From Hero to Humbug

This is the latest in a series of posts that publish for the first time significant documents related to the Polar Controversy.
A further assurance that the Inuit did not draw the first leg of the journey from Annoatok to Cape Thomas Hubbard on Peary’s map is that nowhere along that route do they indicate any [...]

This is the latest in a series of posts that publish for the first time significant documents related to the Polar Controversy.

Because, as we have seen, the existing evidence of what the Inuit said to others about their journey with Dr. Cook varies, and is sometimes contradictory, we will now examine how these accounts [...]

This is the latest in a series of posts that publish for the first time significant documents related to the Polar Controversy.
We have now examined all the known relevant testimony surrounding what Dr. Cook’s two Inuit companions had to say to others concerning the journey on which they accompanied him. The various versions [...]

The ongoing series on the “Eskimo Testimony” will resume next month.
In early 1997 I was asked to submit a paper for a symposium to be held at Ohio State University in Columbus. The aim of the symposium was to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the Belgian Antarctic Expedition, led by Adrien de Gerlache. [...]

This is the latest in a series of posts that publish for the first time significant documents related to the Polar Controversy.
There are four other miscellaneous accounts that do not fit into the narrative up to now, but I will now mention for the sake of completeness.   The first is that of Paul Rainey, who [...]

This is the latest in a series of posts that publish for the first time significant documents related to the Polar Controversy.
The publication of Hall’s monumental study of the Polar Controversy in 1917, although flawed by his severe animus against Peary, was a turning point in the history of this long-lasting geographical dispute. But [...]

This is the latest in a series of posts that publish for the first time significant documents related to the Polar Controversy.
In the wake of the polar controversy, early on, those who followed it closely noticed inconsistencies and impossibilities that led several of them to publish studies aimed at showing there was room to doubt [...]

This is the latest in a series of posts that publish for the first time significant documents related to the Polar Controversy.
We have now come to the end of the accounts of what the Inuit said of Dr. Cook’s journey by all contemporary witnesses of relevance. The next task will be to sift through [...]

This is the latest in a series of posts that publish for the first time significant documents related to the Polar Controversy.
Although Rasmussen expected news by “the first post,” it was a long time in coming. In fact, it was more than a year before he revealed what Olsen had learned from Cook’s [...]

This is the latest in a series of posts that publish for the first time significant documents related to the Polar Controversy.
Knud Rasmussen first visited the Polar Inuit in 1902 as part of the Danish Literary Expedition sent out to study Inuit culture. He was part Inuit himself, and would spend a lot of [...]