Iron, medium octahedriteGreenland

Cape York is the only meteorite that a population depended upon for their existence. In 1818, explorer Captain John Ross became icebound in Greenland while searching for the Northwest Passage. A tribe of Inuit, who had never before encountered members of the Old World, came to trade with their unexpected guests. Among their offerings were knives, harpoons and other tools forged from their sole source of iron—a meteorite. “Iron Mountain,” so named by the Inuit, was part of the largest single meteorite shower from which specimens have ever been recovered. In 1894, the they revealed a thirty-one ton specimen designated Ahnighito (“The Tent”) to Admiral Robert Peary, who had been seeking not only the North Pole but the source of the Inuit’s iron. Three years later, Peary returned to Greenland and then to New York City to great acclaim with Ahnighito and several other specimens from the meteorite now known as Cape York. Peary had obtained and delivered the largest meteorite ever recovered—a distinction still held today. Given its size and massive weight, the meteorite hall at the American Museum of Natural History had to be built around the Inuit's "tent” after its platform was anchored in bedrock. In conveying the meteorite to his ship, Peary built what is still the only railroad in Greenland. Cape York is a most unusual meteorite with large, pendulous inclusions of troilite (iron sulfide), replete with inclusions of metal and phosphate. This select specimen reveals a striking etch pattern offset by Cape York's characteristic troilite (iron sulfide) inclusions. (Iron meteorites are composed of about 99% iron and nickel and 1% other elements. The amount of nickel determines the type of crystalline pattern that will form, referred to as either a Widmanstätten or acid-etch pattern. This singularly dazzling crystalline latticework is unique to meteorites, and only those that contain about 6%-18% nickel.) The meteorite authority Dr. Vagn Buchwald said in the Handbook of Iron Meteorites, “Probably no other meteorite has been so intimately connected with the life and fate of so many people.” Indeed, Admiral Peary had to bring a tremendous amount of iron tools and implements to barter in order to offset the loss of much of the Inuit’s source of iron. Unbeknownst to Perry, other masses of Cape York remained behind. In 1963 Buchwald himself discovered a 20 ton mass that is currently on display at the Geological Museum at the University of Copenhagen.