Bonus Episode 2: Minik and the Meteorites

It weighs about thirty four tons, but it's just a fragment of the colossal rock that crashed into Northwest Greenland as much as ten thousand years ago. Scientists estimate it's about four point five billion years old, roughly the same age as the Sun. It's about iron and so heavy that the apparatus supporting it had to be drilled right into the Manhattan bedrock. Two other pieces of the meteorite

are in the same room. Before White explorers arrived in Greenland, bringing with them metal tools, these meteorites were the only sources of metal for the in white people. How did these massive, heavy meteorites make their way from the Arctic to a museum in New York City. From Mental Floss and I Heart Radio, you're listening to the Quest for the North Pole. I'm your host, Cat Long, science editor at Mental Floss, and this bonus episode is Minic and

the Meteorites. John Ross was the first White explorer to learn about the meteorites. On his eighteen eighteen expedition to the Northwest Passage, he met INU White, who described black mountains some distance away, where they chipped off pieces of iron for their knives. Though he was intrigued by this information, Ross didn't have time to see them himself, and they would remain an Arctic mystery until Robert Peary searched for

them in the eighteen nineties. By then, Peery had already completed two expeditions to northern Greenland with the idea of traversing its ice sheet. On his third trip, in his goal shifted to conquering the North Pole. The expedition was memorable for a few reasons. His pregnant wife Josephine, held down the operations of their base camp and gave birth

to their daughter, Marie on a guito. There. Peery and Matthew Henson made a death defying dash over the Greenland ice sheet, looking four route to the north pole, and Peery would be shown the valuable meteorites that the inuite had described to John Ross seventy five years earlier. After months of preparation, Peary and a small crew launched the reconnaissance of the northern ice sheet in March, but a little over a month after setting off, Pierry had to

admit failure. The weather was just too terrible and it took weeks for everyone to recover. In May, Peery asked the inuite assisting his expedition to lead him to the Black Mountains. With his guide Telekotia. They drove dog sleds over the treacherous spring Eyes to the edge of Melville Bay. Telekotias spied a pile of stones poking through the snow that he said were used to chip pieces from the mountains. As Peery wrote in his book, northward over the great ice.

He then indicated a spot four or five ft distant as the cation of the long sought object. Talakotia began sawing away blocks of snow and three ft beneath the surface. The brown mass rudely awakened from its winter sleep, found for the first time in its cycles of existence the eyes of a white man gazing upon it, Peery wrote. Talakotia said that the boulder was thought of as a female figure in a sitting position. They called it the Woman.

Peerie estimated it at roughly four ft long, three ft wide, and two ft deep at its maximum points, and weighing about six thousand pounds. Perry continued, I scratched a rough pe on the surface of the metal as an indisputable proof of my having found the meteorite, in case I should not be able later on to reach it with my ship. Because that was his plan. It wasn't enough for Perry to find the legendary meteorites. He wanted to

excavate them and take them home as personal trophies. I asked Ken Harper, author of the book Minic the New York Eskimo, how the Inuite might have felt about that the meteorites had been the only source of iron for the Inohuite for a very long time. But it's also true that by the time period took them, the Inuit were no longer you know, chipping off iron to use as as tools from from the meteorites. They would get metal objects and knives and other metal trade goods from

the whalers and then from Peery. You know, people were dependent on Pery. So if this is his mission in certain years is to get these meteorites and get them aboard ship and use Innuit labor to help to do that, and pay in trade goods and the food stuffs for that Innuit labor, then the innuity are going to help them. But that still doesn't mean he should have taken They weren't his right. He wasn't given permission. It was not within Peri's character to ask Nuwit if he could do something.

He was there to do things, and in his view, they were there to do his beating, so he didn't ask for permission. He gave himself permission. The following spring, Perry returned with his ship and crew to abscond with the woman and another smaller meteorite that the Inuit called the dog. An oval mass a little over two ft long and weighing about nine pounds, the dog was rolled onto a sledge made of spruce poles and dragged towards the beach. The crew floated it towards the ship on

a cake of ice. The woman had to be transported on iron rollers over a roadway paved with beach pebbles, then ferried to the ship on ice. But before the woman could be fully secured, the ice beneath it broke and the meteorite began to sink, pulling the ship down with it. By slowly hoisting the massive rock up on chains, the men were able to swing it over the side

of the ship and into the hold. There was still one more prize, the biggest meteorite of all, which the Innuite dubbed the tent, a boulder so big and heavy that Perry would need a stronger ship and all of his experience as a civil engineer to extract it. He settled for transporting the two smaller ones to New York in the summer. He returned for the iron monster the

following year. Perry's crew and every able bodied man from the nearby village began digging the meteorite out of the frozen ground with picks and hydraulic lifts, while Peery supervised as it rose slowly inch by inch. It grew upon us as Niagara grows upon the observer, and there was not one of us unimpressed by the enormousness of this lump of metal, Terry wrote, the struggle to move the

huge meteorite proved to be a lesson in physics. Never have I had the terrific majesty of the force of gravity and the meaning of the terms momentum and inertia so powerfully brought home to me, he recalled. After pausing work during the winter, the crew built a sturdy bridge from the shoreline to the ship. They mounted a railroad like track, and then secured a rolling car to it.

The meteorite was lifted by Jack's into the car and covered with the American flag, while Peery's four year old daughter dashed a little bottle of wine over it and named it Aguito. Perry wrote. Then the meteorite was slowly pulled over the bridge and lowered into the hold for its voyage to New York. In his book, Peery includes several letters from eminent geologists asserting the scientific value of the meteorites, as well as reports on their chemical composition

and physical appearance. But for all the attention Perry paid to his precious rocks, he neglected to mention that he also brought to New York, some of his in white helpers and their families, including an eight year old boy named Minic. Let's take a break here, We'll be right back.

Perry Ship the Hope arrived at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in late septemb Twenty thousand people, each paying a quarter, came to see the giant meteorite and the six inuite, still wearing their fur clothing in the late summer heat. In addition to Minic and his father Shook, there were Nootka, his wife Attagona, their twelve year old daughter Avia, and a young man named Wikasakak. Pierri had brought the inuite to New York at the request of anthropologist Franz Boas,

then the museum's assistant curator for ethnology. Boaz pioneered the theory of cultural relativism, a framework that argues that the values of one culture should not be evaluated based on the values of another. That went against the prevailing belief that human cultures existed on a spectrum from primitive to advanced, and implicitly that white Western cultures were the most advanced in the world. Here's Ken Harper France. Boast is viewed

as the father of modern anthropology. Are very much remembered today as an anti racism activist and did a lot of good work. But the Inuit and the other people are studied by most of these scientists were subjects. They were subjects for study. The New York Times reported that the Inuite would go to the Museum of Natural History, where they will arrange the exhibit of their implements that Perry had collected. They planned to return home on Perry's

next expedition. The museum held an informal reception for the Inuite, who were by then living in the basement. Matthew Henson acted as interpreter. When the throngs of visitors were told the Inuite were not actually on exhibition, they had to content themselves with a glimpse through a grating above the basement, and many lay prone peering through the spaces and the

hopes of catching a glimpse. The Times wrote, between giggling at their unfamiliar clothing and mimics quote unspellable and unpronounceable name. The Times reporter mentioned that some of the six were not well. The climate didn't agree with them, The paper said, less than a month later, all six were rushed to Bellevue Hospital at Taganhaw was so weak with pneumonia that she had to be carried on a stretcher, while the

others appeared to have the flu. Franz Boas explained to a reporter from the New York Sun that the inuite had no immunity to urban diseases. When they come into this climate, they are the prey of every germ that exists, he said. Minics seemed to have a milder case, but the five adults and the young girl never fully recovered, despite moving out of the museum's basement and into the Bronx home belonging to the museum's building Superintendent William Wallace.

In February, Menick's father, Heihuk died at Bellevue. Three others died that spring, only with Kasakak returned home on Perio's ship in July eight. Now an orphan, Menick continued to live with the Wallace family. He missed his father dearly, but his loss was alleviated somewhat by the funeral service Wallace had arranged. The staff of the museum thought it was important to bury casual and have a funeral for

the benefit of impressing young Munich. So they held this ceremony on the grounds of the American Museum of Natural History, where they conducted against the New York version of a traditional Inothuid burial. As he grew up, Minick learned English, rode his bicycle, and befriended the Wallace's son, Willie, who was about his own age. He excelled in high school and competed in an ice skating competition. Nine years went by before Minnick learned of the deep betrayal that would

shatter his trust. The William Wallace and the museum had held an elaborate ceremony for Hishook back in Franz Boas never actually intended to bury him. Instead, he had planned to add Hishook's body to the museum's collection all along. At the funeral service, the museum staff had wrapped a log in cloth and placed a mask at its head to mimic his Shook's body. The ceremony was held at dusk,

and they kept Minnick well back from the casket. Wallace later told a newspaper reporter the boy never suspected, so where was his father's body? The museum had retrieved it and brought it to Wallace's farm west of Albany, New York. Yeah, little building that straddled the stream that went through the property, and that was a de fleshing plant. Museum specimens were sent there, and unfortunately Minick's father, Fratial, was sent there

and his body was de fleshed in this little building. Basically, they ran water continually over the body to strip the flesh from the bones, and then the bones were sent back to the American Museum of Natural History. The three other Inuits bones also ended up at the museum. The newspaper reports had mentioned the museum's plans. Minick remained unaware of what had happened until seven, when he somehow learned

his father was at the museum. He demanded that the museum returned his father's remains so he could bury them properly in Greenland. But Wallace, who might have been able to help him convince museum officials, had been fired a few years earlier for taking bribes. As for Robert Peery, he had washed his hands of the inuite the moment they arrived at the museum. He refused to take men at home. Then Menick took his sad story to the media.

The bad publicity convinced the Periarctic Club that something had to be done. Peery was at just that time on his quest to reach the North Pole, and the public relations nightmare that might greet him when he returned would cost them all. Herbert Bridgeman, one of the founders of the Periarctic Club, arranged for Menick to return to Greenland on Pery's regularly scheduled supply ship in nine His father's

remains stayed at the museum. He arrived back with just the clothes on his back, and he was like a fish out of water. He had lost his son doing skills. He had lost his language. He spoke only English. Manick was eighteen or nineteen years old, the age when his peers would already be starting families and providing for them

by hunting. He relearned his native language, and for a while he worked as a guide and interpreter for Perry's former assistant, Donald McMillan on an expedition north of Ellesmere Island. But unfortunately for Munich, he was still neither fish nor foul. When he had been in New York, he longed for the Arctic the Arctic that he viewed as his home, but which he did not understand. When he was back

in the Arctic, he longed for New York. Menck never felt quite at home in Greenland following his return in nineteen o nine. Several years later, restless and without prospects, he decided to go back to the US and look for employment. But by then the world had changed. World War One was ripping Europe apart. Pierre's triumph at the Pole and his bitter feud with his rival Frederick Cooke

seemed like a story from the distant past. Polar adventurers turned towards Antarctica to claim their fame, a fact clearly illustrated by Sir Ernest Shackleton's heroic rescue of his entire crew from shipwreck. In nineteen six, Menck began working as a lumberjack at a logging camp in northern New Hampshire. There he befriended another worker named Afton Hall, and when blogging season ended in spring, Menick stayed with Hall and

his parents at their farm. As Ken Harper writes, Menick seemed to have finally found a home where he felt loved and cared for a community where he felt like he belonged, but it was not to last. Menick died in nineteen eighteen in the influence of pandemic, but instead of being buried in an unmarked mass grave, the fate of many of the flu's victims, the Halls laid Menic to rest in the local cemetery, where you can still

visit his grave. While the three Cape York meteorites remain at the American Museum of Natural History, the bones of Menic's father and his companions are no longer there. As museums began to reckon with their unethical collection practices of the past, officials repatriated the remains of the four Inhuite. They were finally buried in their home village, which is all Menic had wanted. The Quest for the North Pole

is hosted by Me cat Law. This episode was researched and written by Me, with fact checking by Austin Thompson. The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy and Tyler Clang. The supervising producer is Dylan Fagan. The show is edited by Dylan Fagan. For transcripts, a glossary, and to learn more about this episode, visit Mental flaws dot com slash podcast, The Quest for the North Pole is a production of

I heart Radio and Mental Flaws. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, check out the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more podcasts from my heart radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.