made its way to a Danish Minister and from there to the U.S. Secretary of State. In turn, the Secretary of State sent it to Osborn, asking for an explanation. Rasmussen, himself part Eskimo, was a close friend of Pee-a-wah-to's. When Rasmussen had arrived in Etah in 1916, he heard about his friend's death and asked MacMillan for an account of it. MacMillan merely told him their prepared story about an avalanche. But the story seemed suspicious to Rasmussen, and when he ran into Green in South Greenland he posed him the same question. According to Rasmussen, "Green's face suddenly changed color, and in evident confusion he replied that this was a matter which Mr. McMillan [sic] had told the members of the expedition not to speak about." Rasmussen added, "I only regarded [this explanation] as evidence of Mr. Green's mental condition, for I knew that during the winters in the northernmost Greenland his nerves had become absolutely ruined."
But then, several years later, Rasmussen picked up MacMillan's newly published Four Years in the White North and read the passage quoted above. He was enraged. He was especially incensed at the callous way MacMillan had described the shooting, ''just as if there was only a question of a dog." In his letter he demanded that MacMillan provide a full account of the Eskimo's death, and that the Museum take care of Pee-a-wah-to's widow and children. He added that there was no need to prosecute Green for his crime: "Green was most certainly a nervous wreck," he wrote, "who cannot be regarded as responsible for his act." The nature of exploration in those times brought explorers into extreme circumstances, and it was clear to everyone that Green really felt he was defending his life when he shot the Eskimo.
The Museum replied that Green had helped Pee-a-wah-to's family while he was in Etah, that Pee-a-wah-to's widow had remarried, and that all of his children were either married or independent, except for one. An acrimonious exchange of letters took place. The Danes put the matter before a committee, which concluded in a report sent to the U.S. Secretary of State that Green had misunderstood Pee-a-wah-to's motives. The Eskimo, it reported, merely meant to exhort Green to keep going, thinking the white man meant to give up, and that he was only trying to escape from the deranged Green after Green fired the warning shot. It said, "Green, in a condition of despair and excitement, killed a well-meaning traveling companion." But the report noted that Pee-a-wah-to's widow had died and the children grown up, so that the claim for compensation was being dropped. The matter, having been brought up and dealt with by the proper authorities, was concluded.
The Crocker Land Expedition was the last to explore the Arctic using dogs and sledges; indeed, it was one of the last expeditions to explore the unknown without motorized travel and modern equipment. A decade later the airplane would prove conclusively that Crocker Land, the "Arctic Atlantis," was just a vast, frozen sea, broken and heaved into masses of ice, covering the pole and stretching from western North America to Siberia and beyond.
SIX
The Great Dinosaur "Gold Rush"
During the first ten years of Jesup's tenure at the Museum, a dinosaur "gold rush" was in full swing in the American West. This gold rush was fueled primarily by two wealthy men—Othniel C. Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope—who were engaged in a pitched scientific battle to see who could discover and name the most dinosaurs. The two men hated each other bitterly, vilified each other in public and private, and poured their personal fortunes into searching for and digging up dinosaurs—Marsh for the Peabody Museum at Yale and the U.S. Geologic Survey, and Cope for the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and his own private collection.
The extraordinary rivalry between these two eminent paleontologists began sometime in the late 1860s or early 1870s. While the exact moment
But then, several years later, Rasmussen picked up MacMillan's newly published Four Years in the White North and read the passage quoted above. He was enraged. He was especially incensed at the callous way MacMillan had described the shooting, ''just as if there was only a question of a dog." In his letter he demanded that MacMillan provide a full account of the Eskimo's death, and that the Museum take care of Pee-a-wah-to's widow and children. He added that there was no need to prosecute Green for his crime: "Green was most certainly a nervous wreck," he wrote, "who cannot be regarded as responsible for his act." The nature of exploration in those times brought explorers into extreme circumstances, and it was clear to everyone that Green really felt he was defending his life when he shot the Eskimo.
The Museum replied that Green had helped Pee-a-wah-to's family while he was in Etah, that Pee-a-wah-to's widow had remarried, and that all of his children were either married or independent, except for one. An acrimonious exchange of letters took place. The Danes put the matter before a committee, which concluded in a report sent to the U.S. Secretary of State that Green had misunderstood Pee-a-wah-to's motives. The Eskimo, it reported, merely meant to exhort Green to keep going, thinking the white man meant to give up, and that he was only trying to escape from the deranged Green after Green fired the warning shot. It said, "Green, in a condition of despair and excitement, killed a well-meaning traveling companion." But the report noted that Pee-a-wah-to's widow had died and the children grown up, so that the claim for compensation was being dropped. The matter, having been brought up and dealt with by the proper authorities, was concluded.
The Crocker Land Expedition was the last to explore the Arctic using dogs and sledges; indeed, it was one of the last expeditions to explore the unknown without motorized travel and modern equipment. A decade later the airplane would prove conclusively that Crocker Land, the "Arctic Atlantis," was just a vast, frozen sea, broken and heaved into masses of ice, covering the pole and stretching from western North America to Siberia and beyond.
SIX
The Great Dinosaur "Gold Rush"
During the first ten years of Jesup's tenure at the Museum, a dinosaur "gold rush" was in full swing in the American West. This gold rush was fueled primarily by two wealthy men—Othniel C. Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope—who were engaged in a pitched scientific battle to see who could discover and name the most dinosaurs. The two men hated each other bitterly, vilified each other in public and private, and poured their personal fortunes into searching for and digging up dinosaurs—Marsh for the Peabody Museum at Yale and the U.S. Geologic Survey, and Cope for the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and his own private collection.
The extraordinary rivalry between these two eminent paleontologists began sometime in the late 1860s or early 1870s. While the exact moment
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