The tragic story of this famous meteorite

Inside the American Museum of Natural History in New York is this enormous iron meteorite. It crashed into Earth here in northwest Greenland around 10,000 years ago as a piece of space debris and for centuries was used to make metal-tipped tools and weapons by a small tribe of indigenous Greenlanders, the Inukwit, until an American explorer seeking fame and fortune dragged it across the Arctic and sailed it to New York to sell to the museum. But this giant piece of iron isn't the only thing brought here on that ship in 1897. Six Inukwit came too after being told they'd return home to the Arctic within the year rich with weapons and tools if they agreed to be studied by the museum. Most of them wouldn't make it back. It's a story of false promises, big ambitions, and one small boy who would grow up to challenge the museum that took everything from For centuries of human history, pretty much the only way to get iron was if it crashed into Earth from space in the form of meteorites. Like here, where 19 iron pieces, including this dagger, were found in Tutankhamen's tomb, which was sealed centuries before smelting technology developed in Egypt. Ancient Egyptians even had a hieroglyphic symbol for meteoric iron, which translates literally to metal of the sky. Indigenous groups in this part of the world were using meteoric iron too, like the Inukwit, sometimes called polar Inuit, who make up the northernmost band of Inuit. The ancestors of the Inuit first came to this part of Greenland around 1000 AD, and the chance existence of meteoric iron here was a crucial part of making this region inhabitable for humans at all. This area north of the Arctic Circle has always been harsh and extremely remote, but the Little Ice Age, which spanned from the 15th through early 19th century, froze ocean access to this region, making it even harder to reach. The Inukwit lived in virtual isolation for centuries, until an expedition led by British explorer John Ross arrived in 1818 and came ashore. When he saw the iron-tipped knives, spears, and harpoons, Ross assumed at first that the metal must have washed up from a shipwreck, until the Inukwit told him it came from a nearby mountain. Ross guessed that this iron mountain must be a crashed iron meteorite. Bad weather prevented the expedition from finding the iron mountain, which Ross later described as the most important mineral production of this country. This was the beginning of an increase in trade with European explorers as northern expeditions continued here throughout the 1800s, several of which tried to find the meteorite, but never could. By the 1890s, the Inukwit had become accustomed to trading with foreign ships for manufactured goods, metal tools, and weapons, and relied less on the meteorite as their sole source of iron, which is how an American explorer hungry for fame and fortune justified his decision to take it. At this time, the foreigner the Inukwit interacted with the most was this man, Robert Peary. He had come to this remote part of northwest Greenland with one goal in mind, reaching the North Pole. Peary was part of an era of European and American exploration in the late 19th century, obsessed with the parts of the map not yet reached by white people, and in the case of the North and South Pole, not known to have been reached by humans at all. He's considered to be the first non-Inukwit to study Greenlandic Inukwit culture and survival methods, and throughout his years of exploring the Arctic, funded by his wealthy family and by groups like the National Geographic Society and Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, now known as the Brooklyn Museum, the Inukwit taught Peary how to survive Arctic conditions and how to travel over the ice using sled dogs. They also worked as expert guides, hunters, dog handlers, and laborers during his Arctic expeditions. From a trade perspective, the relationship was beneficial to the Inukwit, but it was much more enriching for Peary. While the Inukwit got resources like guns, household items, and metal tools from Peary, Peary got furs and ivory from the Inukwit, which, along with other cultural artifacts, he would bring back to New York and sell to support his efforts to reach the North Pole. When Peary's 1894 Arctic expedition failed, he knew he had to come home with something to keep his backers interested. And he knew from stories going back to John Ross in 1818 that the Inukwit had access to a rare iron meteorite, maybe a big one. So in exchange for a gun to an Inuk man who said he knew the location of the Iron Mountain, Peary was led right to it. A lot of this history has been lost to time, but what historians do know is that Peary didn't ask permission for what he did next. After a mostly Inukwit crew excavated two fragments of the meteorite found here and dragged them to Peary's ship using rope and wood rollers, Peary learned of a third, much larger fragment on this nearby island, too heavy to take on his ship. It would take multiple attempts over the next couple of years, returning to Greenland with a much bigger ship and specialized equipment, including heavy-duty jacks and even a custom-built railway, to excavate and then drag this largest meteorite across the Arctic landscape to the edge of the island and finally load the most expensive resource Peary ever extracted from the Arctic onto his ship bound for New York. Careful to frame his interactions with the Inukwit as nothing but good-hearted and without coercion or exploitation, Peary orchestrated a few images about his removal of the tribe's local source of iron by staging this scene, recreating the, as he put it, ancient practice of mining the meteorite for metal, and captioning this photo of the Inukwit who moved it for him as a farewell to the Saviksor, the meteorite, who Peary later wrote happily did all they could But the meteorite wasn't all Peary took from the tribe to impress his backers in New York because an assistant curator for the American Museum of Natural History had asked a special request of Peary, that he bring back an Inuk to be studied at the museum. Peary convinced six Inukwit to come with him, a respected hunter and key provider in the tribe named Tak, who brought a young man named Wisa Kasak, and Kisuk, another skilled hunter who lost his wife to an epidemic brought on by one of Peary's earlier expeditions, who brought with him his seven-year-old son, Minik. Peary didn't just promise to compensate the group handsomely for their journey, he also assured them they'd be taken care of by the museum for their entire stay in New York. But that's not what happened. When Peary's ship with the giant meteorite and six Inukwit on board arrived in the Brooklyn Navy Yard in October 1897, it stirred up a lot of excitement. 20,000 people paid to board the ship and see the people and meteorite Peary had brought back, which he pocketed to fund his further expeditions, and then left on a lecture tour promoting his latest thrilling adventures in Greenland. Leaving the Inukwit in New York to be studied at the American Museum of Natural History, where they were initially forced to live in a damp, hot basement inside the museum. Within days of exposure to the warmer climate and with no immunity from American diseases, they were all hospitalized with respiratory infections. Minik's father, Kisuk, was the first to die. The museum told Minik they buried Kisuk, but that wasn't true. Kisuk's body was dissected and his remains were stored inside the museum for further study. Photos of his brain appeared in this 1901 scientific report. Soon after Kisuk's death, Atangana, Nuktak, and their daughter, Avyak, died of disease too. And Wissar Kasak asked to be sent back to Greenland, which left only Minik alone and the only Inukwit in all of New York City by 1899, just nine years old. Minik had lost all contact with Peary at this point. The explorer never came back for the people he convinced to come to New York and sold their meteorites to the museum for $40,000, an equivalent of more than a million dollars today. It took a few years for the museum to find a way to remove the meteorite from the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which they finally did in 1904, and just like in the Arctic, carefully dragged it through the streets of New York on wood rollers. And then a giant truck pulled by a team of horses all the way to the American Museum of Natural History, where it became a prestige item and major attraction for the museum. There's no record that Peary ever shared the fortune he got from the meteorite with Minik, the boy he brought to the museum and then abandoned. After his father died, Minik was taken in by a museum official named William Wallace and grew up in New York City under Wallace's care. He forgot his native language, Inuktun, and started going by the name Mene Wallace. Eventually, his foster family fell in hard times, and now impoverished, a teenaged Minik started asking questions about his father, Kisuk. And though it's somewhat unclear how, discovered the truth that the officials from the museum had lied to him, and his father's body had been desecrated without Minik's knowledge, and was inside the museum, supposedly in the name of science. Starting in 1907, Minik took to newspapers to tell his story and publicly pleaded that the museum return his father's remains so he could give him a proper burial. They ignored him. The following year, he called on Peary to help him leave New York and sent him to his home in Greenland. Peary said there was no room on his ship. At least not until 1909, when there was suddenly a spot for Minik on one of Peary's ships bound for Greenland. It was right around the time Peary claimed that his recent arctic expedition was the first to reach the North Pole. And Minik was writing in American newspapers about how Peary treated his people when he was a boy, including taking the meteorite, which Peary put aboard his steamer and took for my poor people. I can never forgive Peary, and I hope to see him to show him the wreck he has caused. A few months before Peary returned to the U.S. from his final arctic expedition, Minik was on a ship back to Greenland. Before Minik left, he wrote the biggest regret he had about leaving America, that I must return home alone, leaving the body of my father, who was taken from me, a martyr to the cold-blooded scientific study of your people. When Minik got home to Greenland, he needed to relearn his native language and Inuktitut customs like hunting, kayaking, and dog handling. He'd only been around seven years old when Peary took him to the U.S. after all. He eventually returned to the U.S. in 1916, working as a lumberjack in New Hampshire. He died there two years later, one of the millions of victims of the 1918 pandemic. The museum never answered his repeated calls to return his father's remains. They kept the bodies of all four of the Inukwit who died in their care for almost a century, until new appeals were made by author Ken Harper, who had published Give Me My Father's Body, a deeply researched book about Minik, in 1986. The museum finally gave in to mounting pressure and returned the remains of Kisuk, Nuktuk, Atangana, and Aviak to Greenland in 1993. When we reached out to the American Museum of Natural History for comment, they acknowledged that their role in Peary bringing Minik and the five other Inukwit to New York in 1897 included a series of unethical and unjustifiable actions, especially the morally abhorrent act of misleading Minik and refusing to return his father's remains. Only in October 2023 did the museum finally begin to reckon with the more than 12,000 human remains it's kept going back to the 1800s, and committed to removing all human remains from its display cases. But the meteorite Peary took is still there. It remains a signature exhibit of the American Museum of Natural History, which the museum has described as the largest meteorite in captivity. A plaque displayed in front of the meteorite includes a passing mention that it was brought to the museum by American explorer Robert Peary. But nowhere in this room will you find a mention or a photo of Minik or Kisuk or any of the six people that Peary left at the museum.