The woman, the dog and the tent
The Cape York irons, a vital source of metal for Arctic people, and the story told about them.
Key facts
- People and tradition
- Inughuit (Polar Inuit) of north-west Greenland
- Region
- Arctic
- When
- Told to explorers in the 1890s
The story
For centuries the Inughuit of north-west Greenland knew of great masses of iron near Cape York. They travelled long distances to chip flakes from them, hammering pieces off with hard stones and setting them into bone or ivory to make knife blades and harpoon tips. In a land without metal ore, this iron was precious.
The three largest masses were known as the Woman, the Dog and the Tent. In the 1890s the American explorer Robert Peary was told that they were a woman, her dog and her tent, thrown down from the sky by an evil spirit. Peary removed all three by ship in 1895 and 1897 and sold them to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where they remain; the Tent, at about 31 tonnes, is one of the largest meteorites known.
What science says
The Cape York meteorite is an iron of group IIIAB that broke up as it fell, probably about 10,000 years ago, scattering masses over a wide area. Some historians now question whether the woman-dog-tent story was a long-held belief or something told to satisfy a visitor who wanted a legend. What is certain is how important the iron was: tools made from it have been found across a wide area of the Arctic. Its removal is now discussed as a question of who owns a people's heritage.
Did you know?
Peary also brought six Inughuit people to New York in 1897, and most of them died there of disease within months, a tragedy now widely remembered.
Another large Cape York mass, Agpalilik, about 20 tonnes, was taken to Copenhagen in 1967.