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The kind heart at the North Pole TEXT
Thuy Anh Nguyen
133 years ago, an expedition set out to reach the northernmost place on Earth. The African-American Matthew Henson was part of the team. He may well have been the first human being at the North Pole. It was 1887 and Matthew Henson had just met a man in a haberdashery who introduced himself as Robert Peary. The latter was looking for an assistant to accompany him on his travels. Henson agreed, unaware that two decades later they would be trooping 665 kilometers together – until they thought they had reached the most northerly point on our planet. Matthew Alexander Henson was born on August 8, 1866, in Maryland, during a turbulent time for African-Americans. The Civil War had ended just a year earlier. At the age of twelve, following the death of his parents, Henson hired on to the Katie Hines as a cabin boy and traveled to Europe, Asia and Africa. When he returned to Washington D.C., the now 21-yearold Henson met Robert Edwin Peary, a U.S. Navy engineer ten years his senior. For the next two years, Henson accompanied Peary to Nicaragua to help with his surveying work. Henson must have made a big impression on Peary because, rather unusually for the time, he re-hired him for his next project. Peary had an ambitious goal that led him to disregard, temporarily, the social conventions underpinning interactions with African-Americans. He had set his heart on being the first person to reach the North Pole. Henson was invaluable for the expedition team. His skills as a craftsman enabled him to build and maintain the sleds. From the Inuits he had learned how to survive in the Arctic. He became a gifted dog sledder. Peary wrote that he “is probably a better dog-driver, than any other man living, except some of the best of the Eskimo hunters themselves.” Henson not only adapted the strategies of the Inuit people. He also learned their language and way of life. And he became their friend. They dubbed him “Mahri Pahluk”: Matthew the Kindhearted. Starting in 1891, Henson and Peary undertook several expeditions to Greenland that
included forays towards the North Pole. With temperatures plunging to minus 50° Celsius, the Arctic is simply too harsh. On one of the expeditions, Peary lost eight toes. In 1908 they resolved to make one final attempt. In September Peary and Henson arrived on their vessel The Roosevelt at the very northern tip of Canada, and spent the long Arctic winter storing their supplies on Ellesmere Island. At the end of February 1909, the team of 24 men, 19 sleds and 133 dogs embarked on their journey across the frozen Arctic Ocean. Ahead of them lay an approximately 665 kilometer trek to the Pole. During the first few days, they made scant progress. Pack ice had accumulated along coastlines into meter-high mounds. The ice kept cracking and breaking away, sometimes drifting up to ten kilometers to the south – in the opposite direction to the Pole. Channels of open water blocked their path. The winds tore at their faces, snowstorms sapped the explorers’ strength and morale. “We crossed several leads, mostly frozen over, and kept on going for over twelve hours. The mileage was small and, instead of elation, I felt discouragement . . . I was as tired out as I have ever been,” Henson was to write in his autobiography. Travel became easier from the third week onwards. En route, Peary repeatedly sent team members back. This was a common strategy back then: he tapped their strength and manpower and then dispensed with them to reduce the team’s weight and cargo requirements. No one knew for certain if or when they would have to bow out. When one member was dispatched back to base, Henson wrote: “My heart stopped palpitating, I breathed easier, and my mind was relieved. It was not my turn yet. I was to continue onward.” On April 1, just before the 88th parallel, Peary sent back a man for the last time. It was Captain Bartlett, the team’s best navigator. This decision was to prompt many a question later. In the end Peary, Henson and four Inuit were left: Ootah, Egingwah, Seegloo and Ooqueah. They covered the remaining 240 kilometers at record-breaking speed. As the sled driver, Henson forged ahead. On April 6, he assessed
