WEBVTT - Matthew Henson: Courageous Discoverer Despite Racism 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:09.040 Personology is a production of I Heart Radio. Matthew Henson 0:00:09.160 --> 0:00:12.280 was an American explorer and is best known for being 0:00:12.280 --> 0:00:15.319 the first person to have reached the geographic North Pole. 0:00:16.320 --> 0:00:19.320 He was a leader in seven expeditions to the Arctic. 0:00:20.360 --> 0:00:23.840 My guest today is Cat Long, science editor at Mental 0:00:23.880 --> 0:00:27.040 Flaws and host of the podcast The Quest for the 0:00:27.120 --> 0:00:34.560 North Pole. Today we're going to talk about Matthew Henson, 0:00:34.840 --> 0:00:39.159 who was born in August of eighteen sixty six in 0:00:39.320 --> 0:00:44.080 Maryland to actually free black Americans before the Civil War, 0:00:44.320 --> 0:00:47.320 which is already interesting and unusual in and of itself. 0:00:47.360 --> 0:00:49.400 So maybe we could talk a little bit about what 0:00:49.440 --> 0:00:52.000 we do know of his early family life. There are 0:00:52.000 --> 0:00:55.920 actually some conflicting accounts, believe it or not. Henson wrote 0:00:56.000 --> 0:00:59.760 a book about their achievement of reaching the North Pole 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:01.920 after they did that in nineteen o nine, and he 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:06.520 had a very brief discussion of his young life. He, 0:01:07.080 --> 0:01:09.280 like you said, was born right after the Civil War 0:01:09.319 --> 0:01:12.440 in Maryland and Charles County, Maryland, which during the Civil 0:01:12.520 --> 0:01:16.320 War was a slave area. Maryland was a border state, 0:01:16.440 --> 0:01:18.720 part of the state was free, part of the state 0:01:18.920 --> 0:01:21.720 still held slaves. So he was born into a really 0:01:21.920 --> 0:01:26.039 tumultuous time period. It's hard to say exactly how that 0:01:26.160 --> 0:01:29.080 shaped him, but I think it must have, especially that 0:01:29.280 --> 0:01:33.720 his parents were free. They were never enslaved people, and 0:01:34.040 --> 0:01:37.280 I believe they were farmers or worked in kind of 0:01:37.280 --> 0:01:40.800 a rural economy. But when he was really young, either 0:01:41.120 --> 0:01:44.160 he ran away from home because he had a cruel stepmother, 0:01:44.920 --> 0:01:49.240 or he and his family moved to Washington, d c. 0:01:50.080 --> 0:01:53.480 And there he went to school for a period of time. 0:01:53.760 --> 0:01:57.600 Important also to note that his mother died when he 0:01:57.640 --> 0:02:00.560 was seven. I mean that is a significant and traumatic 0:02:00.600 --> 0:02:04.240 loss for anyone, and even in those days when one 0:02:04.320 --> 0:02:07.960 was more likely to die young, still a big loss, 0:02:08.280 --> 0:02:13.240 and left the father to ultimately remarry and have a 0:02:13.280 --> 0:02:16.560 stepmother to whom it seems he was not as close 0:02:16.720 --> 0:02:20.519 or as comfortable with. He did have an older sister 0:02:21.080 --> 0:02:25.840 and two younger sisters. And also important is to know 0:02:26.160 --> 0:02:29.360 that while it was unusual and as you said, a 0:02:29.360 --> 0:02:35.080 tumultuous time to be free and black and living in Maryland, 0:02:35.120 --> 0:02:38.040 they were subjected to attacks by the Clue Klux Klan 0:02:38.240 --> 0:02:43.320 and other white supremacist groups who were intent on terrorizing 0:02:43.840 --> 0:02:48.600 people who were formerly free, and that must have also 0:02:49.120 --> 0:02:53.080 been difficult and traumatic. That's a scene that we see 0:02:53.200 --> 0:02:56.400 in a biography that was written with Matthew Henson by 0:02:56.440 --> 0:03:01.240 Bradley Robinson UM in the sixties forties. There was one 0:03:01.280 --> 0:03:03.680 in the sixties two that took heavily from that, but 0:03:03.720 --> 0:03:05.800 I think it was maybe in the forties or fifties, 0:03:06.120 --> 0:03:09.120 and that was not uncommon in Maryland. From what I understand, 0:03:09.440 --> 0:03:12.640 it seems to me likely that he would want to 0:03:12.680 --> 0:03:16.120 have gotten away from that kind of persecution, and so 0:03:16.480 --> 0:03:19.600 he eventually made his way to Washington, D C. He 0:03:20.280 --> 0:03:24.760 did say in his nineteen o nine twelve Sorry book 0:03:24.880 --> 0:03:27.320 after he went to the North Pole that he attended 0:03:27.320 --> 0:03:30.440 the m Street School, which was a really well known, 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:35.520 really respected school for African American students, and it was 0:03:36.200 --> 0:03:41.520 run by a number of really progressive African American educators UM, 0:03:41.520 --> 0:03:43.520 which is kind of exciting. It was a really good 0:03:43.520 --> 0:03:45.800 thing for him to have gone to that school. Was 0:03:45.840 --> 0:03:49.000 that school in Washington, d C. Or in Georgetown? At 0:03:49.000 --> 0:03:52.840 the time, Georgetown was a separate part from Washington, D C. 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:55.120 The two cities were right next to each other, and 0:03:55.160 --> 0:03:58.600 they were a bit separated, but they did eventually join together. 0:03:58.680 --> 0:04:02.000 So I think it is in Washington d c though, 0:04:02.120 --> 0:04:04.400 and do we know anything about the kind of student 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:07.560 that he was, I mean, realizing that he was only 0:04:07.600 --> 0:04:10.640 able to stay in school limited time, but in this school. 0:04:11.120 --> 0:04:13.880 I haven't been able to find any information about it. 0:04:13.880 --> 0:04:18.280 I have looked into it, because he does speak at 0:04:18.360 --> 0:04:22.839 times in his later writing about poetry, about Dickens, about 0:04:22.880 --> 0:04:25.560 books that he really liked to read, which, again it's 0:04:25.560 --> 0:04:28.040 hard to say for sure, but maybe he picked up 0:04:28.120 --> 0:04:31.000 from one of these progressive educators at the m Street 0:04:31.040 --> 0:04:34.480 School a love of reading or literature, or just an 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:37.640 interest in the world beyond his own life. So it's 0:04:37.640 --> 0:04:39.240 hard to say what kind of student he was, but 0:04:39.320 --> 0:04:43.200 he was at least very curious and at least very adventurous, 0:04:43.240 --> 0:04:46.559 because he did then join the crew of a ship 0:04:46.640 --> 0:04:49.960 called the Katie Hines. He made his way to Baltimore 0:04:50.200 --> 0:04:53.400 and signed up as a cabin boy on this ship 0:04:53.640 --> 0:04:56.600 to go back for one second, because so he's in school, 0:04:56.640 --> 0:04:59.839 but his father dies and he has to actually go 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:02.960 live with an uncle. And that's important just because at 0:05:03.000 --> 0:05:06.520 a young age he's cut loose, right. He doesn't have 0:05:06.600 --> 0:05:11.960 parents anymore really officially, and the uncle did pay for 0:05:12.000 --> 0:05:15.239 a few years of his education, but he also died, 0:05:15.520 --> 0:05:18.000 so in a sense, I just think it's important to 0:05:18.080 --> 0:05:21.839 understand that he had this childhood of frightening things going 0:05:21.880 --> 0:05:24.560 on in terms of attacks on the family. Then he 0:05:24.600 --> 0:05:26.680 loses his mother, then he loses his father, Then he 0:05:26.720 --> 0:05:29.400 lives with his uncle, who also dies, and so he 0:05:29.440 --> 0:05:35.799 doesn't have continued parental let's say, guidance or support. He's 0:05:35.880 --> 0:05:40.039 forced at a pretty early age to leave education and 0:05:40.160 --> 0:05:43.240 to strike out on his own. I think that is 0:05:43.360 --> 0:05:46.080 part of his character. He was always a very kind 0:05:46.120 --> 0:05:48.760 of going against the grain person. I mean, being a 0:05:48.800 --> 0:05:52.719 polar explorer. To begin with this like pretty unusual, but 0:05:52.839 --> 0:05:54.159 you know, when you think of like, what are these 0:05:54.200 --> 0:05:57.320 early roots of independence to the level that you are 0:05:57.360 --> 0:06:01.120 intent on being in some very difficult environment that no 0:06:01.160 --> 0:06:04.440 one has ever gone to before. He came from a 0:06:04.520 --> 0:06:09.360 difficult environment and at a pretty early age was jettisoned 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:12.920 into the world, and you could say forced to make 0:06:12.960 --> 0:06:15.400 way on his own, to be an explorer of the 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:18.599 world on his own. But you could also say there 0:06:18.640 --> 0:06:21.640 clearly was something about it that he easily adapted to 0:06:21.839 --> 0:06:24.960 and even embraced that, as you said, went with his character, 0:06:25.040 --> 0:06:27.960 went with his temperament, right, And one thing that kind 0:06:27.960 --> 0:06:30.480 of struck me is that, as you mentioned, he did 0:06:30.520 --> 0:06:34.080 not have a very stable family life when he was younger. 0:06:34.160 --> 0:06:38.680 He lost his parents, he moved around, another uncle passed 0:06:38.680 --> 0:06:40.839 away who was taking care of him, but he did 0:06:40.960 --> 0:06:44.320 find this father figure. I think he was kind of 0:06:44.320 --> 0:06:47.919 looking for father figures when he signed up on the 0:06:47.960 --> 0:06:50.960 crew of the Katie Hinds with Captain child He describes 0:06:51.040 --> 0:06:55.679 Captain Childs as someone who cared for him, who helped 0:06:56.000 --> 0:06:59.640 teach him about the world, and really became like this 0:06:59.680 --> 0:07:02.760 person and who he looked up to. So he was 0:07:02.920 --> 0:07:05.840 on this ship and with Captain Childs four or five years. 0:07:06.040 --> 0:07:09.359 This is during his teen years, correct, right. I believe 0:07:09.720 --> 0:07:13.760 Captain Childs passed away in eighteen seventy eight, and that 0:07:13.800 --> 0:07:18.640 would have made Matthew Henson about eighteen ish. That must 0:07:18.680 --> 0:07:21.360 have been a huge blow to him because he had 0:07:21.680 --> 0:07:25.960 spent his really formative years with him going where he 0:07:26.040 --> 0:07:29.400 went on a ship, which is a very enclosed atmosphere 0:07:29.560 --> 0:07:32.960 to begin with, and it really did kind of throw 0:07:33.040 --> 0:07:35.960 him for a loop because after that he traveled around 0:07:35.960 --> 0:07:37.840 a little bit. He wasn't really sure what he wanted 0:07:37.880 --> 0:07:41.760 to do. He started working, I think for a ceiling 0:07:42.120 --> 0:07:45.480 enterprise at Newfoundland. He kind of moved around, so he 0:07:45.520 --> 0:07:47.840 was a little at loose ends. Although before we leave 0:07:48.120 --> 0:07:51.600 his time on the boat, Captain Childs taught him to 0:07:51.680 --> 0:07:54.600 read and write. I mean he had only had a 0:07:54.640 --> 0:07:59.440 limited amount of education in school. Captain Childs also encouraged 0:07:59.520 --> 0:08:01.880 him or worked with him on reading and writing, and 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:07.000 they went to ports all over the world, which, again 0:08:07.040 --> 0:08:10.880 in terms of what drives someone to become an explorer, he, 0:08:11.200 --> 0:08:14.360 as you said, in these formative years, he went to China, Japan, 0:08:14.520 --> 0:08:18.400 and Africa and the Russian Arctic seas. This is a 0:08:18.400 --> 0:08:22.520 form of exploring or seeing the world at a very 0:08:22.600 --> 0:08:25.800 young and formative age with somebody who does take on 0:08:25.840 --> 0:08:29.560 a father figure sort of role, and that seems likely 0:08:29.640 --> 0:08:34.760 to be formative, also formative. To go back one more second, 0:08:34.920 --> 0:08:38.520 it's reported that he or he reported, I think, at 0:08:38.559 --> 0:08:42.360 age ten, going to a ceremony that honored Abraham Lincoln, 0:08:43.000 --> 0:08:47.480 who was known at that point to have worked on 0:08:47.880 --> 0:08:50.880 preserving the Union during the Civil War and had issued 0:08:50.920 --> 0:08:54.800 the proclamation that freed slaves in the occupied Confederate States, 0:08:54.920 --> 0:08:59.040 and he heard Frederick Douglas, an escaped slave and renowned 0:08:59.040 --> 0:09:02.520 orator of the time. Time and a leading community member 0:09:02.600 --> 0:09:05.559 for the black community, and that seems to have made 0:09:05.720 --> 0:09:09.200 a real impression. There's no doubt that his time with 0:09:09.320 --> 0:09:14.000 the ship must have broadened his horizons as well as 0:09:14.040 --> 0:09:17.880 hearing these speakers. I've always kind of wondered, like how 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:20.679 much Captain Child's taught him to read and write if 0:09:20.679 --> 0:09:23.360 he had been at school. I kind of have wondered 0:09:23.400 --> 0:09:26.000 about that. There's a little bit of disagreement in the 0:09:26.080 --> 0:09:29.199 historical sources, but there's no doubt that Henson learned from 0:09:29.200 --> 0:09:33.200 Captain Childs, and he really became this person that guided 0:09:33.280 --> 0:09:35.959 his life in a way that a parent would have. 0:09:36.320 --> 0:09:38.480 And I think it was really formative for him during 0:09:38.800 --> 0:09:41.760 his teenage years when he really didn't have any roots 0:09:41.920 --> 0:09:45.320 anywhere else. He kind of was a little bit of 0:09:45.480 --> 0:09:48.520 a rolling stone. I guess you could say, right right, 0:09:48.640 --> 0:09:51.720 It's almost like learning a trade, which in those days 0:09:51.800 --> 0:09:55.360 the idea of apprenticeship, and that is how you learned 0:09:55.760 --> 0:09:59.679 to have the vocation that Captain Childs showed him, how 0:09:59.760 --> 0:10:03.360 he sailed the world. Do we know anything more about 0:10:03.559 --> 0:10:05.560 the ways in which you may have been affected by 0:10:05.640 --> 0:10:08.840 hearing Frederick Douglas speak. To be honest with you, I'm 0:10:09.080 --> 0:10:14.280 actually not familiar, just because I try to stick with 0:10:14.440 --> 0:10:19.559 what I can verify from Henson's own writings, and there 0:10:19.600 --> 0:10:22.839 aren't that many of them. And I feel that some 0:10:22.960 --> 0:10:27.880 of his later biographers embellished a lot of the details 0:10:27.960 --> 0:10:30.640 of his life. And that may have been because they 0:10:30.679 --> 0:10:34.560 wanted to portray Henson as a unique and heroic figure, 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:37.440 which he was anyway, but they may have, you know, 0:10:37.720 --> 0:10:40.000 larded it a bit. So it's hard for me to say, 0:10:40.200 --> 0:10:42.320 we don't know for sure about that because he didn't 0:10:42.320 --> 0:10:44.720 make reference to that. It's kind of the hard thing 0:10:44.760 --> 0:10:47.400 we have about Henson's life, I feel is that he 0:10:47.720 --> 0:10:49.880 didn't leave a lot of writing behind. I mean, he 0:10:49.920 --> 0:10:52.559 only did write one book. One of the reasons he 0:10:52.760 --> 0:10:55.840 wrote only one book is because, jumping ahead a little bit, 0:10:55.920 --> 0:11:01.040 Robert Perry after their North Pole expedition prohibited members of 0:11:01.240 --> 0:11:03.920 the expedition from writing books. Perry wanted to be the 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:06.920 only one who had the book deal and sort of 0:11:07.040 --> 0:11:09.680 was the only one who was permitted to do a 0:11:09.760 --> 0:11:13.200 lecture tour and kind of publicized the things. So we 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:17.520 don't have a lot of personal memoirs from Henson, although 0:11:17.559 --> 0:11:20.319 I wish we did, because he had a fascinating life, 0:11:20.440 --> 0:11:23.800 so shades of the suppression to come before we get there. 0:11:24.200 --> 0:11:28.800 He is then working at a Washington, d C. Clothing 0:11:28.880 --> 0:11:34.679 store in November eight when he meets Commander Robert Perry. 0:11:34.920 --> 0:11:37.240 Can you tell us a little bit about that meeting 0:11:37.320 --> 0:11:40.040 and how it would come to be that Perry would say, okay, 0:11:40.080 --> 0:11:42.040 work with me. Yeah. I think this is one of 0:11:42.160 --> 0:11:46.720 the most serendipitous meetings in the history of exploration because 0:11:47.040 --> 0:11:53.480 it was totally unexpected. Because Henson, after he left the 0:11:53.520 --> 0:11:57.360 Katie Hines and Captain Childs had passed away, he moved 0:11:57.360 --> 0:12:00.000 in with his sister in Washington, d C. And started 0:12:00.160 --> 0:12:03.600 working at this hat shop um or a furrier sort of. 0:12:03.600 --> 0:12:05.360 The shop did a number of things, was kind of 0:12:05.360 --> 0:12:08.719 a haberdasher, and he was a clerk there. And so 0:12:08.880 --> 0:12:13.600 one day Robert Peary walked in and one story says 0:12:13.640 --> 0:12:18.400 he was looking for a son helmet because he was 0:12:18.600 --> 0:12:21.880 on his way to Nicaragua to scout for a canal, 0:12:22.400 --> 0:12:24.880 which eventually became the Panama Canal. But at the time 0:12:25.080 --> 0:12:29.000 the Navy was considering sites in Nicaragua, so Parry was 0:12:29.080 --> 0:12:31.120 on his way because he was a civil engineer in 0:12:31.120 --> 0:12:34.840 the Navy to do some scouting and he needed an 0:12:34.840 --> 0:12:38.920 assistant of Valet. So the other clerk at bh Stein Medicine, 0:12:38.960 --> 0:12:42.600 Son said, well, I have my coworker here, Matthew Henson. 0:12:42.720 --> 0:12:45.079 He's been all around the world. He's a very capable man. 0:12:45.440 --> 0:12:47.440 Why don't you talk to him? And so they seem 0:12:47.520 --> 0:12:51.040 to have really hit it off, which is incredible. And 0:12:51.400 --> 0:12:55.880 Henson must have impressed Perry with his resourcefulness, his practical 0:12:55.960 --> 0:12:59.920 skills and things like carpentry, sailing, seamanship, things like that. 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:02.600 And I feel that they must have had kind of 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:06.560 a connection over being curious about the world, about being 0:13:06.600 --> 0:13:11.440 ambitious and curious, and that combination really kind of colored 0:13:11.480 --> 0:13:15.600 their relationship from then on. So Henson and Perry went 0:13:15.640 --> 0:13:18.960 to Nicaragua. They you know, it was their only warm 0:13:19.080 --> 0:13:23.920 weather expedition together. And when they got back, Perry again 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:27.839 was working for the navy, and Henson kind of did 0:13:27.840 --> 0:13:30.679 a couple of odd jobs, but then Perry eventually got 0:13:30.760 --> 0:13:33.720 him a job at the Naval Yard of Philadelphia. From 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:38.480 there they embarked on a number of polar expeditions. Because 0:13:38.559 --> 0:13:43.240 Perry was pretty obsessed with making his mark in the world. 0:13:43.400 --> 0:13:46.680 I mean, really, that was the driving thing in his life. 0:13:46.960 --> 0:13:49.760 And he wanted fame. He wanted his name out there, 0:13:50.480 --> 0:13:53.960 and polar exploration or some sort of feat in the 0:13:54.040 --> 0:13:57.280 Arctic was his ticket to that um in his mind. 0:13:57.360 --> 0:14:00.199 So by the time that Henson and Perry met, Arry 0:14:00.240 --> 0:14:03.160 had already been in Greenland once and he did an expedition. 0:14:03.160 --> 0:14:06.120 There was kind of a finding mission. He did a 0:14:06.120 --> 0:14:08.640 little bit of exploring, but was kind of getting his 0:14:08.720 --> 0:14:11.079 bearings and figuring out, like, Okay, now that I know 0:14:11.240 --> 0:14:13.760 this about Greenland, what do I really want to do 0:14:13.880 --> 0:14:16.720 here that's going to get me the fame that I crave. 0:14:16.960 --> 0:14:21.560 So Henson, having proven his worth on his Nicaragua expedition, 0:14:21.800 --> 0:14:25.280 went with Perry to Greenland, to the Arctic, to other 0:14:25.360 --> 0:14:28.680 parts of the Arctic for the next twenty years on 0:14:29.240 --> 0:14:33.560 seven expeditions. Perry had eight expeditions to the Arctic and 0:14:33.600 --> 0:14:37.200 Henson was on the latter seven of them. They spent 0:14:37.360 --> 0:14:41.800 eighteen years on expeditions together. Yeah, and in the most 0:14:42.320 --> 0:14:47.240 brutal conditions you can imagine two and oftentimes it was 0:14:47.320 --> 0:14:50.320 just that two of them. So it was a very 0:14:50.360 --> 0:14:54.080 close working relationship. But at the same time, Perry was 0:14:54.400 --> 0:14:59.160 quite driven again by his own sense of fame and accomplishment, 0:14:59.160 --> 0:15:03.000 and I think that prevented him from being completely warm 0:15:03.200 --> 0:15:07.640 and completely a friend to Henson. So it remains sort 0:15:07.680 --> 0:15:11.040 of you work for me as the relationship, and I 0:15:11.080 --> 0:15:15.600 am the leader director of this, and sometimes it was 0:15:15.640 --> 0:15:19.520 the two of them. Sometimes he recruited people familiar with 0:15:19.560 --> 0:15:24.200 the area. And what is amazing is that Henson really 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:29.280 learned the language and learned the ways, it sounds like 0:15:29.360 --> 0:15:35.960 more so than Perry. Absolutely. Yeah, let's take a quick 0:15:35.960 --> 0:15:39.880 break here. We'll be back in a moment. Perry often 0:15:39.960 --> 0:15:45.400 hired the same Inuit people. He visited a particular village 0:15:45.560 --> 0:15:49.400 frequently on subsequent expeditions and tended to hire the same 0:15:49.440 --> 0:15:52.120 people since they knew each other they'd worked together, but 0:15:52.200 --> 0:15:56.920 he never really became involved with them. He always looked 0:15:56.920 --> 0:16:01.120 at them as servants, helpers, employees. They had specific and 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:06.320 very important jobs. They drove dogs, LEDs, which is extremely complicated, 0:16:06.640 --> 0:16:09.960 and so Perry really relied on them, But he also 0:16:10.040 --> 0:16:13.680 thought of himself as sort of they're kindly father slash 0:16:13.800 --> 0:16:18.280 employer slash leader. Henson, on the other hand, really took 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:23.240 to their culture. It's exciting to kind of learn how 0:16:23.720 --> 0:16:28.800 he was instructed by a lot of the indigenous hunters 0:16:28.840 --> 0:16:32.360 and dog drivers in this particular village. They kind of 0:16:32.400 --> 0:16:35.040 took Henson under their wing a little bit because I 0:16:35.080 --> 0:16:39.560 think he showed that he was genuinely interested. His curiosity 0:16:39.600 --> 0:16:43.720 went beyond place and mission. It went to the people 0:16:43.840 --> 0:16:47.920 and the culture and a willingness to learn and absorb. 0:16:48.280 --> 0:16:50.200 And he was the only one who learned how to 0:16:50.320 --> 0:16:52.720 drive the dogs LEDs in the group that was not 0:16:53.160 --> 0:16:56.800 intuit and how to train the dog teams in that way, 0:16:56.840 --> 0:17:00.760 that really speaks to a curiosity dry of an empathy 0:17:00.800 --> 0:17:04.440 in the direction of other people and other cultures, sort 0:17:04.480 --> 0:17:07.520 of like an anthropologist in a way. He was definitely 0:17:07.640 --> 0:17:10.720 interested in them and on a very genuine person to 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:17.239 person level, which is extremely uncommon between explorers who, for 0:17:17.480 --> 0:17:19.680 lack of a better term, kind of parachute in to 0:17:20.000 --> 0:17:22.720 do their mission and then leave. So for that reason, 0:17:22.760 --> 0:17:25.960 Henson is unique and I think that makes him a 0:17:26.080 --> 0:17:30.080 really interesting figure. And not only did he show that 0:17:30.119 --> 0:17:33.720 he was genuinely interested in the folks there, but they 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:37.679 looked at him as a unique person. They gave him 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:41.119 a name, which is sort of their way of bringing 0:17:41.119 --> 0:17:44.320 the person into their culture, into their lives, and in 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:47.000 English it means the kind one. They called him Matthew 0:17:47.040 --> 0:17:50.560 the kind one, and they gave Perry a nickname two. 0:17:50.560 --> 0:17:54.040 But it was basically like Perry the man, Perry the 0:17:54.119 --> 0:17:58.200 leader kind of person, wasn't really wasn't really like indicative 0:17:58.280 --> 0:18:01.479 of his his friendliness. But the other thing is like, 0:18:01.560 --> 0:18:03.760 it takes a really long time to learn how to 0:18:03.880 --> 0:18:06.800 drive dogs. Well, I mean, it is really hard, and 0:18:06.840 --> 0:18:09.920 the dogs have their own minds. They just decide where 0:18:09.960 --> 0:18:11.880 they want to go, and you have to just kind 0:18:11.880 --> 0:18:13.480 of go with them and try to steer them in 0:18:13.520 --> 0:18:16.200 the right way. And they're quite wild and they kind 0:18:16.240 --> 0:18:19.199 of have to work out their own hierarchy among themselves. 0:18:19.359 --> 0:18:22.800 And to be able to do this well as someone 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:25.760 who didn't grow up obviously having the skill or being 0:18:25.800 --> 0:18:28.000 taught the skill over many years when he was younger, 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:31.159 is really an amazing feat. And so in addition to 0:18:31.160 --> 0:18:33.600 the dog driving, like you said, he learned how to 0:18:33.640 --> 0:18:37.040 speak Inuktitut, which is the native language in that area. 0:18:37.160 --> 0:18:40.600 By doing so, I think ingratiated him even further into 0:18:41.040 --> 0:18:46.119 the community, and it showed the new wheat there that 0:18:46.440 --> 0:18:49.680 he was serious, he was someone who could be trusted, 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:53.640 someone who respected them, and of course it then gave 0:18:53.960 --> 0:18:58.160 the native people they're more confidence in helping Perry. I mean, 0:18:58.400 --> 0:19:02.000 Henson was really a liaise on between the Hinu wheat 0:19:02.160 --> 0:19:05.960 and the white people on the expedition, and he performed 0:19:06.000 --> 0:19:08.720 a really important role in that way. To speak for 0:19:08.760 --> 0:19:13.120 a moment about his personal life before this, he did marry. 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:17.840 He married Eva flint In, but it sounds like his 0:19:18.080 --> 0:19:23.000 being off and exploring basically dissolved the marriage because they 0:19:23.040 --> 0:19:27.720 divorced In he later married. He later married Lucy Ross 0:19:27.800 --> 0:19:31.520 in nineteen oh seven. But somewhere in here he's gone 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:35.480 for much of the time on these Arctic explorations. He 0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:39.959 is not having children with either wife, and he takes 0:19:40.040 --> 0:19:43.800 a Innuit wife or at least a partner, and does 0:19:43.840 --> 0:19:48.240 have a child. He apparently had a relationship with the 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:51.840 new Wheat woman over a number of expeditions, so it 0:19:51.920 --> 0:19:55.480 wasn't just, you know, a one and done scenario, for 0:19:55.560 --> 0:19:57.880 lack of a better word. He really cared for her, 0:19:58.040 --> 0:20:01.040 and I believe when I was speaking with the director 0:20:01.119 --> 0:20:05.000 of the Perry McMillan Arctic Museum, she said, at some 0:20:05.200 --> 0:20:09.760 point this woman died and Henson was just devastated. I 0:20:09.840 --> 0:20:13.120 don't know much about her, but we do know more 0:20:13.160 --> 0:20:16.640 about his son that he had with this woman. Did 0:20:16.680 --> 0:20:19.520 she die when he was still with her? I thought 0:20:19.560 --> 0:20:22.600 that basically when he left the region, that was it 0:20:22.720 --> 0:20:25.239 and he never saw her again or the sun. But 0:20:25.560 --> 0:20:28.600 I was unaware if she died while he was still there. 0:20:28.880 --> 0:20:32.080 That was my inference, because he didn't go back to 0:20:32.119 --> 0:20:35.760 the Arctic after they achieved what they went to achieve 0:20:36.080 --> 0:20:39.840 in reaching the North Pole. Neither Perry nor Henson ever 0:20:39.920 --> 0:20:44.040 returned to Greenland or that part of the Arctic. So 0:20:44.640 --> 0:20:47.679 my impression was that she must have died while he 0:20:47.760 --> 0:20:50.479 was there or during the period of years where he 0:20:50.520 --> 0:20:53.639 was going there regularly. Both he and Robert Perry also 0:20:53.880 --> 0:20:57.199 had an involvement with a woman. Both of them had sons. 0:20:57.200 --> 0:21:00.480 Actually Perry had two sons, but one passed a way 0:21:00.560 --> 0:21:04.280 I think when he was young. So Perry's son was 0:21:04.359 --> 0:21:09.720 named Kelly and Henson's son was named a Knockock. And 0:21:10.240 --> 0:21:12.960 they grew up in their community, but they looked a 0:21:12.960 --> 0:21:15.920 little different from some of the other people in their community, 0:21:15.960 --> 0:21:19.800 and so they wanted to know more about their biological fathers. 0:21:20.359 --> 0:21:23.240 The people in the community were quite willing to share 0:21:23.280 --> 0:21:25.639 stories about them. I mean it was no secret, but 0:21:25.720 --> 0:21:28.720 they had never met any of their family from the 0:21:28.760 --> 0:21:32.840 United States before, and so that became something that the 0:21:32.880 --> 0:21:36.200 two sons really really wanted to do, or they really 0:21:36.240 --> 0:21:38.880 really wanted to learn more about their families and their 0:21:38.920 --> 0:21:43.600 fathers as well. So unfortunately, the two sons did not 0:21:43.760 --> 0:21:47.480 meet their fathers when they were alive, but they did 0:21:47.840 --> 0:21:50.880 go to the United States eventually thanks to the efforts 0:21:50.920 --> 0:21:54.840 of Harvard neurologists named s Ellen Counter, who was a 0:21:54.960 --> 0:21:59.439 really interesting polar explorer and figure, and he brought the 0:21:59.480 --> 0:22:03.959 two wings of the Perry and Henson families together in 0:22:04.040 --> 0:22:07.080 the nineteen eighties. And it was a really amazing story. 0:22:07.400 --> 0:22:09.760 But it brings up a lot of questions about, you know, 0:22:09.800 --> 0:22:12.720 what these kids were thinking in their lives, you know, 0:22:12.720 --> 0:22:14.720 knowing that they had fathers but they were so far 0:22:14.760 --> 0:22:17.000 away and that they may never meet them. But it 0:22:17.040 --> 0:22:20.480 sounds like in some ways they were remembered by the people, 0:22:20.560 --> 0:22:27.200 at least certainly Henson was as heroic and kind. Let's 0:22:27.280 --> 0:22:31.040 talk about the expedition. I mean, there were many expeditions. 0:22:31.040 --> 0:22:33.720 As you said, there were seven expeditions, but ultimately the 0:22:33.920 --> 0:22:37.879 nineteen nineteen o nine expedition, which was Perry's eighth attempt 0:22:37.920 --> 0:22:41.440 to reach the North Pole, and it was a large expedition. 0:22:41.760 --> 0:22:43.879 This is the one, right, This is the one where 0:22:44.040 --> 0:22:47.560 ultimately they did reach the North Pole. They got close 0:22:47.560 --> 0:22:51.560 to the North Pole. Yeah, they thought they reached the 0:22:51.560 --> 0:22:54.280 North Pole. They thought they did, right. That is an 0:22:54.280 --> 0:22:58.960 important distinction, I guess. Yeah. In the expedition was the 0:22:59.040 --> 0:23:02.640 Cherry on the Sun Day. Because Perry and Henson had 0:23:02.640 --> 0:23:05.200 spent two decades getting to this point. I mean every 0:23:05.200 --> 0:23:07.160 time they went to the Arctic, they learned something new, 0:23:07.480 --> 0:23:11.960 they scouted new roots, they acquired the services of certain people, 0:23:12.160 --> 0:23:15.399 and they set the groundwork for it each time. So 0:23:15.520 --> 0:23:17.720 in nineteen o eight they had a pretty clear idea 0:23:17.760 --> 0:23:20.800 of what they wanted to do. So they left New York. 0:23:20.920 --> 0:23:25.000 They traveled north. They stopped off in Newfoundland to get 0:23:25.040 --> 0:23:28.760 some supplies and um they eventually made their way to 0:23:28.840 --> 0:23:32.760 this particular village called Eta in Greenland, where they picked 0:23:32.800 --> 0:23:36.240 up their innuitae helpers. They had like a whole community 0:23:36.280 --> 0:23:39.440 with them. They had like twenty two Innuite men, seventeen 0:23:39.480 --> 0:23:44.080 Innuit women, ten children, two hundred forty six dogs, tons 0:23:44.119 --> 0:23:48.320 of whale meat, tons of walrus meats. It sounds like 0:23:48.480 --> 0:23:52.560 moving a village. It almost was, because Perry hired the 0:23:52.760 --> 0:23:55.719 men to drive the dogs and scout the roots and 0:23:55.800 --> 0:23:59.560 be the guides. But he also hired the men's wives too, 0:23:59.640 --> 0:24:03.919 soak clothes to tan hides of the animals that they caught. 0:24:04.000 --> 0:24:06.439 The men and the women seemed to have specific and 0:24:06.480 --> 0:24:10.120 important roles and so each kind of fulfilled that role 0:24:10.280 --> 0:24:13.199 in Perry's mission. And of course they wouldn't leave their 0:24:13.280 --> 0:24:15.560