| The morning of April sixth
I found we were in the
middle of hummock ice. I
calculated about how far
I had come, and I said to my
self, ‘If I’m not on the Pole,
I’ve crossed it, so I don’t have to
go no further.’ And I said to my
Eskimos: ‘We’re going to camp
here. Make
an igloo. Commander Peary was
forty-five minutes behind. He
came up to us as we were
building the igloo and he says,
‘Well, my boy, how many miles
have we made today?’ And I
answers, ‘Too many, Commander; I
think we crossed the Pole.’ So
the Commander got out his
notebook and figured a bit and
he says, ‘I guess you’re right.”
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Six men walked north over
trackless ice. It was April 6,
1909—just thirty years ago. They
were
farther north than men had ever
been before. They were heading
for the North Pole, and they
were almost there: It was
sub-zero cold.
Four of the six men were
Eskimos. Two were
Americans—Commander Robert E.
Peary and
Peary’s assistant, Matthew A.
Henson. And presently these men
reached the Pole.
Henson is
still
alive. He is 72 years old: the
only sign of his age is two
patches of white hair on his
temples. The
white hair stands out, because
Henson is a Negro. I talked with
Henson only the other day.
“We had been traveling eighteen
to twenty hours out of every
twenty-four,” he said “Man,
that was killing work! Forced
marches all the time. But it was
the only way to make it. From
all
our other expeditions we had
found out that we couldn’t carry
food for more than fifty days,
fifty-five at a pinch. That
meant fifty days from the
minute we said good-by to Cap’n
Bartlett,
133 nautical miles from the
Pole. And those fifty days had
to bring us back, not to where
we left
Bartlett but to camp at Cape
Columbia, 413 miles.
Just thirty years ago two
Americans stood at the top
of the world–the first ones ever
to reach the North Pole.
Today one those men is
still alive…still
recalls the great
adventure.
“We used to travel by night and
sleep in the warmest part of the
day. I was ahead most of
the time with two of the
Eskimos.” “You mean you were in
advance of Peary?” I asked.
“Yes,
it was up to me to break trail.
On some other expeditions I’d be
as much as five days ahead of
Commander Peary, never see him
until we made camp,” he
explained, and added that,
though
most people might think that a
trail in the Arctic would soon
be obliterated by wind and snow,
the opposite is actually true.
The hard-packed tracks of the
sledges stand out plainly for
weeks,
and sometimes months.
“Then,” I
asked, “how could you tell in
what direction to go?”
“I had compasses, one on the
sledge, one on my wrist. But as
we got nearer to the Pole they
wasn’t either of them much good.
So most of the time I judged
direction from the ridges cut by
the wind. Up there, the sastrugi,
the ridges, run east and west.
So
the line due north would cut the
sastrugi at right angles.
“The morning of April sixth
I found we were in the middle
of hummock ice. I calculated
about how far I had come, and I
said to myself, ‘If I’m not on
the
Pole, I’ve crossed it, so I
don’t
have to go no further.’ And I
said to my Eskimos: ‘We’re going
to camp here. Make an igloo.’
“Commander Peary was forty- fi ve minutes behind. He came
up to us as we were building the
igloo and he says, ‘Well, my
boy,
how many miles have we made
today?’ And I answers, ‘Too
many,
Commander; I think we crossed
the Pole.’ So the Commander got
out his notebook and figured a
bit and he says, ‘I guess you’re
right.’ “As a matter of fact,
for about a mile or so, I must
have been going south instead of
north. When you’re up there, any
direction you walk away from the
Pole is south.
“The next day we walked
back a mile, then we
walked a few miles in
every direction. The
Commander took four
observations. Of course
the exact location of
the Pole couldn’t be
figured out to a second, unless
you camped there for months,
taking observations all the
time.
At any rate, we walked around
enough to make certain one
way or another we sure had hit
the Pole. The Commander took
the observations and I made
the notes.”
“I suppose Peary was
tremendously excited,” I
suggested. “He didn’t show it,”
said Henson. “We was all too
tired to show much. I was
worrying mostly about the
journey back. I knew it meant
more forced
marches. As soon as the north
wind began to blow, the ice
would begin to break up and I
was
scared of the open-water
stretches we might have to
cross.”
Commander MacMillan has related
elsewhere, and told in public,
that when Peary arrived
at the Pole, he was too weak
even to raise the American flag
that he had brought with him
especially for that purpose.
According to MacMillan it was
Henson who placed the Stars and
Stripes at the top of the world,
while the leader sat exhausted
on the sledge and feebly waved
his
hand.
“After Peary finished making
his observations,” said Henson,
“he just about collapsed. He
couldn’t walk. We had to put him
on a sledge. Man, that was a
march back! Again traveling
eighteen to twenty hours out of
every twenty-four. And was it
cold!
The Commander says to
me, ‘Matt, don’t work the
Eskimos and the dogs to death.’
I says, ‘I know, Commander, but
we
got to make it.’ “
Matt Henson then told me
something that I had never heard
before. It was an explanation of
Peary’s strange retirement from
the, public scene and from all
further activity in exploration
after
he returned from the Pole. I had
asked one of Peary’s assistants,
the indomitable Commander
MacMillan, how he accounted for
it. MacMillan attributed his
chief ’s seclusion to his
distress
and bitterness over the Dr. Cook
controversy. Henson, who was
closer to his great leader than
any other living man, has
another interpretation. He told
me: “The Commander was never a
well
man from the minute after he’d finished taking those
observations at the Pole. It
seemed to be
an effort for him to speak. All
his strength had been
concentrated on getting to the
Pole. Once
he got there his strength gave
out.
“After we returned to
the United States I only
saw him twice—once, here
in New York. I had
no money. I was broke. You know,
we got no pay on those
expeditions. I got a salary only
while
I was helping him get ready to
go. I had to do something when I
got back to support myself and
my wife. And I was all in
too—too weak, too sickly to work
at a job.
“You know William A. Brady, the
theatrical manager? He made me
an offer to send me out
lecturing. But it seems
Commander Peary didn’t want me
to. I didn’t know what to do, so
I went
to Mr. Brady. Mr. Brady cocks up
the cigar in the corner of his
mouth and says, ‘I’ll take care
of
that.’ Mr.. Brady went ahead and
booked me all over the country
and we never heard any more
from the Commander. I thought he
was mad, maybe, and I
was sorry, but what could I do?
I had to make a living.
After
I’d spoken at several places I
got to Chicago and wired Mr.
Brady I couldn’t go no further.
I was sick. Mr. Brady jumped
a train and come out to Chicago
and he says, ‘You sure are
sick. You go right back to New
York.’ So I had to rest for a
while before I did any more
lecturing.”
“When the tour was all over, I
went to Mr. Brady’s office
to get my money and I said to
him: ‘You take out whatever
you want and give me the rest.’
Mr. Brady said: ‘I don’t want
anything.’ And I said: ‘No, that
isn’t right. So Mr. Brady said:
‘Well, if you insist, give me
twenty-five dollars for cigar
money.’ And I said: ‘Why, after
all you’ve done, that isn’t
anything—you must be joking. You
take what’s fair.’ And
Mr. Brady said: ‘I told you what
I want—twenty-five dollars
for cigars.’ And that is all he
took.”
Around Matt Henson centered a
controversy after
Peary’s return. Certain people
publicly censored the
North Pole’s discoverer because
the man he had chosen to
accompany him on his final
successful dash was colored.
The thought was advanced that he
should have taken one of
his white assistants.
This criticism, I believe, was
unjust. It was disavowed
categorically by at least one of
those white assistants,
Commander MacMillan, who has
said to me and stated in public:
“We had never expected
to go that far. In his letter,
offering me the privilege of
going along, Peary specifically
and
emphatically stated: ‘It must be
understood that you are not to
go to the Pole.’ The same
applies
to Captain Bob Bartlett.”
And MacMillan continued:
“The reason for this was
quite simple and
overwhelming. Henson was
the most useful man of
us all. He was the best
man I’ve ever seen, then
or in the thirty years
since, in the handling
of Eskimos. It was
Henson who trained the
Eskimos for all Peary’s
expeditions. Nobody could get
along with them as well as Matt
Henson.
They’re a merry people, fond of
laughter. Henson, with his flashing white teeth, always had a
laugh in his dark face. The
Eskimos accepted him almost as
one of themselves. Besides,
Henson
was the best man at handling a
sledge and driving a dog team.
And we all noticed that whenever
Peary encountered a difficulty,
Matt Henson was the man he sent
for.”
Henson furthermore had become
adept in the making of sledges.
Peary himself could
speak only a few words of the
Eskimo language, whereas Henson
could speak it fluently.
MacMillan says that it was from
Matt that he
learned his first Eskimo words,
from which
beginning MacMillan has compiled
a grammar
and dictionary of the Eskimo
language.
And here are Peary’s own words
on the
subject of his colored
lieutenant: “Henson, with
his years of Arctic experience,
was almost as
skillful [in ice technique] as
an Eskimo. He could
handle dogs and sledges, and was
a part of the
traveling machine. Had I taken
another member
of the expedition also, he would
have been a
passenger, necessitating the
carrying of extra
rations.”
It was some fifty years ago
that Peary first
worked with Matt Henson. The
Negro had
been a foremast hand on sailing
ships, He had
made perhaps a dozen trips
around the world,
“to almost every port where a
sailing ship
could stick her nose,’” as he
puts it.
In 1887,
the Interoceanic Canal
Commission, which was
investigating the respective
merits of Nicaragua
and Panama for a waterway,
borrowed the
services of young Lieutenant
Robert Edwin
Peary, then an engineer officer
of the United
States Navy. And Peary, who knew
Henson,
took him along to Central
America. On that
surveying trip he found Henson
so resourceful,
so loyal and unfailingly
cheerful, that he kept him
in his employ.
In 1891, Peary finally obtained
from Morris Jesup the means to
carry out a long
cherished
ambition, a voyage of
exploration to Greenland.
Peary took Henson with,
him and there he found the
Negro just as useful as he
had been in the jungles of
Central America.
Thereafter
Matt Henson was with Robert
E. Peary on every one of his
Arctic expeditions and became
literally, indispensable. On two
occasions he saved Peary’s life.
And he became so wise in the difficulties and necessities of
the Arctic that Peary would
often defer to his judgment and
experience. It was Henson who
not only trained the Eskimos
but broke in the dogs. His
skill in driving the formidable
Huskies he ascribes to the fact
that he quickly picked up the
knack of cracking the long
thirty foot
whip. “It’s all in the flick of
the wrist,” he explained.
It was Henson, too, whom Peary
assigned to breaking in white
assistants who were new to the
game. There was a twinkle in the
Negro’s eye as he told me, “The
boys I liked never got their
feet froze.” And he added, “But
it was hard to get some of them
to understand that their feet
were the most important part
about them. Some of them would
get all upset because they froze
their foreheads or their noses.
I says to them, ‘You don’t walk
on your nose or your forehead:
look after your feet.’ Commander
MacMillan never froze his feet
when I was with him. And
when he went out hunting I
always gave him the best Eskimos
and dogs.”
The old Negro smiles as he
contemplates the comfort and
luxury of modern Polar
exploration. “Ours was all
starvation expeditions,” he
says: “By the time Commander
Peary
bought his ship and his
equipment, we had no money left
for big stores of food. About
all we
could take with us was tea,
coffee, sugar, condensed milk,
and kerosene and alcohol for
fuel. For
the rest, we lived mostly on
what we could catch or kill.
Sometimes we had to eat dogs.”
Henson, the only living American
who has ever set foot upon the
North Pole, remains unrecognized
by any
geographical body or scientific
institute
in the land. This is a sore
point with
Commander MacMillan, who says:
“If ever
there was a man who deserves
recognition,
it’s Henson.” Henson has just
one token
of appreciation from a public
body. A few
years ago be was given a silver
loving cup by
the Bronx Chamber of Commerce.
Until a
couple of years ago, Henson was
employed
at the office of the Collector
of Customs
in New York. Pretty dull,
monotonous
work for a man who bad put in
the best
years of his life as an
explorer. “But it gave
me a livelihood,” says the
Negro, “and I
was certainly grateful to
President Taft for
giving me the appointment.”
As a matter of fact, if he had
had his own way, Henson would
still be in the service
to round out his thirty years–so
that he could get a full
pension–but the rules and
regulations compelled his
retirement when he was seventy.
As he completed only twenty-five
years, his pension is smaller.
However, Mrs. Henson works in a
bank and Henson himself is still
called upon from time to time
for lectures. I asked how Mrs.
Henson was able to work in a
bank
and keep their apartment so
immaculate. His reply was, “Oh,
I do that. Cleaning an apartment
is
no difficulty to an old
seafaring man.”
END
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The 4
Eskimos (Inuit)
who went all the
way to the North
Pole |
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