Nancy Helena Columbia Palmer was born at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, the daughter of Esther Eneutseak.

She was named by Bertha Honore Palmer, a white socialite and head of the exposition's Board of Lady Managers.

[2][8] Soon after, Eneutseak starred in the Selig Polyscope Company's The Way of the Eskimo (1911, now lost) based on a story she wrote while she was a teenager.

[9] She also appeared in Lost in the Arctic (1911), The Seminole's Sacrifice (1911), The Witch of the Everglades (1911), Life on the Border (1911), God's Country and the Woman (1916), The Flame of the Yukon (1917), and The Last of the Mohicans (1920).

[3] In 1915, after appearing at the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco,[10] Eneutseak and her family moved to Santa Monica, California, to establish an "Eskimo Village" attraction on the city's Ocean Park pier; their attraction and several others were destroyed by fire in Ocean Park at the end of 1915.