Speaker 1: The Quest for the North Pole is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Mental Floss. It's August eighteen and
Speaker 1: two British naval ships are dodging icebergs in Baffin Bay
Speaker 1: on their mission to find the Northwest Passage. John Ross
Speaker 1: commanding HMS Isabella, and William Perry in the h M
Speaker 1: s Alexander are farther north along the western Greenland coast
Speaker 1: than any previous explorers. They assume this land of glaciers
Speaker 1: and stark mountains is uninhabited, but they're wrong. They spy
Speaker 1: several figures running on a hill near shore. Ross assumes
Speaker 1: their shipwrecked sailors in need of rescue, and he steers
Speaker 1: the Isabella to get closer, but they turn out to
Speaker 1: be native people, a community of a new wheat, living
Speaker 1: farther north than Europeans believed was physically possible. Ross, following
Speaker 1: the habit of previous explorers, in mediately sets out gifts
Speaker 1: of knives, European clothing, and a Greenland dog with strings
Speaker 1: of blue beads around its neck to signal that they
Speaker 1: come in peace. Several hours later, Ross writes, the dog
Speaker 1: was found sleeping on the spot where we left him.
Speaker 1: The presence remaining untouched undaunted, Ross decides to raise a
Speaker 1: flag with pictures of the sun, moon and a hand
Speaker 1: holding a sprig of Arctic heath, the northern version of
Speaker 1: an olive branch. At the base of the flag pole,
Speaker 1: he puts out another bag of gifts and a sign
Speaker 1: with a hand pointing to the ship. The following day
Speaker 1: Rossi's a group of a new Wheat approached the gifts,
Speaker 1: he sends out his Inuit interpreter, John Sacose, carrying a
Speaker 1: small white flag. Eventually, he throws a knife on the
Speaker 1: ground and urges them to take it as a present,
Speaker 1: But the native people are terrified of the strange men
Speaker 1: and looming ships. They approached the knife cautiously and gingerly
Speaker 1: pick it up. After a few moments, they begin outing
Speaker 1: with approval and pulling their noses, a move that Sacus imitates.
Speaker 1: The curious Inu Whee bombard him with questions about his clothing,
Speaker 1: the ships, and where he came from. Tho Saku speaks
Speaker 1: a different form of the language. He finally understands that
Speaker 1: these Inu Wheat have never before seen white people. They've
Speaker 1: never met European explorers. They turned out to be one
Speaker 1: of the last uncontacted communities of Arctic people in this region.
Speaker 1: From the advent of modern European polar exploration in the
Speaker 1: sixteenth century right up until the present day, nearly every
Speaker 1: community of indigenous people in Greenland and Arctic North America
Speaker 1: had some encounter with white explorers, whalers, or traders, and
Speaker 1: yet European explorers often thought of the Arctic as an empty,
Speaker 1: inhospitable wasteland. When they did describe the people who lived there,
Speaker 1: they portrayed them as relics of the Stone Age quote
Speaker 1: unquote savages or childlike folk who needed paternalistic guidance from whites.
Speaker 1: Of course, none of that is true, as the historian
Speaker 1: Pierre Burton rights, during the whole of European exploration in
Speaker 1: the North, the real children in the Arctic would be
Speaker 1: the white explorers. But native people's full contributions to human
Speaker 1: understanding of polar geography, wildlife, and climate are often overlooked.
Speaker 1: More than forty indigenous groups totaling over a million people
Speaker 1: live in the circumpolar Arctic today, but in this episode,
Speaker 1: we're going to focus on the peoples of what is
Speaker 1: now eastern Canada and Greenland. They had the most consistent
Speaker 1: interactions with white explorers over four centuries. In this episode,
Speaker 1: we'll try to show the other side of the explorers stories.
Speaker 1: We'll look at how indigenous people saw the white explorers
Speaker 1: or hallunat in their lands, why they helped them, and
Speaker 1: how they saved those explorers lives. Countless times you're listening
Speaker 1: to Mental Flaws presents the Quest for the North Pole.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Cat Long, science editor at Mental Floss
Speaker 1: and this is episode four and you Eat and the Explorers.
Speaker 1: Before European explorers began arriving regularly to Arctic Canada in
Speaker 1: the early nineteenth century, indigenous people there had some memorable
Speaker 1: encounters with them. The first was with the Vikings. Virtually
Speaker 1: all we know of the meetings comes from two North sagas,
Speaker 1: written two hundred years after the events. They say that
Speaker 1: when Vikings arrived in what is now Newfoundland and set
Speaker 1: up a small colony, they traded with the indigenous people,
Speaker 1: but there were deadly battles as well. It wasn't a
Speaker 1: great start to European North American relations. Skipping ahead a
Speaker 1: few hundred years, we to the English mariner Martin Frobisher,
Speaker 1: whom you might remember from our first episode. When he
Speaker 1: and his crew arrived in Baffin Island in fifteen seventy
Speaker 1: six looking for the Northwest Passage, they saw a group
Speaker 1: of Innuit and kayaks coming towards them. One of the
Speaker 1: crew described them as having long black hair, wearing sealskin
Speaker 1: clothing and paddling boats made of sealskin stretched over a
Speaker 1: wooden frame. The women had facial tattoos and blue ink.
Speaker 1: During the first meeting, the Innuit were just in awe
Speaker 1: the klu Nat came with their huge ship. A revered
Speaker 1: elder named Inuki Adamy told the Canadian anthropologist Dorothy Harley
Speaker 1: Eber in the nineteen nineties in oral histories, his ancestors
Speaker 1: had passed on their first hand memories of Frobisher's arrival
Speaker 1: in the Arctic more than four hundred years earlier. Speaking
Speaker 1: in Inuktitut, Innuki said that the Inuit had never seen
Speaker 1: such a big ship and such strange people. They were wary.
Speaker 1: The Hallunut fired two warning shots in the air. I'm
Speaker 1: sure the Kluna had good intentions, but they had never
Speaker 1: seen Innuit before. An Inuit had never seen hallunat the
Speaker 1: scene quickly turned confusing, heightened by the Innuit's bewilderment at
Speaker 1: the englishman's outfits. Here's kristo Uliuk Sawadski, an anthropologist and
Speaker 1: curator of Innuite art from rank and Inlet on the
Speaker 1: western shore of Hudson Bay. She's a PhD candidate with
Speaker 1: a research focus on Arctic anthropology, archaeology, and Innuit oral histories.
Speaker 1: I think that for Innit, when they encountered these people
Speaker 1: in these ships that were lost or shipwrecked or stuck
Speaker 1: in the ice, I think we probably thought that these
Speaker 1: guys are very feel prepared for the Arctic. You know,
Speaker 1: they're not wearing for clothing like we are. Cordial relations
Speaker 1: went south when five crewmen who were ferrying an Innuite
Speaker 1: man from the ship to shore never returned. Winter Forest
Speaker 1: Frobish sure to go home without their comrades, but before
Speaker 1: leaving he gathered quote unquote proof that he had found
Speaker 1: the passage to Asia, a rock sample, and an Inuite hostage.
Speaker 1: The man was taken to London, where artists painted his
Speaker 1: portrait and sculpted his likeness. Frobishers surely expected to show
Speaker 1: him off to the public as a curiosity of the
Speaker 1: New World, but sadly the Inuit man lived only a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks after arriving. Frobisher's sponsors paid a surgeon
Speaker 1: five pounds to involve the man with the idea of
Speaker 1: sending him back to his homeland, but for some reason
Speaker 1: that didn't happen. Instead, the company paid for his burial
Speaker 1: in St Olav's churchyard on Heart Street in London. So
Speaker 1: the church has no record of his burial. We know
Speaker 1: of his fate only from an accounting book belonging to
Speaker 1: Frobisher's chief sponsor. The sponsors were much more interested in
Speaker 1: Frobisher's rock samples anyway, they believe they contained gold. In
Speaker 1: fifty seven they sent Frobisher back to Baffin Island with
Speaker 1: a direct order to stop exploring and focus on gold mining.
Speaker 1: As the men hacked at the ore, Innuit watched from
Speaker 1: a nearby hill, wondering why the Hallunat were obsessed with
Speaker 1: this worthless rock. The scene made a big impression on them.
Speaker 1: Even in the mid twentieth century, a respected shaman pointed
Speaker 1: to the shiny flex and a river and said to
Speaker 1: his grandson, never show that to the klu Nat. It
Speaker 1: steals their minds. Though mining was their sole objective, Diannice Settle,
Speaker 1: one of the ship's masters on this voyage, took note
Speaker 1: of the Innuit customs. He saw that they hunted marine
Speaker 1: mammals and birds for food. They lived in sealskin tents,
Speaker 1: which were the traditional summer housing of the Innuit, easily
Speaker 1: moved from place to place as they hunted migrating animals.
Speaker 1: He admired their resourcefulness and putting every part of an
Speaker 1: animal to good use. He wrote, Those beasts, fishes, and
Speaker 1: fowls which they kill are their meat, drink, apparel, houses, betting, hose, shoes,
Speaker 1: thread and sails for their boats, with many other necessities
Speaker 1: whereof they stand in need, and almost all their riches. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Frobisher and another crew member searched for the missing sailors.
Speaker 1: Encountering to Innuit on a beach, he tried to abduct them,
Speaker 1: intending to ransom them for the return of his men.
Speaker 1: One of the captives shot Frobisher in the buttocks with
Speaker 1: an arrow and escaped. The other was wrestled to the
Speaker 1: ground as he tried to run away, and was brought
Speaker 1: back to the ship. Some of the English later explored
Speaker 1: the area and found what they thought was evidence that
Speaker 1: their missing comrades were nearby, so they chased down the
Speaker 1: Innuit and cornered them on a beach. The Innuit defended
Speaker 1: themselves with bows and arrows. The old stories say that
Speaker 1: the Innuit were so terrified of these white men in
Speaker 1: the row boats that, thinking they were not of this world,
Speaker 1: they started shooting arrows at them, and Nuki said several
Speaker 1: centuries later. In one account, five or six Inuite were killed.
Speaker 1: The crew kidnapped a young mother and her baby. Frobisher
Speaker 1: attempted to negotiate a hostage trade for the five missing men,
Speaker 1: but that failed, so as soon as they filled their
Speaker 1: ships holes with two hundred tons of ore, they left
Speaker 1: the island with the three Innuit captives. What we know
Speaker 1: of the captives after their abduction comes only from English sources. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: their own words and experiences are not recorded by history.
Speaker 1: The Inuite man was named Collicho, while the woman was
Speaker 1: called something like Arnac, and her baby was called Newtok
Speaker 1: or Nutiak, although these words may have meant woman and
Speaker 1: child in their language. To the sailors on the ship,
Speaker 1: the man and woman appeared not to know one another
Speaker 1: when they were brought together in their cabin, but they
Speaker 1: seem solicitous of each other, and Arnoc prepared meals for Collicho.
Speaker 1: They arrived in Bristol, England, in September. Like in a
Speaker 1: Elizabethan p t Barnum, Frobisher wanted to show off the
Speaker 1: native people for paying customers and to the leaders of
Speaker 1: the city. Callicho allegedly met the mayor of Bristol and
Speaker 1: showed off his hunting skills by shooting ducks on the
Speaker 1: River Avon with darts, even though he was also suffering
Speaker 1: from broken ribs and other injuries, apparently from being tackled
Speaker 1: by the English sailor. All three had their portraits drawn
Speaker 1: and printed for the public before Frobisher could exploit them
Speaker 1: as a side show. Though Collicho died of his injuries
Speaker 1: in Bristol, the physician who treated him, Edward Dodding, made
Speaker 1: Arnoc attend the burial to show her that the English
Speaker 1: people did not practice human sacrifice or cannibalism, as he
Speaker 1: believed the Innuit did. Arnoc was unwilling to see the ceremony,
Speaker 1: and Dodding commented that she appeared stoic throughout, but she
Speaker 1: was also suffering from a disease that historians believe was
Speaker 1: measles and died four days later. She was buried next
Speaker 1: to Colicho and Bristol's St Stephen's Church. Frobisher sent Little
Speaker 1: New Talk to London because Queen Elizabeth the First was
Speaker 1: especially keen on seeing him, But tragically, the baby died
Speaker 1: just over a week after arriving in the capitol. He
Speaker 1: too was buried in Say No Loaves Church, and just
Speaker 1: as tragically, none of their family and friends on Baffin
Speaker 1: Island knew what had happened to them. Frobisher was not
Speaker 1: done yet. His sponsors arranged a fleet of fifteen ships,
Speaker 1: four hundred sailors and settlers and supplies for setting up
Speaker 1: a colony next to the mines on Baffin Island. But
Speaker 1: on their way there, the ships carrying their prefabricated house
Speaker 1: sank in a storm, a site that so abashed the
Speaker 1: whole fleet that we thought, verily we should have tasted
Speaker 1: the same sauce, wrote Thomas Ellis, another ship's master. The
Speaker 1: Englishman built a few workshops and a kiln for making bricks,
Speaker 1: surely planning to return the following year. An elder named
Speaker 1: udluri ac Inniak told Dorothy Harley Eber in the nine
Speaker 1: nineties that her ancestors used to talk about the Queen's people.
Speaker 1: They had this deep trench and used it to repair
Speaker 1: their boat, and they also had a water supply area
Speaker 1: and the buildings they made for themselves, and there was
Speaker 1: also a place on a cliff side where they fixed
Speaker 1: their masts. That's how it got its name, not Parusovik
Speaker 1: where the poles are set up. That name is still
Speaker 1: in use today. But unbeknownst to Frobisher, they would not
Speaker 1: be returning their gold was actually worthless. Iron pirate, just
Speaker 1: like the Innuit new it ended up this building material
Speaker 1: all over Elizabethan, England. While a few other European explorers
Speaker 1: poked around the Canadian Arctic, they didn't stay long and
Speaker 1: Innuit life continued on as usual. Here's Kristo Uluk Sawatsky.
Speaker 1: The explorers didn't have a huge impact on other than
Speaker 1: adding to the stories that shared or to old I
Speaker 1: don't think you know, today necessarily think about explorers as
Speaker 1: like a detriment. I don't think that you necessarily think
Speaker 1: of them as like, oh, this was first contact. You
Speaker 1: know it went downhill from there, or it was great
Speaker 1: from then on, or you know, there's not that sort
Speaker 1: of mentality immunity, not that I know of. Like I said,
Speaker 1: a lot of the change that occurred for Innuit was
Speaker 1: around the whaling era, and so I think that, you know,
Speaker 1: we appreciate when there's stories about first encounters with explorers
Speaker 1: in the sense that these are old stories and they've
Speaker 1: been passed on, you know, for hundreds of years, and
Speaker 1: that's kind of cool, you know. I think people appreciate
Speaker 1: that aspect of it, But in terms of um their
Speaker 1: attitudes towards explorers, at least in where I'm from, you know,
Speaker 1: people don't give much thought to explorers other than James Knight.
Speaker 1: And there might be a story are here there that said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: my grandfather remembers this story about his elders when they
Speaker 1: remembered seeing the first ship arrived, that they had never
Speaker 1: seen a ship before and it was shocking to them.
Speaker 1: They saw it from far away, and they thought it
Speaker 1: took them so long to come to shore because they
Speaker 1: didn't realize how big it was. You know, there's those
Speaker 1: types of stories, but compared to other later in contrast,
Speaker 1: they're not as impactful. We'll be back in a minute.
Speaker 1: In eighteen eighteen, when John Ross and William Edward Perry
Speaker 1: sailed up the western coast of Greenland to find the
Speaker 1: Northwest Passage. They were lucky to have John Sacchus on board.
Speaker 1: Sacus was born in western Greenland. Around when he was
Speaker 1: about eighteen years old, he found his way aboard a
Speaker 1: Scottish whaling ship called the Thomas and Anne, and arrived
Speaker 1: in Leith, the main port of Edinburgh. Reports from the
Speaker 1: time indicate that he was interested in learning English and
Speaker 1: becoming a missionary. Unlike the Innuit brought to England against
Speaker 1: their will in the sixteenth century, Sakus is the first
Speaker 1: known Inuit person who came to the United Kingdom by choice.
Speaker 1: Saku seems to have enjoyed living in Edinburgh. He sketched
Speaker 1: passers by at the harbor, and even demonstrated his paddling
Speaker 1: skills against those of six men in a whale boat,
Speaker 1: out maneuvering them in his canoe as a huge crowd watched.
Speaker 1: Prominent artists painted or drew Sakus's portrait. One by the
Speaker 1: Scottish painter Alexander Naysmith shows him in a sealskin jacket
Speaker 1: holding a harpoon. Sakus was himself a talented artist, and
Speaker 1: Naismith offered him drawing lessons. Sakus also traded lessons in
Speaker 1: inuktitute for instruction in English and writing. He joined Ross's
Speaker 1: expedition as an Inuit interpreter. Ross perhaps hoped that Sakus's
Speaker 1: presence among the white men would put native people they
Speaker 1: met at ease, and that he would be able to
Speaker 1: such scenes that few Europeans could imagine. In fact, Sacho's
Speaker 1: drawing of Ross and Parry meeting the Inu Wheat is
Speaker 1: a revealing depiction of contact when the New Wheat accepted
Speaker 1: the gift of the knife, Sach, who has found that
Speaker 1: their languages were close enough that they could communicate. After
Speaker 1: a brief chat, Saku's motion to Ross and Parry to
Speaker 1: come over to where he and a group of eight
Speaker 1: in New Wheat stood. In the drawing, Ross and Perry
Speaker 1: are in full naval dress, complete with bi coorn hats
Speaker 1: and gold fringed epaulets, looking extremely out of place. The
Speaker 1: New Wheat shouting and raising their arms where fur parkas
Speaker 1: and tall boots, and some are gazing at themselves in
Speaker 1: mirrors that Ross gave them as presents. Zachu has captured
Speaker 1: a meeting that voted well for future explorers in their lands.
Speaker 1: The descendants of these very people would play important roles
Speaker 1: and explorer's quests for the North Pole nearly a century later.
Speaker 1: According to the anthropologist Jean Malorie, who lived with the
Speaker 1: Inu Wheat in the ninth fifties, Ross and Perry's visit
Speaker 1: to their home in eighteen eighteen was a cardinal date
Speaker 1: in their history. Ross made a similar impact with Innuit
Speaker 1: on the other side of Baffin Bay too. After the
Speaker 1: embarrassing Croaker Mountains experience, in which he mistook a common
Speaker 1: Arctic mirage for a mountain range, which we talked about
Speaker 1: in our first episode, Ross was basically blacklisted from leading
Speaker 1: any more naval expeditions, but he didn't give up. He
Speaker 1: got a wealthy gin distiller named Felix Booth to give
Speaker 1: him more than ten thousand pounds, with which he bought
Speaker 1: a steamship named the Victory. In eighteen twenty nine, Ross
Speaker 1: set off towards Prince Region inlet, a large channel leading
Speaker 1: south from Lancaster Sound, hoping to locate the Northwest Passage.
Speaker 1: The Victory spent the summer of eighteen twenty nine cruising
Speaker 1: the eastern shore of a peninsula that he named Boothia
Speaker 1: after his benefactor. As winter came on, the Victory hunkered
Speaker 1: down in a small bay ross called Felix Harbor. There
Speaker 1: they encountered a groove of Innuit, the Netzelingmiut, who had
Speaker 1: had no prior contact with Kalunat. The net Selingmiut called
Speaker 1: the spot where they encountered the victory Kabluna Kyuvik, the
Speaker 1: place for meeting white people. An elder named Bibbion niv
Speaker 1: Yovak described the famous meeting to Dorothy Harley Eber. A
Speaker 1: group of hunters happened to be in the tom Bay area.
Speaker 1: One hunter named Abulukte wandered away from the group and
Speaker 1: saw something strange. He went toward it and found the Kalunat.
Speaker 1: He was scared because he had never seen them before.
Speaker 1: He ran so fast that the tail of his parka
Speaker 1: flew out behind him. When he got back home, he
Speaker 1: told everybody that these were really different people with long
Speaker 1: necks and long faces. He scared everyone. The other hunters
Speaker 1: were not sure if they should go towards a ship.
Speaker 1: The shaman in their village spoke through his spirit to
Speaker 1: the Khalunat in English and then told the Innuit that
Speaker 1: the Kalunat were not dangerous. The following day they went
Speaker 1: to the Victory. According to Eber, the tale of Abiluktuk,
Speaker 1: his flying parka and meeting the Kalunat is still shared
Speaker 1: with laughter among communities all across the region. Ross presented
Speaker 1: the Netzelenmia with gifts of metal implements. Soon a cluster
Speaker 1: of igloos went up, which Ross sketched and called snow cottages.
Speaker 1: Ross also instructed the ship's carpenter to fashion a wooden
Speaker 1: leg inscribed with the ship's name, for an Inuite man
Speaker 1: who had lost his to a polar bear. The man
Speaker 1: was able to resume hunting and providing for his family.
Speaker 1: Ross noted and wrote in his journal, I am sure
Speaker 1: the simple contrivance of this wooden leg raised us higher
Speaker 1: in the estimation of this people than all the wonders
Speaker 1: we had shown them. The wooden leg is now in
Speaker 1: the collection of the Manitoba Museum. The first winter passed
Speaker 1: with the Victory crew and the Netzelenmia enjoying friendly relations,
Speaker 1: but Ross would soon face a nightmare. Throughout eighteen thirty
Speaker 1: and eight, Ice and Prince Region Inlet trapped the victory
Speaker 1: along a twenty miles sliver of coastline. What Ross had
Speaker 1: envisioned as a one or two year expedition turned into
Speaker 1: an ordeal lasting four years. Four dark, frigid winters, four
Speaker 1: years of surviving on canned food and ship's biscuit, four
Speaker 1: years of facing the same few people, four years of
Speaker 1: waiting to go home. The one bright spot was that,
Speaker 1: for the most part, Ross's crew avoided scurvy, the often
Speaker 1: fatal vitamin C deficiency that was the bane of sailors,
Speaker 1: because the nets Alignia shared fresh meat with them. The
Speaker 1: crew mounted the first phase of their escape in January
Speaker 1: two by removing every useful thing from the victory and
Speaker 1: piling it on shore. Some of the supplies were bundled
Speaker 1: into caches and left along their planned retreat. Valuable instruments
Speaker 1: were buried in permafrost. The rest of the supplies were
Speaker 1: left for the local people. On May twenty nine, they
Speaker 1: abandoned the victory and began marching towards Fury Beach, a
Speaker 1: depot of supplies salvage from the wreck of the h M. S.
Speaker 1: Fury Perry's old ship from an earlier expedition. There, the
Speaker 1: crew hoped to repair the Furies whale boats obtained provisions
Speaker 1: and sail to Lancaster Sound, where they hoped the European
Speaker 1: whaling fleet would be able to rescue them, But whalers
Speaker 1: always left the area in August ahead of winter, and
Speaker 1: the Victory crew didn't make it in time. That meant
Speaker 1: a fourth winter in the Arctic. The men built a
Speaker 1: hut out of the furies timbers and packed snow all
Speaker 1: around the walls and root for insulation. They called its
Speaker 1: Somerset House, after the elegant London building that houses several
Speaker 1: of Britain's learned and scientific societies. Now without interaction or
Speaker 1: food from the nets, Alumiut days turned into a grind
Speaker 1: of boredom and malaise. Everyone in the crew had a
Speaker 1: touch of scurvy, which made them irritable into pressed. When
Speaker 1: spring finally came, they were determined to escape the Arctic
Speaker 1: or die trying. Despite their weakened state, they rode frantically
Speaker 1: to Lancaster Sound, where they prayed they would be rescued
Speaker 1: by a whaler. On August three, a ship did spot
Speaker 1: the whale boats and sent out an officer in a
Speaker 1: boat to meet them. As Ross wrote, I requested to
Speaker 1: know the name of his vessel, and expressed our wish
Speaker 1: to be taken on board. I was answered it was
Speaker 1: the Isabella of Hull, once commanded by Captain Ross, on
Speaker 1: which I stated I was the identical man in question,
Speaker 1: and my people as the crew of the Victory. The
Speaker 1: mate assured me that I had been dead for two years.
Speaker 1: I easily convinced him, however, that what ought to have
Speaker 1: been true, according to his estimate, was a somewhat premature conclusion.
Speaker 1: They were back in England by October. Meanwhile, the wreck
Speaker 1: of the Victory continued to provide supplies for generations of
Speaker 1: net to Lignut, about thirty five miles north of where
Speaker 1: Abeluktuk first saw the ship. Elder Gideon Caduacs said in
Speaker 1: the ninety nineties there are some old pieces of iron around,
Speaker 1: but a lot of it is vanished. The Innuit never
Speaker 1: found exactly where they buried their stuff. Hunters also tried
Speaker 1: to salvage the victories wooden mass to cut up for
Speaker 1: sledges and harpoons. Many families in the area repurposed the
Speaker 1: thick copper sheathing from the Victories hall to make traditional
Speaker 1: seal oil lamps. Here's Kristo Ulikaatski. One of the misconceptions
Speaker 1: that there might be is this idea that the explorers
Speaker 1: came and it was like, damn, the world changed for Nui,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily. Like there's a misconception right there that
Speaker 1: you know, it was like first contact, but it was
Speaker 1: brief and there was not a whole lot of engagement,
Speaker 1: and then that was it. You know, they came, they said,
Speaker 1: and they lacked. There wasn't like this big bang that
Speaker 1: people might think happened with explorers. But early explorers did
Speaker 1: leave their mark in another noticeable way. Some of the
Speaker 1: legacies that explorers have left, or some of the impacts
Speaker 1: that explorers have made, is the names on our maps,
Speaker 1: Like Hudson Henry Hudson was an explorer. Now we have
Speaker 1: Hudson's right and Hudson Bay. And it's like, that's not
Speaker 1: what we call Hudson Bay. We call it the See
Speaker 1: we Olds aren't going around saying, oh yeah, on Hudson Bay.
Speaker 1: There's this and this. No we you know, in our language,
Speaker 1: we call it something else. And it's just like, I
Speaker 1: find that a fascinating topic and it continues today, this
Speaker 1: like encounter of names. You know the official Canadian government names.
Speaker 1: It's riddled with probably knock names. We'll be back in
Speaker 1: a minute. Inuite oral histories have offered critical clues towards
Speaker 1: solving the biggest mystery and polar exploration. In episode two,
Speaker 1: we mentioned Sir John Franklin and how his lavishly outfitted
Speaker 1: expedition to find the Northwest Passage in eighteen forty five
Speaker 1: seemed to disappear into the Arctic labyrinth. For years afterwards,
Speaker 1: more than a dozen British and American expeditions scoured the
Speaker 1: region looking for Franklin, including one led by seventy two
Speaker 1: year old John Ross. They found remnants of Franklin's camps,
Speaker 1: but no clues about the expedition's demise. In eighteen fifty four,
Speaker 1: Hudson's Bay Company official John Ray was surveying an area
Speaker 1: of the Boothia Peninsula. He met an Innuite man who
Speaker 1: related a very interesting story other Innuits that a group
Speaker 1: of thirty four or forty Coluna had starved to death
Speaker 1: a few years before, some ways worth of their The
Speaker 1: man was wearing a gold cap band, which he said
Speaker 1: came from the place where the Callunat were found. Later
Speaker 1: in the year, Innuit brought Ray a collection of objects
Speaker 1: that definitely came from Franklin's expedition. The Innuit said that
Speaker 1: some of their relatives had sold meat to the starving
Speaker 1: columnat a few years earlier, and told Ray they had
Speaker 1: come upon the remains of the sailors in the area
Speaker 1: of the Great Fish River. There was one more horrifying detail.
Speaker 1: The men had died of starvation after resorting to cannibalism.
Speaker 1: Ray was satisfied that this was the answer to a
Speaker 1: big part of the Franklin expedition mystery. He told the
Speaker 1: Admiralty everything, but because the clues had come from so
Speaker 1: called savages, many in Britain refused to accept it. Charles
Speaker 1: Dickens captured the public feeling and a scathing racist commentary
Speaker 1: in his popular magazine Household Words, saying it was far
Speaker 1: more likely that the Inuit had murdered Franklin's man. But
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty nine the innuits word was proven correct.
Speaker 1: British teams set out by sledge to investigate King William Island,
Speaker 1: where Innuit said that they had seen the starving men
Speaker 1: along the western coast. They found indisputable evidence of their presence,
Speaker 1: including a Cairn containing a note which finally revealed what
Speaker 1: happened to Franklin. He had died on June eleven, forty
Speaker 1: seven of an unknown cause. The expedition's ships HMS Arabis
Speaker 1: and HMS Terror had been stuck in ice for over
Speaker 1: a year and abandoned. Several men had died. The survivors
Speaker 1: were walking towards the mainland to the Great Fish River,
Speaker 1: just as the Innuit had said, and further evidence uncovered
Speaker 1: over the next century and a half has confirmed the
Speaker 1: Innuit testimony. Many questions remained, However, an American newspaper publisher
Speaker 1: in the grip of Arctic Fever named Charles Francis Hall
Speaker 1: believed that there was more to learn from the Innuit.
Speaker 1: He convinced himself that there could still be survivors from
Speaker 1: Franklin's expedition. In May eighteen sixty, Paul hopped on a
Speaker 1: whaler out of New London, Connecticut. He was heading north
Speaker 1: to live among the Inuit. So they were totally unaware
Speaker 1: of this plan and to gather further clues. Here's Russell Potter,
Speaker 1: polar historian at Rhode Island College, an author of most
Speaker 1: recently Finding Franklin. The untold story of a one and
Speaker 1: sixty five year search. Hall did not go up with
Speaker 1: a lot of equipment, and his idea was just to
Speaker 1: hire somebody. And as it happened, the ship he went
Speaker 1: up on didn't get anywhere near where he wanted to go.
Speaker 1: It ended up at Cumberland Sound, which was nowhere near
Speaker 1: where Franklin went missing, so he decided to make use
Speaker 1: of his time there. Paul met an Inuit couple takulk
Speaker 1: to an epr Vic, whom the whalers had nicknamed Hannah
Speaker 1: and Joe. They had already been to England with a whaler.
Speaker 1: They met and had tea with Queen Victoria. When he
Speaker 1: went to visit their igloo, Canada said hello, sir, would
Speaker 1: you care for a cup of tea? And he said,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I hooked up with the right Innuit here.
Speaker 1: And he had not only worked with them and had
Speaker 1: them work for him, but he lived with them. He enjoyed,
Speaker 1: you know. In his journals, he writes with exclamation points,
Speaker 1: first night in an igloo, second night in an igloo.
Speaker 1: He loved switching over and sort of going natives, the
Speaker 1: very thing the British hated, and he formed a very
Speaker 1: strong bond with these two guys. I mean, Joe was
Speaker 1: pretty much the hunter and guide and Hannah was more
Speaker 1: the translator and worked with them for years. On his
Speaker 1: two Franklin search expeditions, Paul visited their village, lived in
Speaker 1: their igloos, and enjoyed long sledging trips with Hannah and Joe.
Speaker 1: He really formed a strong bond there and kind of
Speaker 1: by the end of their time together, he was driving
Speaker 1: dogs as well as Joe, So that's pretty singular and
Speaker 1: way in advance of any other person who later on
Speaker 1: took up Innuit ways of travel. On one of the journeys,
Speaker 1: with Joe's help, Paul rediscovered the roots of Martin Frobisher's
Speaker 1: gold mining camp, where elders had said white men had
Speaker 1: arrived in a big ship many years before. Hall even
Speaker 1: recorded the Inuit explanation of the disappearance of Frobisher's men.
Speaker 1: According to his retelling, they were left behind and lived
Speaker 1: among the Innuit until they could build a large boat.
Speaker 1: Then they set sail and disappeared. But by eighteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: having found no Franklin survivors, Hal turned towards a new goal,
Speaker 1: the North Pole. With Hannah and Joe's help, the three
Speaker 1: returned to the United States, where Hall finagled to grant
Speaker 1: from Congress to buy a ship, which he fitted out
Speaker 1: for Arctic service and renamed the Polaris. With a crew
Speaker 1: that included New London whaling master Sydney Buttington as sailing master,
Speaker 1: another whaler George Tyson as navigator, and Hall as expedition commander.
Speaker 1: The Polaris left the Brooklyn Navy Yard on June. Joe
Speaker 1: and Hannah were aboard, plus a German surgeon named Emil Vessels.
Speaker 1: When they arrived in Greenland, they brought on Hans Hendrick,
Speaker 1: a well known Inuit guide and hunter, and his family.
Speaker 1: Hall followed a route laid out by the American explorer
Speaker 1: Alicia Kent Kane in the eighteen fifties. Kane's expedition had
Speaker 1: found the large waterway between Greenland and Canada's Ellesmere Island,
Speaker 1: now called Kane Basin, and mistook it for the open
Speaker 1: Polar Sea. Now Hall planned to sail through Kane Basin
Speaker 1: and hopefully reached the North Pole. However, the crew didn't
Speaker 1: get along and Hall failed to restore a sense of calm.
Speaker 1: Then Hall came down with a mysterious illness. He drifted
Speaker 1: in and out of delirium, and after a period of
Speaker 1: improvement and then relapse, he died on November eighth, eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy one. Today, some historians believe that he was poisoned
Speaker 1: with arsenic, possibly by Emil vessels who had access to
Speaker 1: the ship's medicine chest. With their commander dead, there was
Speaker 1: nothing to do but wait out the winter and then
Speaker 1: head home. In summer eighteen seventy two, as they sailed south,
Speaker 1: ice broke up around the ship and an immense iceberg
Speaker 1: bore down on the polaris. They thought the ship had
Speaker 1: sprung a leak. Buddington panicked and ordered all of the
Speaker 1: provisions and supplies thrown onto a nearby ice flow. Hans
Speaker 1: Hendrick later wrote, we brought our wives and children down
Speaker 1: upon the ice and hurried to fetch all our little
Speaker 1: luggage and remove the hole to a short distance from
Speaker 1: the ship. Then the ice broke up close to the
Speaker 1: vessel and her cables broke. But in the awful darkness
Speaker 1: we could only just hear the voices on board, and
Speaker 1: when the craft was going adrift, we believed she was
Speaker 1: on the point of sinking. Here we were left nineteen
Speaker 1: and all in the most miserable state of sadness and tears.
Speaker 1: The Polaris and its remaining crew abandoned them. The nineteen
Speaker 1: castaways were helpless and alone. Joe and Hans hunted seals
Speaker 1: throughout the winter in the dark and kept them all alive.
Speaker 1: The Inuit built snow huts that served as their shelter,
Speaker 1: but they had inadequate clothing and other food, and starvation
Speaker 1: was always a threat. As we advanced far south, we
Speaker 1: had a heavy swell, and in the pitch dark night,
Speaker 1: the flow our refuge split into Hans Road at length.
Speaker 1: The whole of it was broken up around our snow huts.
Speaker 1: When we rose in the morning and went outside, the
Speaker 1: sea had gone down, and the ice upon which we
Speaker 1: stood our house had dwindled down to a little round piece.
Speaker 1: They drifted like this for six months over a distance
Speaker 1: of two thousand miles. They were finally rescued in April
Speaker 1: eight seventy three off the coast of Labrador. The master
Speaker 1: of the ship and the crew altogether were exceedingly kind
Speaker 1: to us and pitied us who had spent the whole
Speaker 1: winter with our little children on a piece of ice.
Speaker 1: Hans wrote. Hans Hendrick's memoir of his experience on the
Speaker 1: Polaris and three other Arctic expeditions, was the first such
Speaker 1: published account by an Innuite person. Roughly two decades later,
Speaker 1: Robert E. Peary built on and expanded Hall's modus operandi.
Speaker 1: Hall was different from almost every polar explorer who had
Speaker 1: come before. He was just a man obsessed with solving
Speaker 1: Arctic mysteries, from Franklin's fate to Frobisher's geography, to the
Speaker 1: journey towards the North Pole, and the primary reason he
Speaker 1: survived was his friendship with Hannah and Joe. His choice
Speaker 1: to live as the Innuit did was one that no
Speaker 1: explorer had then made. Now, with Matthew Henson's help, Peery
Speaker 1: formed mutually beneficial yet unequal relationships with the Inuite of Eta,
Speaker 1: the descendants of those Ross and Perry met in eighteen eighteen.
Speaker 1: Over eight expeditions to Greenland and Canada's Ellesmere Island. Peary
Speaker 1: hired a new wheat hunters and their families to obtain
Speaker 1: food so for clothing, cook drive dogs, LEDs, build igloes,
Speaker 1: and other tasks that were essential for Perry's success. Thanks
Speaker 1: to Perry's regular visits. They came to rely on his
Speaker 1: expeditions for certain Western trade goods, such as guns and
Speaker 1: ammunition for hunting. In exchange for the items, the community's
Speaker 1: best hunter signed on to help his expeditions. Here's Ken Harper,
Speaker 1: a historian and author of many books, including Minic, The
Speaker 1: New York Eskimo, An Arctic Explorer, A Museum, and The
Speaker 1: Betrayal of the Inuit People. I'll let him introduce himself.
Speaker 1: I write Northern history, and I also write about Northern
Speaker 1: native languages, especially it. I lived in the Canadian Arctic
Speaker 1: plus two years in Greenland, for a total of fifty years.
Speaker 1: That's five zero, not one five. I started out as
Speaker 1: a school teacher and ended up in business. I also
Speaker 1: worked for the government for one year in six days,
Speaker 1: every one of which I counted because it was a mistake.
Speaker 1: And all the time that I was there, I've been
Speaker 1: listening to Innuit people, listening and learning the inoquit or
Speaker 1: polar Eskimos, as they were formerly called. They were a
Speaker 1: very small group, a couple of hundred people, living very
Speaker 1: you know, tenuously on the ice free parts of land
Speaker 1: between the inland glazier and the sea they had developed
Speaker 1: not a heavy dependence on whalers because there weren't enough
Speaker 1: whalers in their waters to depend heavy along, so they
Speaker 1: lived a very precarious subsistence existence. Then along came Pery
Speaker 1: with his mission to get to the North Pole, and
Speaker 1: Peery knew that he was not going to do this
Speaker 1: without the assistance of the local people. So I think
Speaker 1: Peerry always intended to be there for the long haul.
Speaker 1: I don't mean permanently there for long all, but back
Speaker 1: and forth and involved with that geographic region for the
Speaker 1: long term. Light hal Perry realized that success in the
Speaker 1: Arctic meant adopting the traditional ways of the people who
Speaker 1: lived there, like wearing furs instead of Western made clothing,
Speaker 1: using skin boots instead of leather, and traveling by dog
Speaker 1: sled instead of man hauling heavy sledges. Peary's teams also
Speaker 1: hunted an eight wild game and build igloos instead of
Speaker 1: bringing tons of package supplies north with them and carrying
Speaker 1: tents on their overland journeys. This method of living off
Speaker 1: the land with the assistance of native people became associated
Speaker 1: with American explorers because it was so different from the
Speaker 1: earlier British way of doing things, and yet, despite his
Speaker 1: admiration for inuite skills and survival tactics, Perry still viewed
Speaker 1: the people who developed them as childlike and inferior to Westerners.
Speaker 1: This was the golden age of scientific racism, when proponents
Speaker 1: of eugenics sought to scientifically improve the human race by
Speaker 1: allowing only people with desirable intellectual and physical characteristics to
Speaker 1: have children. Predictably, the white European and American eugenicists believed
Speaker 1: white people to be superior to all others. The movement
Speaker 1: gained steam in the early twentieth century thanks to its
Speaker 1: emphasis on pseudo scientific evidence, which was misinterpreted from ethnographic
Speaker 1: studies of world cultures. Obviously, eugenics was fundamentally racist, and
Speaker 1: Parry was absolutely a product of his time. Here's ken
Speaker 1: Harper Parry was not, i would say, interested in improving
Speaker 1: their living conditions. So, you know, Perry certainly wasn't a missionary.
Speaker 1: He wasn't there to teach people things, build schools, promote religion.
Speaker 1: He was there for his single minded goal of reaching
Speaker 1: the North Pole, and so the Innuit were means to
Speaker 1: an end. He said, they're feeling for me is one
Speaker 1: of gratitude and confidence. I have saved old villages from starvation,
Speaker 1: and the children are taught by their parents that if
Speaker 1: they grew up and become good hunters or good seamstresses,
Speaker 1: pure Leac that's their name for him, will reward them
Speaker 1: sometime in the not too distant future. It's very arrogant
Speaker 1: assessment of his own position visa vis the iniquit, but
Speaker 1: I think he was right. But of course, then when
Speaker 1: he did claim the North Pole in n nine, and
Speaker 1: he's already admitted that the innuity have become dependent on him,
Speaker 1: he has no further reason to stay there. He leaves.
Speaker 1: Do you think that the inuuite there understood Perry's attitude
Speaker 1: towards them? That's what I just can't quite understand or
Speaker 1: get my head around. I think that they did. There's
Speaker 1: there's another quote. I hate to burden you with quotes,
Speaker 1: but you know that you know who we can say
Speaker 1: it better than I can. They were there. In my book,
Speaker 1: I mentioned that in seven an elderly man in the
Speaker 1: little village of Siowk reminisced about Period, whom he called
Speaker 1: the Great Tormentor. For some reason, in the book, I
Speaker 1: didn't name the elderly man. But his name was Amina,
Speaker 1: and he was a man that I knew quite well.
Speaker 1: And in referring to period as the Great Tormentor, he
Speaker 1: said people were afraid of him, really afraid his big ship.
Speaker 1: It made a big impression on us. He was a
Speaker 1: great leader. You always had the feeling that if you
Speaker 1: didn't do what he wanted, he would condemn you to
Speaker 1: f I was very young, but I will never forget
Speaker 1: how he treated the unit. His big ship arrives in
Speaker 1: the bay. He is hardly visible from the shore, but
Speaker 1: he shouts he had to get the horn. I'm arriving.
Speaker 1: For a fact, the nu we'd go aboard. Perry has
Speaker 1: a barrel of biscuits brought up on deck. The two
Speaker 1: or three hunters who have gone out to the ship
Speaker 1: in their kayaks bend over the barrel and begin to
Speaker 1: eat with both hands. Later, the barrel is taken ashore
Speaker 1: and the contents thrown on the beach. Men, women and
Speaker 1: children hurl themselves on the biscuits like dogs, which amuses
Speaker 1: Pery a lot. My heart still turns cold to think
Speaker 1: of it. That scene tells very well how he considered
Speaker 1: this people, my people, who were for all of that
Speaker 1: devoted to him. So that's how Amina remembered period. The
Speaker 1: New Wheat had very different memories of Matthew Henson. They
Speaker 1: referred to Matthew Hanson as ma Pluke, that was his
Speaker 1: Inuktut name. By all accounts, Hansen was a very different
Speaker 1: personality in than Pury. He was kinder, he was you know,
Speaker 1: on the land traveling. He was a tough guy. He
Speaker 1: was a good hunter, he was a good sled driver.
Speaker 1: He did something that Pury didn't do, and in fact,
Speaker 1: none of Peri's men other than Hanson did. He learned
Speaker 1: how to speak the Inuktut language, the language of the Inoch,
Speaker 1: and he learned it very well. And I remember when
Speaker 1: when I was a much younger man in the nineties
Speaker 1: seventies in in Karnak, I got to know a lot
Speaker 1: of the old hunters, and the really old people remembered
Speaker 1: him from their youth and their childhood. Middle aged people
Speaker 1: knew the stories about Hinson and about Perry and and
Speaker 1: everybody else look him up there. And they also knew
Speaker 1: that both Perry and Henson had relationships with the New
Speaker 1: Wheat women and both had children with them. Matthew Henson
Speaker 1: left a child behind up there, and now Cook. And
Speaker 1: I knew a now Cook. He used to say to
Speaker 1: me because he was very curious about his biological father,
Speaker 1: Matthew Henson. And he used to say, you know, what
Speaker 1: do you know about my father's life in the USA?
Speaker 1: Do I have relatives down there? Did he have children
Speaker 1: in America? Do I have brothers and sisters down there?
Speaker 1: So they were they were very curious about these people.
Speaker 1: Perry left a couple of kids behind in Northern Greenland,
Speaker 1: and I knew one of them quite well, Collige Kali Peri.
Speaker 1: These old men were just very curious about their bio.
Speaker 1: Much of the fathers, the memories were I wouldn't say fresh,
Speaker 1: but well among the old man the memories were still fresh.
Speaker 1: We're going to explore the amazing story of Perry's and
Speaker 1: Henson's sons later in our show. Once Perry and Henson
Speaker 1: believed that they had reached the North Pole in nine
Speaker 1: they never returned to Greenland and never saw their loyal
Speaker 1: and new wheat partners again. Just as suddenly as Perry
Speaker 1: had arrived on his very first expedition, he left along
Speaker 1: with the supply of tools and other trade goods that
Speaker 1: the new wheat depended on Fortunately in Danish explorers Peter
Speaker 1: Freakin and Canude Rasmussen opened the two Ley Trading Station
Speaker 1: at Cape York near Eta, which served as a store
Speaker 1: in base camp for their ethnological research in Northern Greenland.
Speaker 1: By a lot of reports that he knew it. Were
Speaker 1: astounded when Perry claimed to reach the North Pole and said, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're here, you know this is it, and the inning
Speaker 1: we looked around said but there's nothing here. This is
Speaker 1: nothing different than what we've been traveling through for days.
Speaker 1: A little bit of disappointment. I suspected the fact that
Speaker 1: this long thought goal was really nothing that they could see.
Speaker 1: The Quest for the North Pole is hosted by me
Speaker 1: Cat Long. This episode was researched and written by me,
Speaker 1: with that checking by Austin Thompson, thanks to our experts
Speaker 1: Kristo Uluk, Sawadski, Russell Potter and Ken Harper. The executive
Speaker 1: producers are Aaron McCarthy and Tyler Klang. Supervising producer is
Speaker 1: Dylan Fagan. The show is edited by Dylan Fagan. For transcripts,
Speaker 1: a glossary and to learn more about this episode, visit
Speaker 1: Mental Flaws dot com. Slash podcast, The Quest for the
Speaker 1: North Pole, is a production of I heart Radio and
Speaker 1: Mental Flaws. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, check
Speaker 1: out the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. For more podcasts from my heart radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.