Black, White and Eskimo
by Max Millard
For most of this century, school children have been taught that the North Pole was discovered by a white American from Maine, Robert Peary, who accomplished the feat in 1909. If there were any doubt, one could visit Peary's grave in Arlington National Cemetery, where his achievement is etched on a huge white marble globe donated by the National Geographic Society.
But Peary didn't reach the North Pole alone. Also traveling to the Pole were Eskimos and Matthew Henson, an African-American who spent 18 years in the Arctic with Peary. Still fondly remembered in Eskimo legend as "the kind one," Henson was a master mechanic and navigator, an expert dog sled driver and the only member of Peary's expedition who learned the Eskimo language fluently.
When Peary made his final, successful assault on the Pole, he left behind all his American team members except Henson, saying, "I can't make it without him." Peary later admitted he had travelled the last hundred miles on a sled driven by his Eskimo assistants while Henson had remained on foot, guiding the sled with all the scientific equipment.
Peary became a national hero. Henson, a sharecropper's son with a sixth grade education, was ignored by white America. Still, he was honored by Black leaders across the country. When Henson died in 1955 and was buried in New York City's Woodlawn Cemetery, thousands of African-Americans attended his funeral.
Henson might have become a forgotten figure if not for S. Allen Counter, a neuroscience professor at Harvard University. An African-American with a long interest in Black history, Counter heard rumors from an Arctic traveller about some dark-skinned Eskimos in Northern Greenland who might be the descendants of Matthew Henson. In the spring of 1986 he made a trip there. Aided by an interpreter, he was astonished to locate two 80-year-old men, Anaukaq Henson and Kali Peary, who were the half-Eskimo sons of the famous explorers. In the weeks that followed, Counter got to know the men intimately, as well as their many children and grandchildren.
But Counter's book goes far beyond a description of this meeting. Finding that the men had a lifelong dream of visiting the graves of their fathers and meeting their American relatives, he was able - through the generous financing of John Johnson, publisher of Ebony Magazine - to bring a large party of the Eskimos to the United States in 1987.
Henson had no children by his American wife, but he did have many cousins, nephews and nieces, whom Counter was able to locate. They were overjoyed at the news of their relative's visit and planned a series of family reunions all over the East Coast. To Counter's surprise and disappointment, the Peary family acknowledged his Eskimo offspring but refused to have anything to do with the group, saying it would disgrace the memory of Robert Peary.
Eventually, however, three members of the family - Peary's son, grand-son and great-grandson, all named Robert - did meet briefly with the Eskimos, although there were no reunions and no Peary representatives on hand when Kali Peary laid a wreath on his father's grave.
The Eskimo's two-week whirlwind tour of the eastern United States, from the Peary Museum in Brunswick, Maine, to Henson's birthplace in rural Maryland, was met by Harvard's president, Derek Bok. The trip received extensive media coverage, and for the first time, Matthew Henson began to receive the fame that had eluded him in life.
Three weeks after returning to Greenland, Henson's son Anaukaq told everyone he had done everything he wanted to do to his life, and was now ready to sleep. He lay down on his bed and a few hours later, died. But the story did not end there. Allen Counter began a campaign to have the great explorer's remains transferred from Woodlawn to Arlington National Cemetery.
His initial request was turned down, but publicity from the Boston Globe and other newspapers shifted the tide. On April 6, 1988, the 79th anniversary of the North Pole discovery, Henson and his wife were reinterred with full military honors, just yards from Peary's tomb. Visitors today can see the fivefoot slab of polished black marble granite with Henson's portrait and these Words:
Matthew Alaxander Henson Co-Discoverer of the North Pole His Beloved Wife Lucy Ross Henson.In an interview on the public television show "Tony Brown's Journal," Counter told how, in the end, Henson set out ahead of Peary and reached the North Pole at least 45 minutes before him.
I take nothing away from the courageous explorer Admiral Robert Peary, who made at least seven attempts to reach the North Pole," he said. " Peary and Henson discovered the North Pole. But many people, particularly historians, don't want to give Henson any credit, and they've left him out ... He raised the American flag at the North Pole, and placed it there in the ice, declaring essentially the territory as American ... Peary should have taken much better care to let the public know the real contributions of Henson."
In San Francisco in July 1992, at the l1lth annual meeting of the National Library Association, "North Pole Legacy" received an award for being one of the "Best Books of the Year for Young Adults." Although written for adults, its inspirational quality makes it especially appealing to the young.
In his book, which traces the two year odyssey from his discovery of the Amer-Eskimos to Henson's reinterment at Arlington, Counter shows how one person, armed only with the truth, can make a major contribution to rewriting the history books and restoring credit to a genuine African-American hero.
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