Was Robert Peary a pedophile?

Robert Peary was America’s most famous Arctic explorer.

He had a wife and two children in the U.S., but he also had two children in northern Greenland with a woman of the Inughuit named Aleqasina. She was in fact the wife of one of the ablest guides and hunters in the district, Piugaattuq.

Peary’s affair with Aleqasina probably began in 1896 when she was about 15 years old. She may have been married to Piugaattuq by that time, as it was customary for women to marry quite young, perhaps because there was a scarcity of women in the region.

By 1913, according to the diary of another explorer in the district, Aleqasina had four children – two girls fathered by Piugaattuq, and two boys, Saamik and Kaali, fathered by Robert Peary.

Piugaatuq apparently did not discourage his wife’s relationship with Peary, for whom he worked for much of the time. The explorer provided Piugaattuq with generous payment for his services: guns, ammunition, food and clothing, far in excess of what he paid the other hunters.

But that apparently was not enough for Peary. If Aleqasina was not available, someone else would suffice. Peary moved the Inughuit around northwestern Greenland and even Ellesmere Island like so many chattels. Sometimes whole families were moved, other times parts of families. 

Jerome Allen kept a private diary while on the Crocker Land Expedition, an expedition led by Peary’s young acolyte Donald Macmillan, after Peary had left the district for good.

Allen wrote in 1914, “Ahnadooah [probably Arnaluaq], Kudlukto’s wife, who is about 19 … has a baby which is a spoiled child. She was Peary’s wife pro-tem on his last trip [1908-1909], when she was but 14.”

Fourteen years old! Robert Peary was 52 at the time! 

This liaison was not a secret. Dr. Harrison Hunt, on the same expedition, wrote, “When Peary was last north, he took a younger woman on his trip, but when he returned he went off in the hills with his former wife [Aleqasina], and the result was the second son [Kaali].”

Hunt is correct on all except the date of the second son’s birth, for Kaali Peary’s birthdate is recorded as June 6, 1906. 

And there is other evidence.

Peary’s great rival as a polar explorer, Dr. Frederick Cook, was at Etah, a staging point for exploration in northern Greenland, in 1909 on his own alleged return from the North Pole. He questioned the Inughuit about what Peary had done there the previous year on his way farther north. 

In his notes, Cook wrote: “The Roosevelt [Peary’s ship] went northward with two young girls for P. cabin. Annodou and Evllie, both 13 years old, crying bitterly, were taken from their mothers and families, forced on the ship and taken north for the lust of him who seeks the pole … Illegitimate children are scattered among the tribe … and at least two should bear the name of Peary … Seeking to avoid a more liberal distribution of Peary offspring has thus taken two young girls of 13.”

The first girl mentioned, Annodou, is certainly the girl mentioned in Jerome Allen’s diary as Ahnadooah. But Cook claims she was even a year younger – only 13. 

And he suggests that Peary, concerned about creating even more offspring in the district, was purposely taking girls so young that they were unlikely to become pregnant!

Back in the U.S., later in 1909 and aware that the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, one of Peary’s many patrons, was about to honour Peary, Cook wrote to Dr. Franklin Hooper, director of that institution, to call Peary out for his wrong-doings and argue for “cleanliness in public life.”

“You are about to honour Peary,” he wrote.

“You invite our wives and daughters to come and do honor to a man under a cloud of indecency. We have a right to expect that the Brooklyn Institute, in its efforts to uplift man by the high aim of arts and science, gives us clean words from clean lips.

“Peary has used the most sacred of our institutions, the public schools, to gather subscriptions for this pretended effort of getting to the pole,” he went on.

“Part of this money thus taken from the hands of our innocent school children was used to promote an immorality that would put the White Slave Trade to shame. Can you put the veil of innocence on this?

“Later the ship Roosevelt was used as a harem. This ship was flying the American flag, was engaged in a mission for which the government was responsible, was equipped at public expense. Its leader drawing an unearned pay as a naval officer. I charge that this ship was used as a den to satisfy a craving which leads to moral rottenness.

“Here Americans are put to the shame of seeing the stars and stripes floating over an Arctic Hell. And, under the cover of wild people, beyond the reach of medical help, the flames of unmentionable diseases – diseases now sapping the life blood of the world’s last clean aborigines. Will you have our wives and daughters shake this man’s unclean hands?”

Cook’s protests were to no avail, and the planned honouring of Peary proceeded.

“Pedophile” was a word not used much in the early 1900s, but it seems an apt modern word to describe Peary’s actions at the time.

You be the judge: Was Robert Peary a pedophile?

Taissumani is an occasional column that recalls events of historical interest. Kenn Harper is a historian and writer who lived in the Arctic for over 50 years. He is the author of Give Me Winter, Give Me Dogs: Knud Rasmussen and the Fifth Thule Expedition, and Thou Shalt Do No Murder, among other books. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.