Robert Peary’s Meteorite And Minik

 Many historical figures are celebrated for great accomplishments but it is easily forgotten for all the terrible things they did to other people. Christopher Columbus is a prime example of this. A quick Google search will reveal dozens of beloved characters with questionable personalities, but one story that isn't often told is that of Arctic explorer Robert. E. Peary is widely believed to have been the first person to reach the North Pole in 1909. However, this story begins much earlier.

About 10,000 years ago a large piece of extraterrestrial rock came very close to Earth and got sucked into the planet's gravitational field. As soon as it hit the dense atmosphere, the intense heat generated weakened the structure of the iron meteorite and it burst into many small pieces. Many fragments fell in Greenland and were absorbed into the vast ice sheet. Others fell into the sea near Baffin Bay. It is estimated that the meteorite weighed 100 tons before the explosion.

Thousands of years later, this meteorite became the only source of iron for nomadic hunting tribes living on the barren northwest coast of Greenland. Devoid of natural metal deposits and with no contact with the outside world, this small community of less than 300 individuals separated iron from this massive space rock and fashioned them into knives, spears and other tools. This was about 300 years before Norse settlers from Iceland arrived in Greenland and brought iron with them to trade with the Inuit.

British explorer Captain John Ross was one of the first to learn of the existence of this meteorite in 1818. The Eskimos told them of a huge iron rock that they used to make their tools, but they did not tell them where the rock was located. , Ross could not find the meteorite but he collected some knives made from it and returned to Europe. These artifacts became the first scientifically collected fragments known as the Cape York meteorite.

For the next seventy years many intrepid explorers tried in vain to locate the meteorite, until Robert Peary managed to convince a local man to guide him to this priceless rock. With the help of guides, Perry walked across snow and ice for eleven days and arrived at two smaller meteorites, which the Inuit called "The Woman" and "The Dog", and another larger piece known as "The Tent". Was known. Each rock was surrounded by a pile of "hammer stones", which were brought by the Inuit over hundreds of years to strike the surface of the meteorite to extract iron from them. By the time Peary arrived, the rocks had lost their importance as the only source of iron, and Peary managed to persuade the Inuit to help him load the meteorites onto his ship. It took him three years to plan and execute their extraction.

In September 1897, Perry set sail for New York Harbor aboard the Hope with the largest piece of meteorite, "The Tent", and six Greenland Eskimos. Franz Boas, the famous anthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History, asked Peary to bring an Eskimo so that he could be studied. Perry brought him six, promising them "good warm houses in a sunny land, guns, knives, needles and many other things." Among them was a little boy of six or seven, named Minik, and his widowed father Kisuke.

The next day, thousands of people boarded the ship, paying 25 cents to Pearly to view the strange cargo. Eventually, the Eskimos were taken to museums where they were constantly examined and measured by scientists like lifeless specimens. There are photographs in the museum's archives in which Kisuke and Minik are standing naked on pedestals.

Minick and his fellow Eskimos were housed in the damp and hot basement of the museum – unfavorable conditions for people from the cold and dry Arctic air. The idea was to keep them in the museum for a year and then send them back home. Unfortunately, most did not survive until the next spring. They all fell ill with diseases to which they had no prior exposure and to which they had no immunity. Four died of tuberculosis – Minick's father was among them. Only one survivor returned to Greenland, leaving Minick alone in an unfamiliar land.

Perry distanced himself from the entire matter. In the two volumes he wrote about his Greenland expedition, he did not mention the Inuit even once. Although Perry made a lot of money from his many Arctic expeditions (he sold the "tent" for $40,000, equivalent to about a million dollars in today's value), he refused to contribute to Minick's maintenance.

Abandoned by Peary, Minick was adopted by the museum's building superintendent, William Wallace. Minick attended school and adapted well to his new surroundings, completely forgetting his native language and traditions. One day, while at school, Minick discovers a terrible secret – his father's burial, which he had witnessed, was accompanied by a log wrapped in fur. The flesh of the real body was taken off long ago, the bones were cleaned and stored in jars in the museum. When Minick learns of the trick, he begins a lifelong quest to recover his father's remains.

Minick did his best to adapt to the conditions of his homeland. He also married a local girl, but the marriage was unsuccessful. He soon began to miss urban life and returned to the United States in 1916. He moved to Pittsburgh, New Hampshire and became a lumberjack. And just as he was finally beginning to find happiness, the Spanish flu of 1918 broke out and Minick died. He was twenty-seven or twenty-eight.

Minick's story first came to light in 1986 through the book "Give Me My Father's Body" by Arctic historian and businessman Ken Harper. Mr Harper has portrayed Peary as egotistical and duplicitous, who became rich by selling artworks to support his campaigns and passing the sales on to charity. Mr Harper also accused the Natural History Museum of being complicit in all this, sponsoring and subsidizing explorers and pretending to show respect for the cultures and native peoples they studied.

Media coverage of Mr. Harper's book eventually forced the museum to return Minnick's father's remains to Greenland. In 1993, he was buried in a church cemetery in Qaanaaq with a plaque that read, in the Eskimo language, "They have come home."

However, hundreds of tribal skeletons are still stored in American museums. Some of these were dug up by Perry after burial and brought to America to sell.

As for the meteorite, the largest piece, named "the tent" or Ahnighito, is still open on view in the Museum of Natural History of New York City. At 31 tons, it is so heavy that it was necessary to build its display stand so that the supports reach directly to the bedrock beneath the museum.