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<div style="background:#dde; font-size:86%; direction:ltr;">On reverse of card: "Eskimo Joe Ebiering and wife Hanna."</div>After the Civil War, naval exploration increasingly focused on the Arctic, either to find evidence of the lost British expedition led by Sir <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Franklin" class="extiw" title="en:John Franklin">John Franklin</a> or to reach the North Pole. Several of these expeditions relied on American whalemen with Arctic whaling experience and on native inhabitants of the region, to survive in that hostile climate. By far the most active Inuit in assisting U.S. northern expeditions were <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipirvik" class="extiw" title="en:Ipirvik">Ebierbing</a>, called Joe, and his wife <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taqulittuq" class="extiw" title="en:Taqulittuq">Tookoolito</a>, called Hannah. After assisting New London, Connecticut, whalemen in Davis Strait in the 1850s and traveling with British whalers to England, where they met Queen Victoria, Joe and Hannah became the guides and friends of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Francis_Hall" class="extiw" title="en:Charles Francis Hall">Charles F. Hall</a> for his Arctic expeditions.<br><br> In 1871 they accompanied Hall on the government-sponsored <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaris_expedition" class="extiw" title="en:Polaris expedition"><i>Polaris</i> expedition</a> toward the North Pole, during which Hall died in northern Greenland and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Polaris_(1871)" class="extiw" title="en:USS Polaris (1871)"><i>Polaris</i></a> was lost in the ice. Joe and Hannah helped part of the crew survive as they drifted south on an ice floe. After residing in Connecticut for several years, Hannah passed away, and Joe returned to the Arctic, again participating in Arctic expeditions.</div>
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Unknown author<span style="display: none;">Unknown author</span></div>
before 1876 <div style="display: none;">date QS:P571,+1876-00-00T00:00:00Z/7,P1326,+1876-00-00T00:00:00Z/9</div>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystic_Seaport_Museum" class="extiw" title="en:Mystic Seaport Museum">Mystic Seaport Museum</a> collection via <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_State_Library" class="extiw" title="en:Connecticut State Library">Connecticut Digital Archive</a>