Currently Reading #1
A children's biography of an Arctic explorer
G’morning, friends,
I’m about halfway through the book Snow Baby: The Arctic Childhood of Admiral Robert E. Peary’s Daring Daughter, by Katherine Kirkpatrick. And this is probably going to be surprising to not a single person other than myself, but it turns out that I find stories about real-life Arctic exploration really, really irritating?
The focus of this book, of course, is not on Robert Peary. But boy oh boy, it’s the details about his actions that resulted in an early-morning tirade by yours truly. It… was not a relaxing way to start the day. I did manage to refrain from flinging the book out the window into a snowbank, so I’m counting it as a win, especially because it’s an interlibrary loan and I’d rather not spend money on this nonsense.
Anyway, this is the section that set me off:
The great brown stones had split from a single flaming mass. According to Inuit legend, the evil spirit Tornarsuk hurled a woman, her dog, and her tent out of the sky. The “woman” stone had resembled a woman seated at her sewing. But over time, Inuit had chipped pieces out of the great iron stones to make knives and spear points, altering the meteorites’ shapes.
Peary saw no reason why he shouldn’t take the meteorites from Greenland. According to him, the Inuit no longer needed the iron meteorites because then could now trade for metal knife blades.
I just. That’s great, you complete toolbox. You come in, take resources that weren’t remotely yours, and then are like, “Oh, sure, it’s fine, because now the people who were living with and using said resources can PAY ME FOR THE RESOURCES THAT I STOLE FROM THEM.”
Also, after he carted the meteorites back to the States, he sold them for $40,000—about a million dollars in today’s money—and the book doesn’t say, but my guess is that the Inuit didn’t see a penny of it.
Congrats, Robert E. Peary, you stink.
And then, on the next page, I hit this:
On the forward deck, the Inuit gathered around Matt Henson, a great favorite of theirs. They admired his dark skin and considered him one of their own. He’d been the only one of Peary’s men to learn their language, Inuktitut.
UGHHHHHHHHHH. I mean, am I surprised that none of the white explorers bothered to learn the language of the folks whose space they were invading? No. But good lord.
And THEN there’s a whole thing about him bringing Inuit “volunteers”—I’m using scare quotes because… is it truly volunteerism when you say yes after being told that you’ll be compensated with weapons and tools at the end of your service?—back to the States to be studied (gross) and most of them died and Kirkpatrick tells that part of the story like this:
Sadly, soon after reaching New York, all but two of the group died from illnesses that they had not developed resistance to.
But Wikipedia—describes it thusly:
Peary left the people at the museum when he returned with the Cape York meteorite in 1897, where they were kept in damp, humid conditions unlike their homeland. Within a few months, four died of tuberculosis; their remains were dissected and the bones of Qisuk were put on display after Minik was shown a fake burial.
Minik, who was a child at the time, said later in an interview:
Our people were afraid to let them go, but Peary promised them that they should have Natooka and my father back within a year, and that with them would come a great stock of guns and ammunition, and wood and metal and presents for the women and children … We were crowded into the hold of the vessel and treated like dogs. Peary seldom came near us.
I took a look at Wikipedia’s online reference on this, and based on what I read there, it looks a whole lot to me like Kirkpatrick skated over some truly horrifying details in order to tell a RAH RAH LOOK HOW COOL THIS VICTORIAN WHITE LADY GIRLBOSS’S LIFE WAS story. So, like, good job perpetuating a supremely incomplete and gross narrative?
Ugh and also bah.
And on that cheery note, I’m going to go lie on the floor for a while.
I’ll talk to you soon.
xoxoxoxoxo,
Leila
Oh, siiiiiiiiiiiigh. Since the pub date on this one is 2007, she can maybe get a pass, but THESE IGNORED DETAILS are the main reasons I really struggle with nonfic published before, say, 2015 - there just wasn't a lot of effort with accurate inclusivity for so many authors before then. And, of course, she's just written TONS of nonfiction books that I'd now blanket consider suspect, AND she's an SCBWI mentor (which, honestly, tracks). How disappointing.
Oh, Leila - Peary sucks! He's one of the worst - a total ass and definite liar. (He never reached the Pole and honestly got as far as he did only because of Henson & the Inuit guides they had with them).
Also - hard agree with Tanita on the approach the author took here. You could very much write a critical book about Peary that would acknowledge how lousy he was while still telling the story of his daughter. (Does the book mention the many illegitimate children he and his party left behind in the Arctic?)
Nansen and Amundsen both worked at learning the local language (Nansen was more successful on that) and meeting the Inuit as equals. They were both Norwegian though and I think the Americans in particular were just arrogant jerks.
I promise, there are way better books out there and waaaaaay better polar explorers. Personally, I've always preferred the groups that went to the South Pole - the only lives they could destroy were their own.