Ah! You can taste the fresh roasted walrus and polar bear
steaks...yummy! Fred and Bradley had weeks of exciting animal
kills. Bradley as trophy hunter claimed valuable walrus tusk
ivory, arctic fox pelts, seal skins, and giant polar bears. They
feasted on roasted muskox steaks while sipping wine aboard the
ship.
Cook
traded trinkets with the Eskimos for valuable furs and ivory. He
loaded Bradley's yacht with these. He even boasted in his 1911
book that he gave one "boreal pygmy", as he called them, a
9 cent tin cup for a $100 walrus tusk. He put an exclamation mark
after that statement - thus revealing that he was excited to be be
taking a valuable item in exchange for a trinket. He shows, in his
written accounts of this, no respect for the natives. Cook would
trade, for example, a red handkerchief for an ivory tusk. All Cook
wanted was their valuables, as evidenced by his account in My
Attainment of The Pole.
Interestingly, Peary never allowed this kind of activity with his
expeditions. It was forbidden in the contract the men signed. No
one was allowed to trade with the Eskimos in a manner such as Cook
did to exploit them. Peary discusses in his books how he never
gave the Eskimos worthless items. Instead, he made a point of only
trading tools that were vital for their survival. Peary paid his
Eskimos with sewing awls, needles, knives, cooking pots, harpoon
spear heads of iron, axes, fishing gear, rifles & cartridges,
boats, and even raw lumber. This last item was highly valued to
make sledges. Their only source of wood had been drift wood. Thus
he provided for their well being by ensuring that they could hunt
and make tools and clothing.
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