Research Catalog

Title

Minik : the New York Eskimo / Kenn Harper ; foreword by Kevin Spacey.

Author

Harper, Kenn

Publication

• Hanover, New Hampshire : Steerforth Press, [2017]
• ©2017

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

Spacey, Kevin

Description

xv, 286 pages, 48 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map; 21 cm

Summary

"Sailing aboard a ship called Hope, celebrated explorer Peary entered New York Harbor with peculiar "cargo": six Polar Inuit intended to serve as live "specimens" at the American Museum of Natural History. Four died within a year. One managed to gain passage back to Greenland. Only the sixth, a boy of seven or eight with a precociously solemn smile, remained. His name was Minik. This significantly revised and updated edition of Kenn Harper's landmark book is published on the 120th anniversary of Minik's arrival in New York. Although it provides a much needed corrective to history's understanding of Peary, who was known among the the Polar Inuit as "the great tormenter," it is, at heart, the story of a boy, Minik Wallace, known to the American public as "The New York Eskimo." Orphaned when his father died of pneumonia, Minik never stopped fighting for the dignity of his father's memory, and never gave up his belief that people would come to his aid if only he could get them to understand"--Back cover.

Alternative Title

New York Eskimo

Subject

• Wallace, Minik, 1890 or 1891-1918
• American Museum of Natural History
• Polar Eskimos > New York > Biography
• Polar Eskimos > Biography
• Ethnology > Moral and ethical aspects
• Arctic regions > Discovery and exploration

Genre/Form

• collective biographies.
• Biographies
• Biographies.

Note

• "An Arctic explorer, a museum, and the betrayal of the Inuit people"--Cover.
• "This is a greatly revised and updated version of an earlier work published as Give me my father's body: the life of Minik, the New York Eskimo"--Title page verso.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 263-270) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Arrival in America -- Peary's people -- The iron mountain -- An Inuit orphan in New York -- Minik, the American -- The Wallace affair -- Scam -- "Destined to a life of tears" -- Give me my father's body -- In the interest of science -- "The very pitiful case of Minik" -- "A hopeless condition of exile" -- The polar plan -- Runaway -- "An iron-clad agreement" -- Return to Greenland -- An Inuk again -- The Thule station -- Uisaakassak: the big liar -- Wanted: dead or alive -- The Crocker land expedition -- On thin ice -- Back on Broadway -- The north country -- "They have come home" -- Epilogue.

ISBN

• 1586422413
• 9781586422417

OCLC

• 967763772
• SCSB-10769067

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library