WEBVTT

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[sil.]

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[music]

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[music]

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[music]

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This is the story that takes place in the
time when the world remained unexplored

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and maps was still full of black spaces.

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A story about the prize that was paid
for one man’s dream to reach his goal

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\"The North Pole.\" Already as
a teenager Peary decided to

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become a pole explorer. His goal was
to put an end to half a century

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of disasters arctic expeditions and be
the first man to reach the North Pole.

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When Peary first visited
the pole Eskimos in 1891,

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he felt instantly in love with
both the country and its people.

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For the first time in his life, he was free
from the strict rules of Victorian Society.

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Peary was to spend

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almost 20 years amongst the pole Eskimos,
a period in which he felt most alive.

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During these years, he
maintained a parallel life

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with dearly held families in both Greenland
and back home in the United States.

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Life back in America
became a constant search

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for funding for new expeditions.

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[music]

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[sil.]

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In order to finance his expeditions,

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Peary wrote books, held lectures, and
collected anthropological material

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for his main sponsor, the Museum
of Natural History in New York.

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On one of his first expeditions, Peary
discovered the largest meteoroid stone

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known on earth. He then realized that
his financial struggle could be solved

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if only he manage to bring it
back and sell it in America.

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For two years, he struggle to
get the 90 ton heavy iron stone

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of the permafrost and onboard his ship.

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[music]

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[sil.]

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[music]

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The hope was totem to Brooklyn Navy yard

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early in the morning of October 1st 1897.
During the first day,

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thousands of curious visitors
paid 25 cents in admission

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by the dock gate. The newspapers
reported enthusiastically

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about the little brown man in fur clothes, who
was suffering in the unusually strong heat wave.

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The men from the Museum of Natural History

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were excited but shocked by the commotion.
They had expected one Eskimo at the most,

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but since they hadn’t heard from
Peary for a long time, they were not

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even sure about that. Now, they suddenly

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had a band of six Eskimos.

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[sil.]

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[music]

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[sil.]

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Take a look at the room, make sure everything is
okay, comeback and I will check you in. Okay?

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[sil.]

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[music]

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[music]

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And most of that work was done up in this
laboratory right next to where they were living.

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Some of it was done in Dr. Boes’ house which
was on 82nd street. We are on 77th street now.

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So just a few blocks over
there was an apartment

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where I understand some of
that research was done. Okay.

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[music]

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The intention of 19th Century scholarship
in the Natural History Museums

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was to understand the condition of
all humanity. It wasn’t just enough

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to understand or say Victorian England came
from. In a period of colonialism at Australia

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and Africa and the Americas and Asia,

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were being explored. The world needed to know how
all of these races of humanity fit in together.

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Major empires were being setup around
the world and they had to understand,

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what the natural order was. So
there was this huge thrust.

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And the thinking was the more we can
understand about the way things really are,

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out there in the world and the better science
we can do the better world we gonna run

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in the 19th Century. To be a
good natural history museum you…

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you are studying nature in its broad sense
and that included studying anthropology

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\"The Study of People.\" And in the 19th Century, the study
of people evolved heavily around the study of races

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and how they came to be in the way you
studied races was by studying skulls,

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and there were just not enough skulls
to go around. So as major museums

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all over this country and actually in
Europe as well were… were getting going,

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they would send out expeditions
to get skulls however they could.

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So there were a number of episodes
of scientific expeditions going out,

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many of them under falls pretenses and trying
to bring back the human skeleton material

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that they could, there was quiet a market in
the late 19th Century. A good human skull

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would bring five bucks, a good human
skeleton would bring 20 bucks,

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that’s big dollars. So we even see in the early
history of anthropology, anthropologists,

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whose main interest is in symbolism
or in language or in kinship

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or in social organization. Actually
financing their scientific expeditions

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by collecting the skulls and skeletons
in the villages that they were studying

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to bring back and sell either in the black market or
openly to museums in order to finance the expeditions.

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That’s really one of the early chapters in
the history of anthropology in this country.

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Even Peary collected skulls
and skeletons for the museum.

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He later claimed to a New
York Times journalist

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that he had actually been friends with several of
Eskimos whose bones he had brought back with him

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to the museum.

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In the belief that indigenous
cultures were doomed to disappear,

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anthropologists in a race against time try to collect
and bring back as much as they could to the museums.

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One of the scientists
that worked at the museum

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was Franz Boes, who’d later be regarded
as the father of American Anthropology.

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Franz Boes came to work
at the American Museum

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in the 1890s and he has…

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he had done fieldwork with his central
Eskimo and it was, he had some ideas that…

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that were new, that were different
from 19th Century ideas

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and he was really interested in pursuing the
Eskimo research to extent that he could.

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So he came up with the idea that if we could
instead of send the anthropologists out

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to the remote corners of
the world to study people,

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would it be possible to bring people into New
York where they could work with anthropologists

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and the knowledge could be saved. So that is
I understand is why Boes approached Peary

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and ask him would it be possible for
you to bring some of the Eskimo people

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who are working with you anyway in
Greenland to spend over winter one year,

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and stay at the museum, work with my students,
record the language and then go back home.

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Boes was not a new comer in field.
It had been his job

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to create the so called ethnographic
zoo at the Chicago World Fare of 1893,

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setup to celebrate the 400th
Anniversary of Columbus.

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His task was to bring native
people from all over the world

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and create an environment where they could
perform and play out their culture.

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[music]

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The museum later tried a similar
venture when they placed a pygmy

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in the Bronx zoo, he shared
a cage with an Orangutan.

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[music]

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[music]

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[music]

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[music]

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[sil.]

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[music]

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[music]

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[music]

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[sil.]

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Even if the dying Eskimos

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were a serious drawback for the museum, they
offered a unique opportunity for study.

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A public battle about the
ownership of the body raged

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between the hospital and the museum,
even before Qihuk actually dead.

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Finally an agreement was reached stating that the
museum would get the skeleton and the hospital,

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the tissue and organs. In the twilight,

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a piece of log wrapped in Qihuk’s clothes
was buried in the museum garden.

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Behind Minik’s back,

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Qihuk’s body was then taken
away for preparation.

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The museum tried on countless occasions

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to ask Peary for help with (inaudible)
Eskimos, but he was always

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to busy raising funds for his upcoming
expedition and never replied.

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Early the next summer,

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he retuned to Greenland again, he
stayed on this occasion for three years

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exploring the northern coast in an effort
to find a land bride to the North Pole.

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During this expedition, Peary discovered that
there was no land at the top of the world.

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This meant that the North Pole was
only reachable by a way of its icecap.

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Going way back in time and
you have these almost

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pre-mapped it prior to 1500,

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and there was great concept of
how could the world be balanced?

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Why wouldn’t it spin out of control
if the landmasses were not equal.

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Again, when they found the Arctic continent and they said,
\"Well, there must be a counterweight at the North Pole.

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But of course, you did have fringe
explorations up there and the attempts

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to find the northwest passage and they
kept going further and further north,

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but again as far as the Arctic Ocean, Peary was
obviously the first man to be successfully

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going all the limit to the… to the point
of reaching the North Pole and so.

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Oh, I think there is no doubt about the
importance for Peary in American History.

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I think he was driven by his desire to be…

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to become famous and there was the overwriting
factor in his mind but again due to…

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to protect that concept
is what he suffered the…

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the loss of his toes and the
hardships that he suffered,

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I certainly would have not wanted to live the
life that he did in accomplishing that correct.

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I am repeatedly asked,

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\"What is the charm of the Arctic
region?\" \"Why is it that a man,

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who once goes North, is
anxious to go again?\"

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The charm of the Arctic is the appeal
of primeval world to primeval man.

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Stirring the last drops of the blood of the
cavemen in our veins. It is a physical lust

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of struggling with and overcoming – the journey’s
natural obstacles on the face of the globe.

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And no white man, no man
with red blood in his veins

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– ever goes North, but once
returning, he goes again if possible.

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[sil.]

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One of the interesting facets of early
exploration is that very few explorers

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ever utilized the expertise of Inuit.

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Peary’s… his first year on the
arctic, he (inaudible) over,

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and what he did was to attempt to
learn all he could from the Inuit,

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about their clothing, their mode of travel. It
always sort of intrigued me, we have downstairs,

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we have one of Peary’s sledge. And
over the years we have had many

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arctic explorers, who think they are so
brilliant, they design their own sledges,

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and cross the sea ice in (inaudible)

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fracture. And they always
went back to (inaudible)

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and got the genuine (inaudible) to make their
treks up over the sea ice to the North.

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[music]

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[music]

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[non-English narration]

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[sil.]

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I also had hair like Peary once.
It was all over my body.

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\"Look, a little money!\" People
screamed when they saw my legs.

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But then, after eating polar bear
meat I was saved by the trichinas.

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The trichinas saved me,
so I lost all my hair.

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Up here I also had some Peary
hair, that was red like that.

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It was a little, tiny spot like this.

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That was my mark from him.

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I’m only sorry I lost that hair too.

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[music]

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I’m following the trail

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back to 1900 to find a little Eskimo boy,

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who was adopted by William Wallace long
time ago. He use to live around here,

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so I’m trying to find
the old house but the…

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Old house (inaudible). Yeah.

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No one (inaudible). Okay. There is an old
house over here. Those are old houses

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and up the block (inaudible).

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18 and some year (inaudible)
they put all new building.

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Right, okay. (inaudible) already.

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You never gonna find that little
house that you are talking about,

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never because… The place.

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The place, look, sometime
they change even the place.

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[sil.]

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What about my life? What about my life?

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What about his life? What about his life?

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[music]

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Boes was interested

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in… in studying Eskimo research.
When he went out into the field,

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he was told that Eskimos
are living fossils.

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And this was the time where the
entire history of the world

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was viewed in terms of cultural stages. There
were savages, and there were barbarians,

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and then there were civilized people and you
didn’t crossover that line easily at all.

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So if the Eskimo people were
considered to be living fossils

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from an ice age time living out a
life way that was almost extinct.

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They had zero potential to become
civilized. Boes looked at it differently.

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He thought the environment had a tremendous
impact on the way and which people grew up

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and behaved. So Boes would argue,
you could take an Eskimo child,

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move them to Peking and they would
end up speaking fluent mandarin.

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So what he was trying to do was take Eskimo
people because they are such a dramatic exception

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and such a great difference. He thought if he
could show that they were a functioning society

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working within the limits of a
very difficult environment,

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he could not only develop his ideas about the (inaudible)
race, and how that fit in with language and culture.

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But he could also completely
eradicate this notion of stages

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and human development.

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[music]

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Turn right.

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[music]

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[sil.]

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It was said that when they came to this
country their manners weren’t too good,

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and called them a little savage

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because he would just take his hands
and stuff the food in his mouth

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and then cut it off with a knife. It
took six months and he turned out

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to be a very polite little boy.
And he was a good friend of…

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of the Wallace’s son.

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He did go to Sunday school.

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And he did learn his prayers.

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He didn’t take it too seriously though,
he would start a prayer at the bottom

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of the stairs so that when he
got to the top of the stairs

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he could climb right in bed.

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[sil.]

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Minik went to Sunday
school here, and he sang

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in his native language to the
whole congregation right here.

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And this is the Sunday school attendance book. I marked the places
I found and there’s a lot of kids going to the school here…

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Mm-hmm. And but this is from 1898.

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1898. And here class number six Mrs. (inaudible)
is the teacher. There is many Wallace

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on the bottom. Right, so he
had already Wallace name.

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Yeah, by 1898, he is already here with
Wallace name. So he was here until.

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He is here everyday except for
last two weeks of August.

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He could have been sick again
or maybe back down in New York.

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Wallace had built up a
mini empire in Louisville,

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and became known as a
generous philanthropist.

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He bought several farms. He started a dairy
plant which supported the cities down south

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with fresh milk and butter. On his
summer house, Cold Spring Farm,

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he run a private side business, where
he obtained dead or dying sick animals,

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the remains of which were prepared,
then sold to the museum.

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(inaudible) when I first moved
in this community 20 years ago

00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:04.999
and the first two things people… locals told
me that there is an elephant in the spring

00:41:05.000 --> 00:41:09.999
which may or may not be true. There certainly
was an elephant in the spring at one time,

00:41:10.000 --> 00:41:14.999
and that the house over here
that was really haunted

00:41:15.000 --> 00:41:19.999
and it was haunted by Eskimos.

00:41:20.000 --> 00:41:24.999
And there was one night years ago, it was only a year
or two after purchasing the house and moving here umm…

00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:29.999
that I heard, what sounded very clearly to
me, a voice, it was a calm evening umm…

00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:34.999
and it appeared to be
saying mommy, to me it was

00:41:35.000 --> 00:41:39.999
what it sounded like. Very
brief, but very distinct

00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:44.999
and very unnerving, because I don’t personally believe
in ghosts and haven’t had any experiences like that,

00:41:45.000 --> 00:41:49.999
but say quiet obviously I did hear something
and it was very out of the ordinary.

00:41:50.000 --> 00:41:54.999
Well, I guess they used
to use museum specimens,

00:41:55.000 --> 00:41:59.999
different animals, I have heard of
elephants and things like that,

00:42:00.000 --> 00:42:04.999
but then as the stories told Minik’s father
was also… the bones were cleaned here too.

00:42:05.000 --> 00:42:09.999
Much… Minik surprised later in life, right?

00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:14.999
Minor (inaudible) in the history that
this is somewhere in the vicinities

00:42:15.000 --> 00:42:19.999
where they would bring the bones from the
city for the museum and they would heat them

00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:24.999
again when I heard a steam plant and then they would douse them in the
coldwater and scrape the meat off to clean the bones for display.

00:42:25.000 --> 00:42:33.000
[music]

00:43:55.000 --> 00:43:59.999
I can see that in this book, that
he has taken the brain of Qihuk,

00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:04.999
it could be among the collections he had.

00:44:05.000 --> 00:44:09.999
That is very possible, it’s a standard
process then was to… was to preserve brain

00:44:10.000 --> 00:44:14.999
so that they could then be studied
and measured in the future.

00:44:15.000 --> 00:44:19.999
And Hrdlička was actually fascinated
even obsessed with the techniques

00:44:20.000 --> 00:44:24.999
of how to preserve human brains. So
he actually wrote one 300 page manual

00:44:25.000 --> 00:44:29.999
that’s all about exactly what kind
of formaldehyde you should use,

00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:34.999
and how much of it, and what
size jar you should use,

00:44:35.000 --> 00:44:39.999
and how long this specimen
as they call these brains

00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:44.999
would be preserved. So I can’t
imagine that they would have

00:44:45.000 --> 00:44:49.999
destroyed the brain. I… I imagine that
it must have been saved somewhere.

00:44:50.000 --> 00:44:58.000
[sil.]

00:45:20.000 --> 00:45:24.999
I checked up on the… on the skull and the
brain business, we don’t have any brains

00:45:25.000 --> 00:45:29.999
from… from Greenland in the collection at all. ‘Cause
this couldn’t start working for the Smithsonian

00:45:30.000 --> 00:45:34.999
as a staff member until 1910, but
he was on the outside and working,

00:45:35.000 --> 00:45:39.999
you know, on contracts and doing a few things,
but we think he went up to New York City

00:45:40.000 --> 00:45:44.999
to look at this material. He… he did
anthropology from Schizophrenia studies,

00:45:45.000 --> 00:45:49.999
so there is a scientific reason that
he started getting interested in.

00:45:50.000 --> 00:45:58.000
[sil.]

00:46:00.000 --> 00:46:04.999
Are you the brain collector?
No… no this collection uh…

00:46:05.000 --> 00:46:09.999
stopped actually in the 1940s.

00:46:10.000 --> 00:46:14.999
It was collected over nearly
a hundred years I think by

00:46:15.000 --> 00:46:19.999
the series of (inaudible) professors.

00:46:20.000 --> 00:46:24.999
The last one was picked up in I guess 1944

00:46:25.000 --> 00:46:29.999
and since then it’s been
stored in various places.

00:46:30.000 --> 00:46:34.999
And they… they are in various conditions.
Some are in better conditions than others.

00:46:35.000 --> 00:46:39.999
Different people of different times stored them
in different chemicals. Some of which turned out

00:46:40.000 --> 00:46:44.999
to not be very good for keeping them.
So is there any possibility

00:46:45.000 --> 00:46:49.999
to find some brains of Eskimos, here.

00:46:50.000 --> 00:46:54.999
Here, umm… I’m not sure, uh… the…

00:46:55.000 --> 00:46:59.999
many years ago one of the earlier curators
of the collection, lost the table

00:47:00.000 --> 00:47:04.999
that matches the histories to
which the brains they are.

00:47:05.000 --> 00:47:09.999
So many of these brains they don’t have names on them. We don’t
know who they are? But we have the histories of everyone.

00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:14.999
That was ever part of the brain collection,
(inaudible) all other brains’ histories

00:47:15.000 --> 00:47:19.999
and you can certainly look through them. Okay. I can
find you a place to sit down I suppose. Right, yeah.

00:47:20.000 --> 00:47:24.999
[sil.]

00:47:25.000 --> 00:47:29.999
(inaudible) we have (inaudible)
it’s not just medical doctors

00:47:30.000 --> 00:47:34.999
with their bad handwriting.
German Comedian (inaudible).

00:47:35.000 --> 00:47:43.000
[sil.]

00:48:15.000 --> 00:48:23.000
[music]

00:48:25.000 --> 00:48:29.999
I’d like to look at some skulls.

00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:34.999
All right. Is it real
skulls over there. Yes.

00:48:35.000 --> 00:48:39.999
How much does it cost?
From $300 to about $1000,

00:48:40.000 --> 00:48:44.999
mostly depending on how many teeth
they have. And where are they from.

00:48:45.000 --> 00:48:49.999
Uh… Different places. We get them from medical supply
companies, these days they are very difficult to obtain,

00:48:50.000 --> 00:48:54.999
to buy antique ones. Which
kind of those noses are they?

00:48:55.000 --> 00:48:59.999
Uh… Most of them are from Asia. Do
you have some Eskimo skulls? No.

00:49:00.000 --> 00:49:04.999
No. Indian skull. No. Native
American skulls, I meant. No.

00:49:05.000 --> 00:49:09.999
No. If I want to get some like this
what can I do … where can I get it?

00:49:10.000 --> 00:49:14.999
I have no idea. You have no idea.
I think that Native American

00:49:15.000 --> 00:49:19.999
remains are protected under the law.
I don’t think you can buy

00:49:20.000 --> 00:49:24.999
and sell them. This baby
up there is that real or.

00:49:25.000 --> 00:49:29.999
Yes. You say what’s that?
It’s a human infant skeleton

00:49:30.000 --> 00:49:34.999
or fetal skeleton. They
were prepared in France.

00:49:35.000 --> 00:49:39.999
We bought a number of them from a doctor.

00:49:40.000 --> 00:49:44.999
We sell them for about $5,000 each. Uh…

00:49:45.000 --> 00:49:49.999
Fetus is hard to come by.
Certainly they don’t die

00:49:50.000 --> 00:49:54.999
and as many numbers as adults.

00:49:55.000 --> 00:49:59.999
At least, we like to hope not.
This one is standing in

00:50:00.000 --> 00:50:04.999
what’s called anatomical position.
We also have one in the front window

00:50:05.000 --> 00:50:09.999
that’s set in the fetal position.

00:50:10.000 --> 00:50:18.000
[music]

00:51:00.000 --> 00:51:04.999
I really don’t know that the relationship was
between Minik and Wallace and that’s a huge mystery

00:51:05.000 --> 00:51:09.999
and I wonder if there is any way
to find this out, if Wallace never

00:51:10.000 --> 00:51:14.999
actually officially adopted him.
But there must have been

00:51:15.000 --> 00:51:19.999
affection between them. I mean, they
were like father and son really,

00:51:20.000 --> 00:51:24.999
but it didn’t seem to stop Wallace
from exploiting this tragedy

00:51:25.000 --> 00:51:29.999
to his own end. William Wallace was
very strange and interesting character

00:51:30.000 --> 00:51:34.999
and a man of dubious ethics and morals. Raised
in the five points house of the industry

00:51:35.000 --> 00:51:39.999
in one of the worst sections of New York, and
one of the worst slums probably ever to exist.

00:51:40.000 --> 00:51:44.999
And he rose to be superintendent
of the museum and prodigy

00:51:45.000 --> 00:51:50.000
of one of the richest man
in the United States.

00:53:30.000 --> 00:53:34.999
The story that was published in
one of the newspapers at the time

00:53:35.000 --> 00:53:39.999
when Minik as a teenager went to
museum and found his father’s skeleton

00:53:40.000 --> 00:53:44.999
in a case staring at him you know,

00:53:45.000 --> 00:53:49.999
and I think that whole story is false. I think
that story was concocted by William Wallace

00:53:50.000 --> 00:53:54.999
and perhaps with the assistance
of the newspaper reporter

00:53:55.000 --> 00:53:59.999
as a way to embarrass the
museum as much as possible,

00:54:00.000 --> 00:54:04.999
because that didn’t happen. There isn’t any
evidence that the skeleton was ever put on display

00:54:05.000 --> 00:54:09.999
and knowing the museum’s history I… I
know that it’s very unlikely the skeleton

00:54:10.000 --> 00:54:14.999
would have been put on display and the way it described
in that article with this brass joints or whatever,

00:54:15.000 --> 00:54:19.999
that the skeletons in the museum were not
mounted that way ever. They weren’t mounted

00:54:20.000 --> 00:54:24.999
with brass joints. I think Wallace told
Minik what had happen to his father.

00:54:25.000 --> 00:54:29.999
Minik found out from Wallace. But
Wallace in trying to get his

00:54:30.000 --> 00:54:34.999
job back or and trying to save
himself threatened to expose

00:54:35.000 --> 00:54:39.999
what the museum had done with Minik
and so Wallace went to the papers

00:54:40.000 --> 00:54:44.999
with this horrific story about how they pretended to bury
his father but instead they buried a log with a mask on it.

00:54:45.000 --> 00:54:49.999
And instead were preparing his father’s
body for exhibition in the museum.

00:54:50.000 --> 00:54:55.000
Anyway he sensationalized and
the yellow press loved it.

00:55:55.000 --> 00:55:59.999
I mean this was a gross violation
of Christian beliefs at that time.

00:56:00.000 --> 00:56:04.999
This wasn’t just indigenous beliefs that were being
violated but the idea that they would take a body,

00:56:05.000 --> 00:56:09.999
and dissect it and take the brain out and boil
the bones so that the skeleton could be removed

00:56:10.000 --> 00:56:14.999
and installed in the collection. This
was all violations of Christian belief,

00:56:15.000 --> 00:56:19.999
and New Yorkers were horrified
to read about this.

00:56:20.000 --> 00:56:24.999
I mean, I think Minik genuinely, you
know, had a lot of these feelings

00:56:25.000 --> 00:56:29.999
of wanting his father’s body back and was very
resentful of disrespect that the museum had shown

00:56:30.000 --> 00:56:34.999
his father’s remains. But at the same
time, he was grossly exploited by Wallace

00:56:35.000 --> 00:56:39.999
as a way not to help Minik but to get back at
the museum and I think he did a lot of damage

00:56:40.000 --> 00:56:45.000
to that young Eskimo.

00:59:10.000 --> 00:59:14.999
[music]

00:59:15.000 --> 00:59:19.999
[sil.]

00:59:20.000 --> 00:59:24.999
The only problem

00:59:25.000 --> 00:59:29.999
was that Peary’s ship was the
sole vessel going that far north.

00:59:30.000 --> 00:59:34.999
Peary was now in his mid 50s and marked
by physical and emotional hardships.

00:59:35.000 --> 00:59:39.999
He knew that this was his last chance to reach the
pole and he had no wish to have Minik run around

00:59:40.000 --> 00:59:44.999
and gossip to the Eskimos about how
badly they’ve been treated in America.

00:59:45.000 --> 00:59:49.999
So once again Peary turns back on Minik

00:59:50.000 --> 00:59:54.999
and refuses Minik’s request saying
that the ship is overcrowded.

00:59:55.000 --> 00:59:59.999
In the summer of 1908, Peary bids
farewell to President Theodore Roosevelt

01:00:00.000 --> 01:00:04.999
and the New York Society and
set sail for his last attempt.

01:00:05.000 --> 01:00:10.000
[sil.]

01:00:50.000 --> 01:00:55.000
[music]

01:01:25.000 --> 01:01:33.000
[sil.]

01:04:05.000 --> 01:04:10.000
[sil.]

01:05:20.000 --> 01:05:24.999
[music]

01:05:25.000 --> 01:05:29.999
After over 20 years of struggle,
Peary reached his goal.

01:05:30.000 --> 01:05:34.999
In his diary, he writes to his
wife, \"Made good at last,

01:05:35.000 --> 01:05:39.999
the Pole is mine.\" For Peary this signaled the
end to his lifelong love affair with the Arctic.

01:05:40.000 --> 01:05:44.999
As his health deteriorated (inaudible),
his wife refused let him return.

01:05:45.000 --> 01:05:49.999
He was never again to live the simple life.

01:05:50.000 --> 01:05:54.999
Never again to see his Eskimo wife
or his two sons, Kale and Samik(ph).

01:05:55.000 --> 01:06:03.000
[sil.]

01:06:30.000 --> 01:06:38.000
[sil.]

01:06:50.000 --> 01:06:54.999
Oh, you. Good to see you. You look great.

01:06:55.000 --> 01:06:59.999
I came here when I was

01:07:00.000 --> 01:07:04.999
two weeks old and I spend every summer

01:07:05.000 --> 01:07:09.999
here for 20 years.

01:07:10.000 --> 01:07:14.999
I was only about 20 months old when he died

01:07:15.000 --> 01:07:19.999
so I don’t have any memories of him
personally. But I was raised by

01:07:20.000 --> 01:07:24.999
his wife and his daughter.
And his personality…

01:07:25.000 --> 01:07:29.999
he had a very strong personality, you can
imagine. And that come… came through,

01:07:30.000 --> 01:07:34.999
you know, in a very positive
way from his life (inaudible)

01:07:35.000 --> 01:07:39.999
that I know him and you can feel him here.

01:07:40.000 --> 01:07:44.999
[sil.]

01:07:45.000 --> 01:07:49.999
We… we knew all but it was never discussed.

01:07:50.000 --> 01:07:54.999
We knew that… that had been

01:07:55.000 --> 01:07:59.999
a son born up there, we didn’t know… I
didn’t know at that time that they were two.

01:08:00.000 --> 01:08:04.999
But it was never…

01:08:05.000 --> 01:08:09.999
it was never talked about. Which is why

01:08:10.000 --> 01:08:14.999
when both my mother and grandmother
were gone and could no longer be

01:08:15.000 --> 01:08:19.999
hurt by this, then I said, \"Hey,
I got a family up there.\"

01:08:20.000 --> 01:08:24.999
And I went up and… and solemn and
immediately felt the kinship.

01:08:25.000 --> 01:08:33.000
[sil.]

01:10:00.000 --> 01:10:04.999
[music]

01:10:05.000 --> 01:10:09.999
Four months after Minik’s return to America
he applies for American Citizenship.

01:10:10.000 --> 01:10:14.999
He has now taken his
former enemy Peary’s name

01:10:15.000 --> 01:10:19.999
Minik Peary Wallace, describing himself

01:10:20.000 --> 01:10:25.000
as a white man.

01:10:40.000 --> 01:10:44.999
He came here from Boston.
They use to go to Boston

01:10:45.000 --> 01:10:49.999
and hire possibly immigrants

01:10:50.000 --> 01:10:54.999
and like that to come
and work in the woods.

01:10:55.000 --> 01:10:59.999
That’s how he had to come to Pittsburgh. You know, in
this area, I think most people were all treated the same.

01:11:00.000 --> 01:11:04.999
Mm-hmm. There were a lot
of different nationalities

01:11:05.000 --> 01:11:09.999
that came here to work.
Afton was a bachelor,

01:11:10.000 --> 01:11:14.999
lived in with his mother and father
and they became close friends,

01:11:15.000 --> 01:11:19.999
he and Minik and I think they treated
him just like one of the family

01:11:20.000 --> 01:11:24.999
but when the flew epidemic hit

01:11:25.000 --> 01:11:29.999
that was it.

01:11:30.000 --> 01:11:38.000
[sil.]

01:12:40.000 --> 01:12:45.000
Right here, right.

01:13:05.000 --> 01:13:10.000
[non-English narration]

01:13:30.000 --> 01:13:35.000
[sil.]

01:14:30.000 --> 01:14:38.000
[music]

01:18:35.000 --> 01:18:40.000
[sil.]