in our national scrapbook.<\/p>\n The divergent\u2013American and Inuit\u2013versions of polar expedition history might have remained isolated in their respective countries had it not been for Dr. S. Allen Counter, a Harvard professor who has become an expert on the second families of the Peary expeditions. Traveling to northwestern Greenland himself, Counter was among the first to look this buried history in the eye.<\/p>\n Otherwise, given their mother\/grandmother\u2019s anguish over the long-term affair with Ahlikahsingwah, the Inuit kin might have gone unexplored by Josephine Peary\u2019s descendants in the U.S., especially since, in recent decades, Peary\u2019s actual claim to having discovered the Pole has come under fire. As a result, any discussion of his two Inuit sons might have provided opponents with additional \u201cammunition [to use] against Peary\u2019s credibility,\u201d explained a Peary descendant\u2013who would not identify himself\u2013to Dr. Counter in the mid-80s.<\/p>\n In spite of this, Counter has been able to reunite several family members from the North with their Southern counterparts, including spectacularly Peary\u2019s 81-year-old son, Kaala, with Peary\u2019s 84-year-old son, Robert Peary, Jr. Consider this exchange in Augusta, Maine, in Counter\u2019s North Pole Legacy: Black, White, and Eskimo<\/em>:<\/p>\n Peary, Jr. to Kaala: \u201cNow, are you my half brother?\u201d<\/p>\n Kaala: \u201cYes, I am Peary\u2019s son\u2026[Kaala] Peary.\u201d<\/p>\n Peary, Jr.: \u201cDo you have the classic Peary gap between your two front teeth?\u201d<\/p>\n Kaala: \u201cI think I used to have that gap when I had my own teeth. But I can\u2019t rightly say that the ones I have now are mine.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2005, the two families were reunited again. This time, it was Robert and Ahlikahsingwah\u2019s great-grandson, Hivshu, and Robert and Josephine\u2019s grandson, Edward Stafford. Stafford says when he met Hivshu, he learned that \u201cat school up there the kids had gotten after him: \u2018You think you\u2019re better than anybody else because your name is Peary.\u2019 And he said, \u2018You\u2019re damn right and furthermore, from now on, my name is Robert E.<\/em> Peary.\u2019 So I told my uncle Bob, Robert E. Peary, Jr., about that and he said, \u2018You tell that young man that there are a lot of Robert E. Pearys around and that he has got to have a number after his name. Two and five are up for grabs.\u2019 So I told him. So he picked two. So now he is Robert E. Peary, II.\u201d<\/p>\n The two have since come together in other ways. Eagle Island in Casco Bay hosts the Peary family\u2019s turn-of-the-century cottage\u2013a historic site and museum\u2013operated by the State of Maine. If you look closely, on the mantle of the three-sided fireplace, a framed photograph now joins the two branches of the family for all eternity\u2013a snapshot of Hivshu visiting Edward Stafford. Although it\u2019s been a long time coming, the rapprochement is opening the door to extraordinary new insights.<\/p>\n as told by his great-grandson Hivshu<\/p>\n I heard stories about my ancestors when I was a child, but it was difficult to remember at first, since the [Danish] government took me away from my family when I was nine to be educated in the white man\u2019s way of life, which is not to believe in life, but in their own man-made values to become \u2018rich and powerful.\u2019<\/p>\n When I returned at age 20 to live with my grandfather\u2019s brother, K\u2019arqutsiaq, and his wife, they saw\u2026that I had to be reborn. I began by being a hunter. When the written stuff of my schooling began to fade, the Universe began to appear. I was again seeing, hearing, and feeling. It was great to be free again! To be alive! That feeling Admiral Peary wanted to share with everybody in the world! It was then I could tell the stories again without being ashamed of my ancestors\u2026like the stories about how we whistle the stars down to bring them closer. But don\u2019t whistle too much, we say, or we\u2019ll capture the attention of our ancestors playing in the lights (Aurora), and they\u2019ll come down and take everything but our bones.<\/p>\n Early on, the Danish-influenced people here harassed me, telling me I was one of \u201cthe ugly descendants of Peary,\u201d and that I looked \u201cjust like [my] grandfather Kaala\u201d\u2013basically saying we should be ashamed of being Pearys.<\/p>\n I never answered back, but in my mind I defended my grandfather, Kaala, and my great-grandfather, Piulirhuaq, The Great Peary.<\/p>\n He earned that name for his courage. Some of the great Shamans were convinced Admiral Peary must have been a great Shaman because he dared to \u2018cross\u2019 the bad weather.<\/p>\n The Eskimos do not go out hunting when it\u2019s storming\u2013it won\u2019t help to stand at the seal hole or hunt the polar bear when you don\u2019t see, hear, or feel anything but the storm.<\/p>\n What some Eskimos did\u00a0not\u00a0know was that Admiral Peary was not going out for hunting but to reach a certain point as his goal.<\/p>\n He so often chose to be with Inughuit by himself\u2013alone, without his own people. He lived just like us and could build a snowhouse just like us and hunt just like us. He knew how to survive an Arctic storm and was not afraid to \u2018take a walk\u2019 to get closer to a destination. He spoke our language\u2013although broken\u2013very useful for communication. That was his way of learning about our life without being disturbed by his own people, the ones he had to act like a commander around. When he was with Inughuit he was just like another old people\u2019s son.<\/p>\n Oodaaq (Ootah), Admiral Peary\u2019s Eskimo companion and leader of the Inughuit, told these stories to my maternal grandfather\u2013son of Admiral Peary. K\u2019arqutsiaq, my grandfather\u2019s brother, told me the stories I brought to my children, but now I am sending the materials to my son to keep the stories in our way of telling them\u2026<\/p>\n Long before Robert Peary arrived in Greenland and claimed three meteorites as his own, his Inuit associates and their ancestors considered them holy, \u2018celestial stones\u2019 from which they cold-hammered iron deposits into sharp hunting tools of mythical power and excellence. In return for learning the secret locations of these precious pieces of a larger mass known today as the Cape York meteorite (over 4.5 billion years old), Peary bartered a single gun.<\/p>\n The Inuit \u201cnever interposed the slightest objection to my removal of their heavenly guest[s]\u2026\u201d the explorer writes in\u00a0Northward Over the Great Ice, published in 1898.<\/p>\n The smaller two of the three, \u201cThe Woman\u201d and \u201cThe Dog,\u201d were taken by Peary in 1895 on\u00a0The\u00a0Kite\u00a0before the ice closed and he had to leave behind the largest piece, \u201cThe Tent,\u201d considered the second largest meteorite in the world. He returned in 1896 for \u201cThe Tent\u201d but was unsuccessful due to weather. In 1897, he finally made off with it, sailing south on\u00a0The Hope.<\/p>\n According to researcher Patricia A. M. Huntington in her\u00a0Polar Geography\u00a0article \u201cRobert E. Peary and the Cape York Meteorites,\u201d Josephine Peary, whose father worked at the Smithsonian, sold the meteorites to the American Museum of Natural History for $40,000 (estimated at $757,222.69 in 2002 dollars), claiming in a letter to AMNH\u2019s new president, Henry Osborn, \u201cI think it only fair to state that the meteorites are my property, and the money obtained for them will not be expended in Arctic Exploration. It is all I have with which to educate my children in the event of anything happening to my husband. Of this, [former AMNH president] Mr. [Morris] Jesup was cognizant and he approved entirely of my keeping the proceeds as a nest egg.\u201d<\/p>\n To our knowledge, the Inuit have never benefitted directly from this transaction. Some consider the meteorites consolation prizes he brought home after an unsuccessful attempt to reach the North Pole: In\u00a0True North: Peary, Cook, and the Race to the Pole, Bruce Henderson ventures, \u201cPeary\u2019s motives were not altogether altruistic. As if to ensure clear and undisputed title, he made the point of acquiring from a Danish official a bill of sale for the meteorites, although there is no evidence anything of value was received by the Danes or local natives in return\u2026\u201d<\/p>\nThe two family legacies of polar explorer Robert E. Peary reunite.<\/h2>\n
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<\/a>So Josephine Peary penned to her husband, Robert E. Peary, the renowned Arctic explorer from Maine who was celebrated the world over for being \u2018the first man to reach the North Pole.\u2019 Even while he was passing the long arctic nights of 1900 in Greenland with a teenage Inuit girl named Ahlikahsingwah, Josephine was quarantined in a darkened bedroom in Washington, D.C., grieving from the loss of her infant child and nursing her scarlet-fever-ridden daughter, Marie. After writing this letter, Josephine made a surprise visit to the Arctic to locate her husband; before finding him, Ahlikahsingwah introduced Josephine to her baby boy, Anaukaq-Hammy, who Peary had fathered; another son by Peary, Kaala, would follow six years later.<\/p>\nPiulirhuaq, The Great Peary<\/h3>\n
Case of the ‘Stolen’ Meteorite<\/h3>\n
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