Volume 24-25, 1976-7 - The Arctic Circle - Home

VOL. }Cry I'iC . ITFIE AIiCTIC CIRCUi"AR1965, when the Nlew York State Legislature honored its native sone fronthe Catskills as "a pioneer ocplorer of the Arctic and Antarctic" andasked the Governor to sign an appropriate nenxrrial on Ure occasion of thecentennial of tJre explcrer' s birth, the last sunriving menber of the PearlzI.Icrth Pole orpedition wrote a lengthy letter of condsnnation. " . . . havenottring to do with a plan to honor Dr. Frederick A. Cook, " wrote Donal-d B .MacJvlillan, adding that "he (Cook) was not an explorer. he did nottringof note vfrrereby he should be called such. " Ttre }4acl[illan rsnarks nny beforgiven as tlrose of an old man reslnnding withr indignation at a belatedpublic recognition of his old ccr,rnander's archrival , but it still followeda pattern of historical review by innuendo and blatant falsehood. !{hrenttre rnriter began his Cook research scrne years d9o, Maclvtitlan refused toansvJer any @rrespondene dealing with Cook. His colleague Vilhjalm:rS€efansson was, to ttre crcntrarlz , very helpful, being in a large partresponsible for ttre nonograph which resulted. Yet he, too, offered unsupportedassertions about Cook, reporting that he was a '\nrell liked fellow"but in the exploration c-'cnrrunity "many IIDre liked hjm tJ-an believed hjm. "f cannot indulge in Freuchren-like judEnents about Hobbs, MacJtillan andStefansson, who for a good part of thi.s centu:12 represented much of ttresource data for enqgclopedic reference works on the h-istorical greogrraphyof t]le Polar Regions . But I can collrnent on style, and I do suggest thatbiographical researdr into their careers would reveal a not surprisjngsjrnilarity: they hnd all backecl the polar priority of Pearry, and on ttrisrested much of ttreir reputation as authorities . Frederick Cook i-n prison,and even in deathr, represented a specter-Iike threat to tlreir individualcredentials.Did Frederick Cook, a }one wolf outsider, stand in reasonable pro>rimity tothe top of the earth on April 2I, I9OB, tJte first of any hurnn being to doso r and with hjm tr,v"o Eskjmos without whcm he would have gone ncxuhrere? Noperson, arctic o