He Wanted His Father's Body Back

The Date: September 1897

Who: American Explorer Robert Peary, African-American Matthew Henson, the crew of the ship Hope and six Inuits, known then as Eskimos, including the 7-year-old boy Minik, and his father, Qisuk. During his several voyages to the Arctic, Peary's quest was to reach the North Pole.

Years later Minik told a reporter from The World about the day he first spotted Peary's ship looming in the distance around Cape York: ''I had never seen anything bigger than my father's kayak. The big ship brought to our little village more white men than we had ever seen. I lived in a little igloo with my father. My mother was dead, and I had no brothers or sisters. And so I loved my dear father very much.''

A 100 ton meteorite was on deck, brought back from the Arctic. During the  voyage, the Hope was tossed by fierce, wild seas, and the Inuit thought they had been cursed for allowing the meteorite to be removed from its native soil.  After anchoring in New York City they, dressed in sealskin coats trimmed with polar bear fur, suffered sweltering heat.

Peary let Franz Boas and experts at the American Museum of Natural History study them. The Inuits at first had quarters in the Museum attic but moved to the basement to escape the heat. Not part of an official exhibit, they were on view for special museum guests. Then they were moved to Bellevue.

At first Minik was a cheerful boy and was attracted to the city lights more than he had ever been to the Northern Lights. He thought New York City was  “like a land that we thought to be just like heaven” and he laughed when he saw bicycle riders in Central Park, but that was not to last. Their bodies encountered germs that couldn't survive in the frigid Arctic and with no immunity all six became ill, most dying of tuberculosis. Minik's father died and another returned to Greenland. Minik survived but mourned his father's death. He was alone, an alien in a big city. (The Eskimo deaths were a public relations disaster for Peary.)

To The San Francisco Examiner he said of his father, ''He was dearer to me than anything else in the world, especially when we were brought to New York, strangers in a strange land. You can imagine how closely that brought us together; how our disease and suffering and lack of understanding of all the strange things around us . . . made us sit tremblingly waiting our turn to go, more and more lonesome and alone, hopelessly far from home.''

Had it not been for one man, William Wallace, the Museum superintendent, he might have been abandoned to the whims of fate. The Wallace family adopted him and saw to his upbringing and had him educated at Manhattan College. Still, as one newspaper reported, he "felt like a prisoner" in the city. A sorrow lay deep in his bones and he couldn't escape the sense of being an outsider. At Manhattan College he felt he was ''a freak to those about me.''

This may have been partly fostered by his discovery  that museum officials never gave his father the proper burial they claimed. Instead, Qisuk's body became part of the museum collection. Discovering the ruse, Minik became deeply upset.  He continually tried to reclaim his father's body, only to be rebuffed by the Museum. Eventually Minik went home.

In 1909 (the year Peary claimed to reach the North Pole) Minik sailed back to Greenland  A New York paper, The Eagle, wrote "The appeal of the Eskimo, Mene [Minik] Keeshoo, brought here by Commander Peary and left on the lee shore of New York, to be returned to his native North Greenland again proves that home is a lodestone’s attraction for the most uncivilized of God’s creatures.”

Modern civilization, however, had eaten its way into his expectations.  Minik relearned his native language, becoming a guide and translator, and hoped to lead an Inuit expedition to the North Pole. His marriage to an Eskimo failed.His nostalgia for home came up against the harsh conditions of the frozen waste.  Not at home in New York nor Greenland, in 1916 he returned to the United States.  Unable to find work, he eventually became a lumberjack in Pittsburg, New Hampshire, where Afton Hall and family took him in, and perhaps with people who cared about him he was briefly happy.

Then the Plague of 1918 came. It was far more horrible than this children's nursery rhyme about it:

I had a little bird, it's name was Enza
I opened up the window and in flew Enza

It spread around the world. The French called it the Spanish disease. The Spanish called it the French disease. Even as far west as remote California, the President of the University of California, Berkeley, had printed in the Daily Californian, “Act intelligently and do not become alarmed. FEAR reduces your resistance. … KEEP AWAY FROM ALL CROWDS. AVOID STREET CARS … DO NOT ATTEND PARTIES OF ANY NATURE … GO TO BED AT ONCE if you feel sick … INFLUENZA IS A PERSONAL CONTACT DISEASE.” Sailors in San Francisco Bay were quarantined.

That year, in rural New Hampshire, Minik came down with influenza and died and was buried in New Hampshire. He was thought to be 27 or 28.

Give Me My Father's Body is a book published by Kenn Harper, married to an Inuit.  He wrote the book after learning Minik's story from a family member. In 1993 He finally succeeded in having Minik's father and the other Inuits returned to near Qaanaaq in Thule, Greenland. Etched on their gravesite plaque is a simple Inuit inscription "Nunaminqnut Uteqihut" ("They Are Home").