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The Cook-Peary files: The “Eskimo Testimony”: Part 9: Analyses of the “Eskimo Testimony”: Dr. Cook’s

June 20, 2023

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 the various versions, note the contradictions they contain, and try to come to some decision on what value should be given to the “Eskimo Testimony” as verification or refutation of Cook’s claims. But before we do, let us examine the analyses done by others to see how they hold up. Not surprisingly, the first to raise doubts about it’s value was Frederick Cook. Of course, he was a very interested party, because if Peary’s version of what the Inuit said was true, his story of reaching the North Pole was irrefutably untrue.

We have already seen (in Part 3 of this series) Cook’s initial response to the statement and map published by the Peary Arctic Club purporting to show his actual route that it said was provided by Etukishuk and Ahwelah when they were questioned at Etah in August 1909. When Rasmussen’s second version of the “Eskimo Testimony” appeared (see the previous post), Cook had only just returned to America from London, where he had been living incognito for some months.

One of his first public statements when he returned, after an absence of more than a year, was a response to Rasmussen, which he sent in writing to the New York Times, which published it on December 26, 1910. June Post 1

In it Cook analyzed the Dane’s statement and speculated on his motives for first enthusiastically supporting him in his first version of what he had heard in Greenland (see Part 7 of this series), and then publishing this new version, which was, in almost all important aspects, a total refutation of his first version:

“One cannot help but ask the question: Why did Rasmussen first launch out into this polar controversy and defend me, later to discredit me and then to champion Peary, and again later to pull down Peary? What is the point aimed at?”

Cook then went on to point out Rasmussen’s opening statement that “Already in 1909 there existed grave doubts as to whether Dr. Cook really had reached the pole” contradicted his previous wholehearted and enthusiastic support based on what he heard about Cook’s trip from Inuit he had encountered in Greenland at that very time, at the end of which he had declared baldly, “Briefly: It was the Eskimos’ opinion that Cook has been at the Pole, and that he, according to the statement of his companions, during the whole journey had shown unusual strength and energy.” Rasmussen made no mention whatever of any “grave doubts,” either by the Inuit or even himself. Cook speculated that perhaps Rasmussen held a grudge against him because John Bradley had forbid him to eat dinner with him aboard the Bradley, after Dr. Cook had invited him to do so, because of the way the Dane smelled in his oily fur clothing.

Cook then went on to point out that Rasmussen’s second version contained a number of “false statements.” Cook countered these by stating that he started with 11 sledges, not 9; in response to Rasmussen’s claim that they slept only once before reaching Ellesmere Land, Cook contended that they “had slept several nights before reaching Flagler.” The report’s contention that on the 19th day they changed their course westward, was not true, Cook said, because that would have necessitated “crossing the impossible, snow-free mountains of Heiberg Island”; and finally, that if, as Rasmussen had the Inuit say, “We stopped at open water near land,” Cook contended, “if so, the returning Eskimos would have reported it. The nearest water to land was at the big lead 100 miles off, where land was but a blue haze on the horizon.” Any of these incorrect statements could have been corrected by asking men who had traveled with him before they turned back for home, Cook said, and the first two could be corroborated by Rudolph Franke, who was with Cook as far as his first camp in Flagler Bay. “Even Mr. Peary’s statements contradict these assertions,” Cook declared.

Cook then stated, as he would do later in My Attainment of the Pole, that he used mirage and low banks of clouds to encourage in the Inuit the belief that they were always near land. Otherwise, he said, Inuit out of sight of land tended to panic and talk of desertion. And, of course, he contended that on March 30 they saw actual land to the west, but it was not “Ringnes Land,” as Rasmussen had the Eskimos say, but the new land, Bradley Land, that he had discovered.

Cook also denied that he had cheated his Eskimos, calling this charge Rasmussen’s “meanest slur.” Cook said he had instructed Whitney before starting south to turn over all of his property left at Annoatok to the two men when he left, and Whitney could verify this, if someone would just ask him.

Cook then questioned the ability of the missionaries, from whom Rasmussen allegedly got the information contained in his second, anti-Cook version, to communicate efficiently with his Inuit companions. “In August of 1908 the steamer Godthaab arrives with the mission equipment aboard. Two half-breed Eskimo Christians were aboard. They spoke Eskimo perfectly, as they thought, and came with the laudable purpose of preaching God’ s Word.” But Cook had it from Captain Schoubye, he said, that this was not so. They spoke Danish well, but had not mastered the Inuit dialect spoken by the Polar Inuit living north of the Danish settlements. “The missionaries claiming to speak the native tongue could not make themselves understood. Yet these same missionaries are credited with sufficient intelligence to cross-question the Eskimo boys about something which they themselves do not understand.”

This might seem a remarkable statement, but according to Kenn Harper, who speaks a number of Inuit dialects, Inuktitut, the one spoken by the Polar Inuit, is the most difficult to grasp.  “Knowing other Eskimo dialects doesn’t help a lot when trying to learn Polar Eskimo.  I lived among the Polar Eskimos for two years . . . after living among Canadian Eskimos for many years.  . . . Yet I found their language very difficult to learn.  I had assumed that this was a problem unique to a white man speaking any Eskimo dialect as a second language [but] . . . an old Eskimo man that I was visiting told me that, even though he was been to Qaanaaq a few times, and has received visitors from there many times, he still finds their language hard to understand.” (letter from Harper to the author, dated October 10, 1994, possession of the author).

In the end, Cook concluded, “the only rational explanation for Rasmussen’s irrational course is to credit him with an ambition to get int o the limelight . . . But need an explorer stoop to the depths of a literary muck-raker to get public attention?” Although this last statement proved most ironic in light of the content of My Attainment of the Pole (MAP), published a year later, is there any validity to Cook’s arguments?

How many sledges Cook had at the start of his polar attempt is a trivial detail of no consequence.  In MAP he said he had 11, and in Franke’s published narrative he also said 11, and it appears from a photographic copy of his original field diary recovered by the author in 1993 in a Copenhagen library, that he had either 11 or 10, not 9, so he is correct on that.  The diary names the eight Inuit who accompanied him and Franke, so 10 sledges would be more logical, one to each man.

The second “false statement” Cook cites is actually not false, however. Cook’s party spent one night on the ice between leaving Annoatok and reaching Pim Island, a small island just off the eastern coast of Ellesmere Island, so Rasmussen was correct on that detail. But Cook’s counter-statement that they slept “several nights before reaching Flagler,” is equally true. According to Cook’s field diary it took them four days to reach Flagler Bay, which is also on the coast of Ellesmere Island.

On the 19th day out, according to Cook’s diary, the party was in camp in Sverdrup Pass, held up there by a glacier that blocked his route to Bay Fjord, though in MAP he was already on his way up Eureka Sound on his way to Cape Thomas Hubbard on that day. In the first case he was headed west already, and, in the version in MAP, he did not take a westerly course until heading northwest after he left land and started across the Arctic Ocean. In the MAP version, Cook’s statement that if had he turned west on the 19th day he would have had to cross the mountains of Axel Heiberg Island would be true. But there may be another telling possibility for the use of the terms 18th and 19th day in Rasmussen’s statement.

The only account Cook had published of his journey at the time of Rasmussen’s 1910 statement was the serial account that had been published in the New York Herald in September-October 1909. In it he reported that he had left Cape Thomas Hubbard on March 18 and that his supporting party of two additional Inuit had turned back three days out on the ice, or March 21th. Peary’s 1909 statement had him abandoning his polar quest the day after he left land, or March 19th. Perhaps the days given are actually a reflection of these dates, not the number of days on the trail, because even in Cook’s published version, he took far more than 18 days to reach his jumping off point. This would show that perhaps Cook’s published report and Peary’s published statement were used to concoct the “missionaries’” story, because, if that is so, that is something the Inuit could not have done independently.

That the Inuit said they were stopped by open water a short distance from land is the most important of the alleged “false-statements,” because it implies that Cook gave up almost as soon as his real journey toward the North Pole had begun, just as Peary’s statement had alleged. But, as we have seen (see Part 4 of this series) Borup’s notes show that the two additional Inuit did indeed accompany Cook more than one day north of land before returning. Of course, just how far Cook went out on the Arctic Ocean is still a matter of debate once the two turned for shore. The distance Cook actually went will probably never be known with certainty, as we shall see later.  But Cook’s statement that “The nearest water to land was at the big lead 100 miles off, where land was but a blue haze on the horizon” is of great interest in this connection.

Of course Rasmussen’s “meanest slur” is demonstrably false. Cook instructed Whitney to distribute his goods to his two companions, just as he said. A typewritten copy of these instructions can now be found in Peary’s papers at NARA II.

June post 2

So, on the whole, all of Cook’s objections to Rasmussen’s statement hold up pretty well, based on his published account. Even so, there are other reasons why Rasmussen should not have regarded the missionaries’ report to him “as absolutely authentic,” if only because the report’s contents are, themselves, self-contradictory, and, as Cook pointed out, some of it is directly contradicted by Peary’s 1909 published statement attributed to the same two Inuit, which Peary also contended was “absolutely true.”

Let us consider some of the statements from the missionaries’ report:

• “It took four days to cross Ellesmere.” According to Dr. Cook’s field diary, it took 18 days to cross Ellesmere Island from the head of Flagler Fjord to Bay Fjord. In Cook’s version in MAP, he intentionally compressed his journey to Cape Thomas Hubbard so that in his eventual account of his polar attainment he would have arrived at land’s end with a plausible amount of time left to reach the pole and return before the ice went out. So, in MAP he reported it only took him 5 days to cross the island. So, again, this detail could also have been derived from Cook’s published statements, but it is contradicted by what actually happened, as recorded in his field diary. Had the statement been from the Inuit’s actual experience, they would have indicated a number of days closer to 18 than to 4.

• “18 days out our companions left us. We then had gone only about 12 English miles from land.” This is absurd on its face. Even in Dr. Cook’s Herald serial he claimed he had taken from February 19 to March 18 to reach Cape Thomas Hubbard, a span of 29 days (1908 was a leap year). In actuality, according to his field diary, he took much longer: from February 26 to about April 2, so about 36 days. There can be no doubt about what day “our companions left us”; that was when Inughito and Koolootingwah turned back three days out on the ice. In MAP that would have been March 21; in the field diary it would have been approximately April 5. There is documentary evidence from Harry Whitney and others who spent time with the Polar Inuit that, while they could draw a fairly accurate map of coastlines they were familiar with, they had no concept of distance traveled, and had no means of estimating it. They certainly did not think in terms of “English miles.” Journeys to them were measured in “sleeps,” meaning days of travel, not measurements of distance. Curiously, 12 miles is the exact distance later assigned to Cook’s turn back point by Donald MacMillan in 1914, but he assigned other distances in other writings.

• “The ice was fine and there was no reason to stop, for anyone who wanted to go on could do so.” Yet later in the report it says “on the way we stopped at open water near the land.”

• “On the 19th day (or the day after their companions left them) Dr. Cook took observations with an instrument he held in his hand, and we changed course to the West.” It was a major point of the 1909 campaign against the validity of Cook’s claim that he was incapable of making accurate astronomical observations with a sextant. The whole point of the Dunkle-Loose affidavits was to show that’s why he hired them: to provide him with a competent set of fake ones to convince the scientists at Copenhagen. If they provided these, however, Cook did not submit them in proof of his claim, but because he submitted NO observations at all, this led to his claim’s rejection by the Konsistorium appointed to examine his “proofs.” Yet here his two companions allege he took observations “with an instrument he held in his hand,” implying a sextant. Of course, he could have just made a show of making observations as an excuse to change course. The Inuit had no understanding of “observations” or how a sextant would be properly used, let alone in which direction the North Pole lay, for that matter, so this statement is not significant.

• “We left a lot of food for men and dogs and [Etukishuk] went ahead to examine the ice. He reported it in good shape, which it was, but Dr. Cook looked at it and said it was bad.” Cook never claimed to have left any caches of food on the polar pack ice. To do so would have been futile, because any such caches would have just drifted away with the ever-moving ice, never to be located again. He did leave a cache at Cape Thomas Hubbard, however, before departing land. This cache was referred to in both Cook’s Herald serial as well as Peary’s statement. This statement also implies that it was Cook who refused to go on, even though the ice was “in good shape.” It’s a historical fact that explorers who traveled with Inuit found them extremely reluctant to venture far onto the Arctic pack ice. Some on Peary’s 1906 expedition even feigned illness to excuse themselves from going on, and Peary punished them by making them walk all the way back to his ship, frozen in at Cape Sheridan, without supplies. According to his field diary, on MacMillan’s trip toward “Crocker Land,” his two Inuit, one of whom was Etukishuk, begged him to return “as Dr. Cook had” several times on their journey across the ice from Cape Thomas Hubbard. Therefore, it is hardly credible to imply that Etukishuk tried to persuade Cook to go on when he judged the ice “in good shape” but Cook “said it was bad.” The Inuit would have been delighted to return as soon as possible, get off the treacherous moving pack ice, and claim their rewards.

• “We stopped one day and went over to Ringnes Island before the snow had melted (April). We had not had the least fog on the ice. At this time the sun was just below the horizon at night. It was the month when it does not get dark (March). Later when near Axel Heiberg Land, we passed two days in a fog.” The mention of fog is another indication that Cook’s published story in the Herald may have been consulted before Rasmussen’s anti-Cook account was written, because Cook mentions there that on his return from the pole he was unable to get his bearings for about 20 days because of constant fog. Peary’s statement makes no mention of fog. Additionally, this paragraph is an astronomical and geographical muddle. First, it says it was “April” when they went over to Ringnes Island, and at this time the sun was just below the horizon. At the latitude of Amund Ringnes Island in April, the sun would have risen well clear of the horizon and would be visible continuously 24 hours a day. Then follows directly the statement that is was “March,” not April, and “later when near Axel Heiberg Land . . . ,” They had started from the northern tip of Axel Heiberg Island, which is far north of the Ringnes Islands, but Peary’s map does show them crossing over to the bottom of the island after leaving Amund Ringnes Island before crossing Norwegian Bay, so this is not as illogical as it might first sound. However, the lack of mention of going down the west coast of Axel Heiberg Island before going to Amund Ringnes is curious.

• The report contends that the Inuit knew Cook was a liar when he was seen drawing a map of his route far out to sea, where they knew they had never been. Again, this reminds one of MacMillan’s later claim (in 1914) that when he showed them Cook’s claimed route on the map in MAP, that his former companions “laughed” at it because they knew they had not been that far at sea. This is a strange coincidence, at the very least, and Edward Brooke, the cameraman on MacMillan’s 1914 expedition, said that when he questioned Etukishuk and Ahwelah while he was in Greenland that same year, that they said “they went far from land for a long time” (see the author’s Cook & Peary, page 566).

• Other than the references to Ringnes and Axel Heiberg Islands, there is little or no information about their return route until they reach Hell Gate, where the report says Dr. Cook instructed them to abandon their dogs. In MAP, the dogs were abandoned near Cape Vera after crossing Colin Archer Peninsula, after which Cook says he set out on to  Jones Sound in the folding boat.  He does record visiting Hell Gate, but only after one of the wildest tall tales in the book, that of being blown there in a fierce storm from out in Jones Sound while lashed aboard a floating iceberg.  However, the report doesn’t mention this memorable adventure, but it does say “we do not know how many days we slept on this part of the trip.”  So there are no clues even to the amount of time that passed, much less where they traveled or what they did.  It seems strange that the same two Inuit who were alleged by Peary to have drawn the detailed map of their travels with Dr. Cook in 1909, had no such details to provide the missionaries in 1910.

• The missionaries’ report says that Dr. Cook told the Inuit “we will reach human beings (Baffin’s Land) within two days.” While it is true that Cook’s plan was to try to rendezvous with one of the Scottish whalers that visited Lancaster Sound each year as a shortcut home, it’s absurd to think he would have said he could travel from Hell Gate, on the extreme west end of Ellesmere Island, to Baffin Island, a distance of well over 350 miles in an airline, in two days.  The report mentions that they mistook a distant rock for a tent, while searching for “human beings.”  Arctic light does do odd things to distant objects.  In MAP at about this same point, Cook says that they thought they saw two men in the distance, only to find on approaching them, that they were two ravens.

• The report goes on to say that after searching for human beings for a “long time” they came to an island where eider birds were nesting. On Peary’s map, the Inuit were alleged to have found nesting eider ducks near Cape Vera, which is near where Dr. Cook said he descended to Jones Sound from Wellington Channel, and he mentions securing eider ducks near there in MAP.  Cape Vera is not far below Hell Gate across the water on the coast of Devon Island, a distance of around 60 miles along the coast, if they took the track outlined on Peary’s map.  So if they actually followed that course, they would not have taken “a long time” to reach this point from Hell Gate. Moreover, the relevant passage in Peary’s statement says that after reaching Simmons Peninsula on Norwegian Bay “They spent a good deal of time in this region and finally abandoned their dogs and one sledge, took to their boat, crossed Hell’s Gate to North Kent, up into Norfolk Inlet, then back along the north coast of Colin Archer Peninsula to Cape Vera, where they obtained fresh eider duck eggs. Here they cut the remaining sledge down, that is, shortened it, as it was awkward to transport with the boat, and near here they killed a walrus.” Peary also gives a time frame for their arrival at Cape Vera: “The statement in regard to the fresh eider duck eggs permits the approximate determination of the date at the time as about the 1st of July (This statement also serves, if indeed anything more than the inherent straightforwardness and detail of their narrative were needed, to substantiate the accuracy and truthfulness of the boys’ statement. This locality of Cape Vera is mentioned in Sverdrup’s narrative as the place where during his stay in that region he obtained eider ducks’ eggs.”  The time frame is close to Dr. Cook’s story in MAP: he says he was near Cape Vera on July 7.  So if it were truly April when they were at Amund Ringnes Island, it took them more than two months to get from there to Cape Vera. Why is there no mention in either Rasmussen’s, or for that matter, Peary’s statement as to what they did during these two-plus months? It does not square with the detail described on other portions of their alleged route.

• Rasmussen’s report then says “We followed the land past Cape Sparbo, and when our provisions were nearly gone, we returned toward Cape Sedden, where we arranged for wintering.” Again, this is geographically absurd. They did go past Cape Sparbo, but turned back when they had reached the bay just beyond Belcher Point. They wintered at Cape Sparbo, not Cape Seddon, which is on the west coast of Greenland, far across the open waters of Baffin Bay, which they would have been incapable of crossing in their small collapsible skin boat.  In MAP, Cook says they turned back just beyond Belcher Point.

• The description of their wintering contradicts Cook’s dramatic tale of spending a “Stone Age Winter” in an “underground den,” but it is much closer to the truth. They had plenty of ammunition, killed the abundant game at Cape Sparbo at will, and were comfortably sheltered in a turf and stone igloo for the winter. Cook’s diary that he kept over that winter confirms all this, no matter what he later wrote in MAP. How they spent the winter, the Inuit making clothing and Cook writing constantly, is also accurate, as is the description of their journey back to Annoatok, as far as it goes. When they arrived there in April 1909, however, they were near starvation. That’s why they abandoned their sledge, in a desperate attempt to reach Annoatok after being diverted far to the north by open water in their attempt to cross over to Greenland from Pim Island.

• As noted above, Cook did not cheat his Eskimos. It was Peary who did so. He countermanded Cook’s instructions, which he had in his possession, since a copy of them is now among his papers at NARA II, and instructed his men to give nothing to any Inuit who helped Cook, but to distribute the excess supplies to those who had aided him instead.

In summary, there are several suspicious points that suggest that whoever wrote the “missionaries’” report had consulted Cook’s New York Herald serial and Peary’s 1909 published statement before doing so. The report is chronologically questionable and a geographical muddle in several places, making several of its statements impossibilities. The report is also in contradiction of several points made in Peary’s 1909 statement attributed to the same two Inuit who are said to be the source of missionaries’ statement, and prefigures later statements about Cook’s journey not in Peary’s account, but made by Donald MacMillian only in 1914, suggesting, perhaps that MacMillan’s account took into account Rasmussen’s 1910 statement. So, on all these points, their report cannot be “absolutely authentic” without disqualifying Peary’s. On the other hand, Cook’s stated objections to it are all at least consistent with his previous account published in the New York Herald in 1909 and as later elaborated in MAP, though a number of them are refuted by the contents of Cook’s original field diary recovered by the author. However, Rasmussen’s statement is more accurate than Cook’s version of the events of his overwintering at Cape Sparbo. In this, at least, the statement is, indeed, “absolutely authentic.”

But Dr. Cook was not the last to take up the questions posed by the various accounts of the “Eskimo Testimony.” It would become the subject of detailed analysis by several students of the subject over the next 100 years, some trying to discredit Cook, others trying to vindicate him.

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The Cook-Peary Files: The “Eskimo Testimony”: Part 8: Knud Rasmussen 2

May 2, 2023

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 two Inuit companions. It may be significant that in the meantime, in December of 1909, the Konsistorium appointed by the University of Copenhagen to examine Cook’s evidence announced that Cook had failed to submit anything it could consider proof he had been at the North Pole in 1908. In the wake of this ruling Cook was almost universally denounced as a cheap faker. The “Copenhagen Decision” combined with Cook’s disappearance for nearly a year perhaps accounts for Rasmussen’s tardiness in making any further comment on Cook’s polar journey, because Cook would have been in no position to reply.

In October 1910, however, via a rambling interview with the New York World, Cook announced his intention to return to America. The next month, on November 8, 1910, a new statement from Rasmussen was published in the pages of the Chicago Daily News. The contrast between Rasmussen’s two statements could hardly be greater:

Already in 1909, when I was on an expedition to Greenland, there existed grave doubts as to whether Dr. Cook really had reached the pole, so I determined to find out from his two Eskimo companions. I secured their statements through the missionaries.

Etukishuk and Ahwelah

Etukishuk and Ahwelah

This is the story of the Eskimos as given in the despatch:
“We travelled from Annatook with eight sledges, in company with Dr. Cook, at the first sunshine (February). From there to Ellesmere we slept only once on the ice. It took four days to cross Ellesmere Land. 18 days out our companions left us. We then had gone only about 12 English miles from land.

“The ice was fine and there was no reason to stop, for anyone who wanted to go on could do so. The 19th day Dr. Cook took observations with an instrument he held in his hand, and we then changed our course westward.

“We left here a lot of food for men and dogs and one of us (Itukusuk) went ahead to examine the ice. He reported it in good shape, which it was, but Dr. Cook looked at it and said it was bad.

“On the way we stopped at open water near the land. We stopped one day and went over to Ringnas [sic] Island before the snow had melted (April). We had not had the least fog on the ice. At this time the sun was just below the horizon at night. It was the month when it does not get dark (March). Later when near Axel Heiberg Land, we passed two days in a fog.

“One day, I, Apilak, came upon Dr. Cook sitting down and drawing a map. I looked at it and asked him: ‘Whose route are you drawing?’

‘My own,’ replied Dr. Cook.

“But that was a lie, because he drew the map a long way out at sea, where we never had been.

“We continued to shoot bears on the ice till we had enough for the dogs. We do not know how many nights we slept on this part of the journey. The small rivers had only begun to break when we reached Hell’s Gate.

“Here, as Dr. Cook directed us, we left our dogs behind us, although they were fat from the meat of bears. Dr. Cook said: ‘We will reach human beings (Baffin’s Land) within two days.’

“We had slept twice when he looked ahead and said he saw a tent, but it was only a stone. We kept hunting for human beings a long time. Then we came to an island on which eider birds were nesting. We followed the land past Cape Sparbo, and when our provisions were nearly gone we returned toward Cape Sedden, where we arranged for wintering. It was yet twilight the whole night and we built a house of peat and stone, just as we do at home. We caught walrus, musk ox and bear for the winter. With the bow we killed only two hares. We had a gun to kill musk ox and bear with. To kill a musk ox with the bow is impossible. It was a fine autumn and we had good provision for the winter.

“During the dark time we were inside most of the time making clothes. Dr. Cook wrote all the time. At first sight of the sun we started home.

“We pushed the sledge ahead of us and [took] much target practice at seals until we had only four cartilages left. Not before we were near Annatook did we leave the sledge. The sun then stayed in the sky at night.

“Dr. Cook during the journey promised us a good reward, but he proved himself a liar and swindled us out of the payment. We did not get the guns he promised us. These he sold for fox skins. He gave us only a knife, some matches and a useless boat.

“This is all we, Itukusuk and Apilak, have to tell of our journey with the great Dr. Cook.”

I regard the report as absolutely authentic. According to what is known, Dr. Cook said nothing of the pole while with his two companions, and when he left them and began to tell of “finding the Pole” his new companions believed, as they could not conceive of a man prevaricating about so great a thing. The map drawn by Itukusuk is remarkably well done.

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The Cook-Peary Files: The “Eskimo Testimony”: Part 7: Knud Rasmussen 1

April 11, 2023

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 time north of the permanent Danish settlements in Greenland after that. In 1910 Rasmussen and Peter Freuchen would establish the Thule mission and trading post at North Star Bay, 20 miles up the coast from Cape York, to take advantage of a lucrative fur trade with the Polar Inuit farther north. But even by 1909, Rasmussen had already become something of a Danish folk-hero. As Captain Shoubye said, “We believe in Knud Rasmussen because he is more of an Eskimo than a white man, and he knows all the tricks of the ice.”

Knud_Rasmussen

Knud Rasmussen

Rasmussen had first met Cook at Etah when John Bradley’s yacht had called there in August 1907. Cook was mum on any plan to essay the North Pole at the time, so Rasmussen had taken him for no more than Bradley’s private secretary. Cook invited him to dinner aboard the John R. Bradley, but his millionaire backer could not abide the smell of him and banished him to the galley. Nevertheless, over the winter, Rasmussen amiably visited with Cook several times and learned of his preparations to attempt the Pole, and later remarked, “I had the opportunity to ascertain that a more sensibly equipped expedition could not possibly be thought of.”

Like the Swiss, in the spring of 1909, Rasmussen, too, heard the talk of Cook’s triumph while he was in Umanak Fjord after Cook had passed south on his way to Egedesminde. On July 16th, just before leaving on the Godthaab for North Star, he wrote a letter to Cook:

My most hearty congratulations to you on your successful voyage to the North Pole. You have won the victory, and this victory, the greatest in Arctic history, will, in spite of all the honours which will overwhelm you from the whole world, be the greatest remuneration in itself. Your display of energy has been wonderful, and I admire you deeply. But it is well known that all great victories produce envy, and you certainly know that you will have to fight a bitter battle against all the sceptics in the world. I have, therefore, thought that I perhaps might help you, if I, during my stay this summer among the Eskimos at Cape York, had a serious interview with your followers and later published that interview. For the construction of this interview, I would be much obliged if you would send me a small sketch of your travel before you leave Greenland, and I ask you to send it to me at Umanok with “Hans Egede.”

During Rasmussen’s stay that summer at Cape York, he did not interview either of Cook’s Inuit companions on his journey toward the Pole, who remained farther north. But he heard a lot about it from other members of their tribe, though he admitted freely that what he heard was, therefore, “second-hand.” When the Hans Egede called at Umanak, Rasmussen was disappointed that it bore no message to him from Dr. Cook. He did not do much better getting details of Cook’s journey from him when he met Cook personally at Egedesminde just before the ship sailed. Therefore most of the details of Cook’s journey only reached him through newspaper accounts that he received by mail from Denmark dated up to September 9. In them Rasmussen discerned exactly what he had predicted in July: the beginnings of the controversy over whether Cook had actually reached the North Pole. He therefore thought the time was right to say what he had learned of Cook’s journey during his stay at North Star Bay that summer. He sent his account, dated September 25, to Politiken, where it was published on October 20.

Right at the beginning, Rasmussen admitted that what he had to convey was not “proof” of Dr. Cook’s attainment: “Of course it is impossible to get absolute proofs that Dr. Cook—one white man with two young Eskimos—has been at the North Pole. It must be more of less a matter of faith, as most authorities can maintain that a traveler, even if he does not reach the pole-point, can make observations, which, in the absence of real observations, cannot be overthrown. . . The Polar-Eskimos are incapable of stating positively whether Dr. Cook has been only on his way towards the Pole or really has reached the famous 90 degrees . . . .

“As stated above, I have not met the companions of Dr. Cook, but I am informed by trustworthy members of the same tribe, that the expedition had, on the whole way out, comparatively very favorable ice and good weather. The ice got better and better the farther out they went. . . How far they have been, they have, of course, not been able to decide; but they have said that their journey across the ice fields, away from land was so long that the sun appeared, reached a high point in the sky and at last did not set at all, and it was almost summer before they reached land again. . . .

“The Eskimos . . . have themselves shown me on my own map the route of the expedition towards the North Pole and the winter camp at Jones’ Sound. . . Besides, the Eskimos have told me in full accord with Cook’s reports, how Apilok and Itukusak stated that they could not on their return journey go to Heiberg’s Land, where they had their [caches]. . . because of cracks in the ice, and this was the reason why they passed down to North Devon. . . .

“The Eskimos stated decisively that they were very much astonished when Cook told them that they now had reached their goal, because the place was not at all different from the other ice over which they had traveled. . . so it is sure that the travellers were not compelled to turn back because of ice-hindrances, but only because they believed the goal was reached. . . .

“Briefly: It was the Eskimos’ opinion that Cook has been at the Pole, and that he, according to the statement of his companions, during the whole journey had shown unusual strength and energy.”

Rasmussen concluded as he began: “As I remarked before, the above is a subjective proof that Cook has been at the Pole.”

In an interview printed in Zum Dannebrog on October 26, Rasmussen continued this qualified stance: “Well * * * you will understand that I have not made any proof; and who could make it? The two Greenlanders from Etah could not, even if I had spoken with them. They do not understand anything about observations. But the Greenlanders have a remarkable sense of taking bearings. They can judge correctly from the fatigues experienced and the number of nights spent on the way; and when they do tell their brothers of the tribe about the immensely long journey with Dr. Cook, they must have travelled very far.”

When asked about Peary, Rasmussen said, “I do not know much besides the fact that he insists that Cook has not been far from land. And that is nonsense. If the expedition had only been a few days journey from land, why should they have come to Cape Sparbo for the winter? And the expedition has been there.” Rasmussen laid great emphasis on this: “Personally, I wish to express my admiration for the bravery and firmness Dr. Cook has shown on his Polar trip,” he had said in his previous statement. “This man who practically alone has gone through and endured the winter at Cape Sparbo and the terrible march up to Anonitok through deep snow and violent ice-crushings, in darkness and bitter cold, has deserved to be the first man at the North Pole.”

Rasmussen thought the matter might be cleared up entirely by the instructions he had given to a missionary at North Star Bay named Hans Olsen when Rasmussen returned there without meeting Ahwelah or Etukishuk. Rasmussen described Olsen as “a very intelligent man, who will not be in doubt about what it depends upon, and he is better able than I to win the confidence of Dr. Cook’s two Eskimos.” Olsen was a Greenlander, himself, and although he spoke Kalaallisut, a different dialect than that of the Polar Inuit, Rasmussen had asked him to interview the pair and send him a report. “The first mail from him will bring the results of his examinations,” Rasmussen said, adding confidently, “Dr. Cook will, no doubt, stand the test!”

Sources: All of the quotations from Politiken and Zum Dannebrog are from the translation published in an article entitled “The Witnesses for Dr. Cook,” by the then United States Minister to Denmark, Maurice Francis Egan, which appeared in The Rosary, v. xxxv, no. 5 (November 1909), which contains Rasmussen’s full written statement to Politiken. A very similar account appeared in the pages of the New York Times on October 20, 1909.

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The Cook-Peary Files: The “Eskimo Testimony”: Part 6: Disinterested Witnesses

March 19, 2023

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


As Cook came down the Greenland coast, word of his conquest of the Pole came with him. After arriving at Upernavik on May 21, he was invited to stay at Governor Hans Peter Kraul’s house. Over breakfast the next day, Cook recounted to him some of his recent adventures and showed the governor his route on a map. When Kraul asked Cook directly, Cook told him quietly that he had been to the North Pole. Kraul was still skeptical, however, but in the two months Cook stayed with him, Kraul read some of Cook’s notes that he left scattered around while writing a summary of his expedition; with this reading his doubts faded.

While he was staying in Upernavik, the Dundee whaler Morning, Captain William Adams, arrived with news of the outside world. Cook gave Adams in return the news of his attainment. As we have already seen, it was through a letter left by the captain on the Greenland coast that Peary first learned Cook had made a public claim of reaching the Pole. Before Cook left Upernavik on July 20, Cook gave Kraul a hand-written copy of his detailed account of his expedition, which was nearly identical to that which he would wire to the New York Herald from the Shetland Islands. Kraul agreed to send it to the address of the Explorers Club in New York City in case some accident or ill fortune befell Cook before he could reach Europe. Cook also left a letter addressed to Captain Joseph Bernier, in which he claimed to have reached the North Pole on April 22, 1908.

Although he had sworn the Inuit to silence, Cook was quite free in giving details of his polar expedition to others. The correspondent of the Illustreret Tidende of Copenhagen, who went by the sobriquet “Olrick,” was aboard the government steamer Godthaab, which regularly ran between the Danish settlements, when it reached Upernavik. There he heard news from the Greenlander pilot that “There is an Englishman walking around the colony who says that he reached the North Pole this past Winter.” Olrick could hardly believe it, so he asked the man to repeat what he had just said. “Illumut, it is true,” the pilot replied, “He, Kok has reached the North Pole.” Olrick’s intense desire to meet this man was fulfilled shortly after when Cook came on board to take passage to Egendesminde, and was introduced to the other passengers by Kraul.

“As I was fortunate enough to speak English as well as Danish,” Olrick reported, “I immediately steered Dr. Cook over in a corner where I could belabor him in peace: ‘Now, if you please, doctor, go ahead and speak freely about everything,’ I began. Then he started to relate while I listened feverishly because it was all like a fairy tale.” Cook gave many details of his entire journey in vivid detail, so much so that Orlick wondered, “How can I convey in such lively colors his interesting tale?”

Once the Godthaab sailed, Cook also talked freely of his adventures to her captain, Henning Schoubye.

Henning Schoubye

Captain Schoubye

Schoubye was also of a skeptical mind, “But when I had once got the man on board in Upernavik, we soon became very good friends. One day we sat in the cabin; he brought forward his observations and showed them to me. . . . ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘these two sheets contain the observations I made on the day I discovered that I had only fourteen seconds left to reach the North Pole. Believe me, I was glad.’” Schoubye added, “He told me that he had definitely told the two Eskimos, and Panikpah (the father of one of his companions), to tell nothing whatever about the journey.”

After reaching Egedesminde, Schoubye took the Godthaab back north with Knud Rasmussen aboard. Shoubye had no opportunity to talk directly to either Ahwelah or Etukishuk, but he did speak with two families of their tribe and other Inuit at North Star Bay, about 35 in all, who all knew of their kinsmens’ journey with Dr. Cook. Despite Cook’s injunction, they related to him that “Cook jumped and danced like an Angacock (an Inuit shaman) when he had looked at his sun glass and seen that they were only one day’s journey from the ‘great nail.’ They said that they had been told to keep very quiet about their brothers’ voyage to the North Pole as well.” The captain finished by saying that Rasmussen, after his own questioning of those at Cape York, believed Cook’s story was true. This was confirmed by a Mr. Lindaas, who was manager of the Iosva Mine, who had spoken with Rasmussen after his interviews with the Inuit.

At Egedesminde, Cook gave his first lecture on his triumph to his fellow lodgers at the King’s Guest House there. And on the ensuing voyage to Denmark he expanded on his thrilling experiences with some of his fellow passengers. Among them was Professor Hans Peder Steensby, a Danish ethnographer.

H. P. Steensby

H. P. Steensby

Steensby later wrote an account of his talks with Cook, which shows that Cook was very forthcoming about his experiences among the Inuit, whom he remembered in fond and respectful terms. In this account, Steensby, by way of his ethnographic acumen, made an astute comparison between the characters of Cook and Peary based on his own communications with the Inuit who knew them both well, contrasting each explorer’s methods of getting the Inuit to do what he wished to accomplish. Steensby judged Cook’s comparative likableness and his deep understanding of Inuit psychology as superior to Peary’s despotic use of fear, intimidation and forced dependence on him as the sole supplier of arms, ammunition and other necessary or desirable trade items as his means of persuasion.

That summer of 1909, a German-Swiss Expedition had been on the Greenland coast. It traveled to the Uumanaq area of west Greenland, to the same area investigated by Erich von Drygalski in 1892–1893. Its major objective was to evaluate the changes in the nearby outlet glaciers since Drygalski’s visit. The expedition was also commissioned to study the coal and graphite deposits on the island of Disko and the Nugauak peninsula, as well as to make technical and scientific studies of the Greenland icecap. Man-hauling sledges, the expedition also made a sortie into the interior of the ice cap, penetrating to a distance of about 60 miles and to a height of about 5,500 feet. It was while they were in Sermillit [Sermilik] Fjord that they heard the native gossip that “one Dr. Cook” had discovered the North Pole.

Swiss Greenland Expedition 1909Members of the Swiss expedition: August Stolberg is at the far right, de Quervain is standing next to him

A Swiss journalist who had been sent to Greenland to cover the progress of the Swiss expedition found himself in position to report a major scoop when he found that Frederick Cook would be sailing from Egedesminde to Denmark aboard the Hans Egede, on which the members of the Swiss expedition would also return to Europe. “Cook has told of his dangerous adventures and starvation periods to only a small circle of friends,” he reported. “It was on the homeward journey from Greenland on the steamer Hans Egede where he lectured for the first time about his polar trip. We listened (in English) for hours in the cabin or on deck to the descriptions until we almost pictured them as our own. I take the liberty of repeating some of his remarks, which are necessary for the correct judgement of his trip. Also if I cannot give every detail [it is] because of its having been spoken (not written). The soon-to-appear book ‘The North Pole Reached’ – the finished manuscript of which Dr. Cook showed us on the trip, will tell everything clearly.”

Two of the Swiss scientists aboard, Alfred de Quervain and August Stolberg, also listened with much interest to Cook’s recounting of his experiences. De Quervain took the opportunity of questioning the doctor in detail when the ship was off Cape Farewell. Here is a free translation from the relevant passage in de Quervain’s 1911 book, Durch Gronlands Eiswuste, Reise der Deutsch-Schweizerischen Gronland-expediton 1909 auf das Inlandeis, in which he recounted a fateful conversation with Cook concerning the apparent movements of the sun at the North Pole:

“I had scarcely been able to get him away from his assertion that even at the Pole the sun should be at very different heights in the sky at ‘midnight’ and ‘midday.’ Then I presumed to come to the conclusion, scarcely to be expressed in precise language, that the place of the observation in question therefore was not at the Pole, and I said that certainly this was not his intention. Was he really at the Pole? It was certainly not possible that he could be talking without thinking, since he himself had said that the observation was based on exact measurements, so now, as a result of so may hardships, I thought his memory must be deceiving him. I explained at the time, to myself and to him, that this problem’s implications, because of its impossibility, were so monstrous as to leave open to him a fault of his memory [for the discrepancy] rather than a conscious effort at deception.

“Only a degree or two south of the pole the behavior of the sun was really such as he asserted, and so I suggested that that impression might have become fixed with him. After Cook had looked into the force of my observations, he heartily accepted that my psychological explanation for his incorrect statement was indeed plausible. Moreover, that same day, I said to Dr. Stolberg that I found it scarcely comprehensible how one who had been so taken up with the attainment of the pole, later, even after the worst hardships, should not have actually recognized the one foremost criteria of an actual attainment, entirely without regard to what he pictured in his memory.

“Indeed, we otherwise had a good impression of him. . . but since that discussion about the sun I had always in the back of my mind the persistent barking of the true hound of doubt.

“But after I, myself, had constructed an escape route for him though my own explanation, and so had in a certain measure somewhat too quickly given him a vote of confidence, I could not later with decency throw his fatal original statements at Cape Farewell into the raging polar dispute, although it might have made enough effect to perhaps have settled the contest. Now, when that episode already belongs to history, it is different.”

That de Quervain’s memory of his conversation with Cook was accurate was confirmed in a letter dated December 20, 1936, to Herbert Hobbs, an ardent Peary supporter, who was just then fighting a liable suit filed against him by Frederick Cook for statements Hobbs made made about him in his biography, Peary. In that letter, the German oceanographer Gerhard Schott, reported: “On September 11, 1909, on the return from Greenland (with Cook) to Copenhagen, De Quervain was in my house and reported to me the conversation with Cook about the course of the sun at the North Pole, the same as Stolberg verbatim after a writing of De Quervain’s had made [it] public in the popular book . . . . Durch Gr0nlands Eiswuste . . . . enough according to my opinion to completely expose Cook as a swindler; and today one can only deplore that De Quervain did not decide in the general tumult [of the Polar Controversy] to publish the conversation at once.”

When the Hans Egede arrived at Lerwick in the Shetland Islands, on September 1, 1909, to allow Cook to send the telegrams in which he first announced to the world at large that he had been to the Pole, Inspector Jens Daugaard-Jensen, director of the Greenland Board of Trade and Administration, took the opportunity to send this wire to Copenhagen as well:

We have on board the American traveler, Dr. Cook, who reached the north pole April 21, 1908. Dr. Cook arrived at Upernavik in May of 1909 from Cape York. The Eskimos of Cape York confirm to Knud Rasmussen Dr. Cook’s story of his journey.

It was Rasmussen’s belief in Dr. Cook’s story, as referred to above, as much as anything else, that fueled the Danes initial faith in him. So we will next examine in detail Rasmussen’s testimony about what the Inuit told him that convinced him that Cook was telling the truth, and his subsequent reversal.

Sources:
Olrick’s account is from a story entitled “From Upernivik to Skagen; Something about the North Pole: A Greenland interview with Dr. Cook in the month of May,” which appeared in the Illustreret Tidende, Copenhagen, September 12, 1909.

The Swiss correspondent’s account is taken from the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich, September 30, 1909.

Shoubye’s comments are from “The Witnesses for Dr. Cook,” by Maurice Francis Egan, United States Minister to Denmark, which appeared in the The Rosary Magazine, November 1909.

Professor Steensby’s comments appeared in “The Polar Eskimos and the Polar Expeditions,” published in the Fortnightly Review, November 1909.

The handwritten copy of his initial polar narrative that Dr. Cook gave to Governor Kraul is now in the Royal Library in Copenhagen. For those who wish to see the full text, the author owns a complete photocopy of this document and published a full transcription of it in his book, The Lost Polar Notebook of Dr. Frederick A. Cook (2013).

The letter from Schott to Hobbs is in the papers of Herbert H. Hobbs, University of Michigan.

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The Cook-Peary Files: The “Eskimo Testimony”: Part 5: Donald MacMillan

February 22, 2023

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

The only member of Peary’s crew we have not dealt with is Donald MacMillan. The subject of the “Eskimo Testimony” comes up a number of times in his writings over the years. MacMillan outlived all the other members of Peary’s expedition, not dying until 1970. Although most of his relevant published writings are now in the public domain, under the current US Copyright laws, his unpublished writings are protected until 2040. There is little respect for the copyright laws in the digital age, but owning copyrights myself, I do try to observe them, so in the discussion that follows I will only summarize these unpublished writings as to their content, rather than quoting from them directly. For those wishing to see the source materials of these summaries, I will list where they can be found as we go along.

As noted before, MacMillan signed off on the version of the Inuit testimony Peary published in the newspapers in October 1909, and by so doing, tacitly agreed to its accuracy. There is reason to believe that MacMillan may even have witnessed Henson’s questioning of the Inuit aboard the Roosevelt in August 1909, but his own accounts of what the Inuit said vary from Peary’s published account in ways that are hard to reconcile. MacMillan’s accounts are given here in chronological order and summarize what MacMillan said about the route Cook took as related by the Inuit who accompanied him.

First of all, however, we need to get one thing out of the way. MacMillan could not speak Inuktitut, so whatever he recorded had to have come from someone who did, or was derived from what he could understand through isolated word phrases or sign language. Kenn Harper, who wrote a book about Mene, the Inuit boy Peary brought back to America in 1897, and who was married to an Inuk and spoke her language fluently, wrote to me regarding MacMillan’s grasp of the language, which he characterized as “abysmal.” His mother in law, Amaunnalik, who worked for MacMillan on some of his later cruises to the Arctic, often joked about his attempts to speak to the Inuit in their tongue. (letter to the author, dated October 10, 1994).

#1 MacMillan’s 1909 diary: In MacMillan’s diary he says he had questioned “nearly all” of the men Cook had with him once he left land, and that they all agreed that they were never out of sight of land and that they did not spend more than three nights on the sea ice. When they reached the cache they had laid on shore, the sleds were still so heavily laden with food that Cook did not increase his loads from the cache. Along the way they discovered two islands to the southwest of Cape Thomas Hubbard. They were gone such a short time that they found duck and gull eggs “perfectly fresh” upon their return. According to the Inuit, they could have crossed Jones Sound in their boat, but preferred to winter in an igloo. In a later entry he relates that Whitney had told him that Cook had gone beyond Peary’s 1906 record, as Cook had instructed him to do. It should be noted that MacMillan habitually rewrote his accounts, and in fact was the butt of jokes on the Crocker Land Expedition for constantly revising his manuscripts. There are thus several versions of his “diary” and they vary somewhat from revision to revision. This particular version is now at Bowdoin College.

#2 At NARA II is a memorandum in a notebook exactly like the one Peary says he kept on his way to the North Pole and back in 1909. This account is titled “Information about Dr. Cook.” Because it was kept sequestered by Peary with Peary’s North Pole Diary and Borup’s account of the Inuit interviews (see Part 4 of this series), it may have been taken down at the interviews Henson held with the Inuit who had accompanied Dr. Cook.

MacMillan sample

Sample page from MacMillan’s memorandum


MacMillan says there that Cook left Annoatok early in March with 8 men and 8 sledges, and the last word from him came in the form of the letter addressed to Rudolph Franke, dated March 14 at Cape Thomas Hubbard, that was brought back by six of the Inuit in May, 1908.

It goes on to say that when Cook departed over the ice, he took four Inuit with him. Inugito and Koolootingwah accompanied Cook, Ahwelah and Etukishuk onto the ice for “one sleep,” MacMillan said, before turning back, and they caught up to the others at Shei Island [actually a peninsula]. Although he claims they went only one sleep, MacMillan says they built two igloos on the ice before turning back, implying they stayed with Cook two days. After they left, Cook and his companions encountered “bad ice and open water,” used their ice picks once while on the ice, and returned to land a little west of their starting point. They then went south along the west coast of Axel Heiberg Island, building three igloos before they started using Cook’s silk tent. Along the way they discovered two unknown islands in Crown Prince Gustav Sea. They continued south to Cape Southwest and then to Graham Island in Norwegian Bay before reaching Hell Gate. They reached Jones Sound by way of Colin Archer Peninsula and followed its shores around to Cape Sparbo. From there they went a short distance before finding open water. They then turned back to Cape Sparbo and started building their igloo there for the winter. In the spring they crossed frozen Jones Sound and went north along the east coast of Ellesmere Island, returning to Annoatok in April. They had no meat on the sledges when they left land, and while on the ice saw no bears. They killed none of their dogs to feed the others, made no caches on the ice, and they crossed no leads.

When they returned to the land they visited the cache they had left there, and Etukishuk retrieved his rifle from it. They then went down the west coast of Axel Heiberg Island to a group of small islands shown on Sverdrup’s chart and then crossed the narrow southern end of Crown Prince Gustav Sea to Amund Ringnes Island, then followed down the east coast of that and across Norwegian Bay to Hell Gate. Here they abandoned their dogs, took to their boat and followed round the head & south shore of Jones Sound, but met ice on the inside of Coburg Island. They then went back to Cape Sparbo, where they wintered.  In the spring they followed the coast north to Cape Sabine & thence across to Annoatok.

In the same memorandum, MacMillan said Inugito told him they went two sleeps, not one, on the ice and that they always had plenty of food. Inugito said Cook’s sled’s upstanders broke continually on the journey. He and Koolootingwah were able to return to land again after leaving Cook and the others in one march without sleeping. He added that Cook’s marches were short and did not equal the ones he had made while working for Peary in 1906, when he had tried to reach the North Pole from Cape Columbia. He also commented on the abundance of game, noting bears, deer and musk oxen that they killed along the way.

Egingwah, who had only been to the edge of the polar sea with Cook, said the ice near the shore was smooth, but further out it was rough.

Macmillan said that Etukishuk told him he remained on the ice “not more than three sleeps and were never out of sight of land.” He also mentioned camping on a large, uncharted island and that they had seen a second one. He added to the game list that they found, saying plenty of duck and gull eggs were found at Cape Vera, but no hatchlings. Etukishuk said they abandoned their dogs at Hell Gate and took to Cook’s folding boat to cross the straights, and by the time they reached Cape Sparbo, they were unable to cross Jones Sound because of open water.

MacMillan led his own expedition to the Arctic starting in 1913. His goal was to explore the land Peary reported seeing from the heights of Cape Thomas Hubbard, which Peary called Crocker Land. In 1914 MacMillan journeyed about 100 miles out from Axel Heiberg Island to the northwest in search of that mythical land. He had with him on this trip Etukishuk, who had been with Cook in 1908 when he left the same cape. He made several reports of what Etukishuk said about Cook’s trip at that time and also had many opportunities to question the Inuit at his base at Etah during the course of the Crocker Land Expedition, which did not return until 1917. Here are his reports on what MacMillan said he heard at that time.

#3 In a letter to David Brainard dated August 25th 1914, MacMillan said that after they set out to the northwest, they came upon pressure ridges and open leads of water, but after getting through the rough ice near the shore, they had excellent going and covered as many as 30 miles a day, and that he lost sight of the last land at about 75 miles out. In another letter to Thomas Hubbard dated December 11, 1914, he had something to say about Cook. He said Etukishuk told where they had camped on Cook’s outward trip and pointed out a spot on the polar sea that Cook had turned back, which MacMillan estimated was about 15 miles from shore. In this letter he said he had read passages of My Attainment of the Pole to Etukishuk and Ahwelah, who “had many a laugh” over them. ( The Brainard letter is now at Bowdoin, the Hubbard letter is at NARA II.)

#4 MacMillan, in the draft of his book Four Years in the White North, now at Bowdoin, says that at end of the his first march seeking Crocker Land, they camped at the base of a small pressure ridge about 14 miles from land. When asked how far Etukishuk had gone with Cook before turning back, the Inuit looked back toward Cape Colgate and pointed to a small pressure ridge, indicating that as the place they had turned back. When asked where they had gone after that, Etukishuk was supposed to have said they went back to land to get a rifle they had placed in their cache, and then down the south shore and out to a “small island which we found in the ice.” After spending the winter in a rock-sod igloo, they had walked back to Annoatok in the spring. “Here was the same story which he had told to me in the cabin on board the S.S. Roosevelt, anchored at Etah on August 17, 1909!” MacMillan exclaimed. However, when his book was published in 1918, MacMillan left out this entire passage. Nor are there any similar passages to this in any of MacMillan’s original Crocker Land Expedition diaries now at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

#5 After his return from the Crocker Land Expedition, MacMillan sent a letter from Boston to the editor of the American Geographical Society’s journal regarding what the Inuit said about Cook’s journey, which was the most detailed account he ever produced. The letter, dated December 21, 1917, was reproduced in full in The Geographical Review’s February, 1918 number as “New Evidence that Cook did not reach the Pole.” In this account MacMillan said Cook had never actually been to Cape Thomas Hubbard, and that accounted for him not being able to locate the cairn Peary had left there in 1906, which Cook said he had searched for in vain. On the point of land Cook left, MacMillan related, Cook had cached “a few small articles” and departed in the company of four Inuit, who traveled together for one day, during which he covered “about 12 miles.” After competing an igloo, two of the Inuit returned. Cook and his remaining two Inuit did not proceed beyond this point, he said, and after sleeping two nights there, the party returned to the cache on the shore of Axel Heiberg Island, took everything from the cache and proceed south, following its western shore. “Two low islands were discovered in about latitude 79°, very low and about five miles from land.” They then crossed over to Amund Ringnes Island where they killed one or two caribou. From there they went to Cape Southwest, then along the southwest shores of Ellesmere Island, then crossed the land to Goose (Gaas) Fjord and went south to its entrance. There they “turned west, then north into the narrow channel known as Hell Gate” where they abandoned their dogs and one sledge and launched their small collapsible boat. They followed along the southern shore of Jones Sound to Baffin Bay where they encountered heavy ice that stopped their progress. They then turned back to Cape Sparbo, where they prepared an old Inuit igloo for the winter. Game was plentiful and the igloo, well stocked with meat, was warm and comfortable. In the spring, manhauling their sled, they crossed Jones Sound. Between Coburg Island and Ellesmere Island they discovered two small islands, and after much privation, they crossed Smith Sound and reached Annoatok.

#6 In his 1934 book, How Peary Reached the Pole, MacMillan had yet another go at it; here is the relevant page:  “With Dr. Cook [the Inuit and Franke] left Anoritok in the early spring,

macmillan6

with the intention of catching the first steamer for Copenhagen.”

Again, this version differs in some details from MacMillan’s previous accounts.  On the end papers of this book he published a new map showing Cook’s alleged route according to his Inuit companions.  The route on this map is very different from the one published by Peary.

Mac Map

So what is one to make of all of these various MacMillan accounts? If one reads the different accounts and compares their details, one soon realizes they are not, as MacMillan claims, “the same story which he had told to me in the cabin on board the S.S. Roosevelt, anchored at Etah on August 17, 1909!” They differ from Peary’s version in many significant ways, and from each other for that matter, as to the distance Cook traveled on the ice, the time the two extra Inuit spent with Cook’s party, the time Cook, Etukishuk and Ahwelah spent at the igloo after the other two Inuit returned, the direction in which Cook’s party moved once they broke camp, where they made landfall, and what they took from the cache they had left at Cape Thomas Hubbard upon their landfall. MacMillan even questions if Cook ever was at Cape Thomas Hubbard at all in one of them, which Peary’s version accepted without question. Then there are also differences in the accounts of their return trip: the size and location of the two islands they sighted, for instance, is very different in the various accounts, and Cook’s route varies from Peary’s published 1909 map, allegedly drawn by his Inuit. A more detailed accounting of all these differences will be made once we have considered the two accounts of what Knud Rasmussen says he heard from Inuit in Greenland in 1909.

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The Cook-Peary Files: The “Eskimo Testimony”: Part 4: Peary’s Crew REVISED

January 27, 2023

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

Since the original posting, I requested that the National Archives and Record Administration digitize the notebook in which George Borup wrote notes of the Inuit interviews conducted by Matt Henson in August 1909.  I have now received that digital copy.  I’ve requested that they post the entire digitized notebook on their website under record group XL.  After examining the digitized copy in detail, I have revised the section of this post that deals with it. See the section on George Borup below.

In the last post we dealt with all of the eyewitnesses. The rest are only hearsay witnesses, but there were many of these in position to hear the Inuit gossip directly and what Cook’s two companions said of their journey through others. However, it should first be remembered that most of these had only scant knowledge of the native language and so could not get the story directly from Cook’s two companions or the tribesmen they may have told it to without an intermediary. What they heard must have come from someone who was fluent in the Inuit language.

Of Peary’s crew, including Peary himself, only Matt Henson would have had a level of understanding in Inuktitut that would enable him to grasp so complex a story as was related in the statement released by the Peary Arctic Club to the press on October 13, 1909. Of Peary’s assistants on the 1908 expedition, three, George Borup, Donald MacMillan and Dr. John Goodsell, had never been in the arctic before. Only Ross Marvin had been on a previous expedition with Peary, but he had been murdered by one of his Inuit companions between the time he left Peary’s party out on the sea ice and when the two Inuit companions in his support party reached land again. So the only statements of his knowledge of Dr. Cook’s movements were those previously reported (see the posts for the series “Inside the Peary Expedition” below). Marvin seems to have had a fair grasp of the native language, but after his death, as mentioned in the post on “Peary’s Proofs,” what Etukishuk and Ahwelah said was most likely given to Henson. But Henson was not functionally literate, and so could not write their story down himself. It appears that George Borup, and possibly Donald MacMillan as well, acted as scribes and took notes on what Henson said the Inuit said as they said it. Notes to this effect are among Peary’s papers in Borup’s hand, and the personalized language, using the first person singular, indicates that Borup is writing down Henson’s words, not his own. For instance, at one point the notes say that one of the Inuit “had been with me on the ice in 1906.” As just mentioned, neither Borup or MacMillan had been on the 1906 expedition, but Henson was.

But before we look at those crucial notes, let us examine the evidence that each of the other members of Peary’s crew left.

John Murphy

Murphy, as already noted, was the bo’sun of the Roosevelt. He, along with Billy Pritchard, the cabin boy, had been assigned by Peary to “guard” Cook’s supplies left at Annoatok, but had actually been instructed to trade them to the Inuit for valuable items such as furs and ivory. (see “Inside the Peary Expediton” below) The two of them split their time between Cook’s box house at Annoatok and the Inuit village of Etah, twenty-five miles down the coast. Shortly after Cook returned to Annoatok in April 1909, Murphy departed for Etah. He was not present at the time Cook told Whitney and Pritchard that he had reached the North Pole. Both Whitney and Pritchard kept their word to Cook not to tell of his attainment of the pole, so Murphy had no knowledge of it from them.

Murphy was perfectly illiterate. In fact, Billy Pritchard had been left by Peary to keep the log because of this. So he left no written account. The only statement attributed to Murphy on the subject was given in the New York American for October 7, 1909:

“The Commander,” says Murphy, “talks Eskimo like a native. And so does Henson. The Commander had Cook’s two ‘huskies’ on board and questioned them about where Cook had been. Now an Eskimo knows as much about a chart or a map as a passed mariner, and while they talked they took pencils and showed on the chart just where they had been with Cook. They say he made a two days’ journey toward the North and then stopped. At the end of the first day he had cached a heavy gun. At the end of the second day he ordered one of the huskies to go back and get that gun. Dr. Cook waited two days for the man to come up with the gun and then the three men turned westward, and that was AS FAR NORTH as they EVER GOT. The Commander has those marked charts now.”

Peary might have given the impression that he had mastered “Eskimo,” but in fact he only learned useful phrases that he could use to allow the Inuit to know what he wanted them to do, mostly commands. And the Inuit obeyed because they feared him greatly. Other than this, he relied on Henson as an interpreter. Clearly Murphy had heard the scuttlebutt about what Cook’s companions had told Henson, but even this short statement varies from Peary’s press statement. For instance, Murphy implies Cook camped four days on the ice before they turned westward, but Peary’s statement says he camped but two days.

Billy Pritchard

Peary had raised the point that Cook had told no one of his polar attainment upon his return as suspicious. Whitney had said nothing of it when he was aboard the Roosevelt, and neither had Pritchard. However, while Peary was in Labrador besieged by the press, a reporter got Pritchard to admit that he had known about Cook’s claim since April. This caused Peary to stop at St. Paul’s Island on his way to Sydney to get the full details being reported in the newspapers of what Pritchard said. Apparently, according to some accounts, the Inuit had told him that Cook had gone “way, way North.” After Pritchard’s statement became known, Murphy admitted that Cook had told him that he had gone farther north than Peary’s record in 1906—exactly what he had instructed Whitney and Pritchard to say.

John Goodsell

Peary’s physician on the 1908 expedition was John Goodsell. He kept a meticulous diary daily that was extremely detailed, so detailed that Peary raided it for many of them to fill out his own published narrative, The North Pole. Here is what it had to say there relevant to Dr. Cook’s claim:

August 8, 1909

We hear that Dr. Cook returned to Annoatok this spring stopping but a few days before proceeding southward toward Upernavik.

August 25, 1909

We heard that Dr. Cook claims to have reached the Pole April 22, 1908. The Commander I believe received the information through a letter from Captain Adams.

When he heard about Henson’s interview with the Cook Inuit, Goodsell requested permission from Peary to interview them himself so that he could include a record of what they said in his diary. Peary forbade him to do so. Consequently, there is not a word about it in his actual diary. Also, as a result of Peary’s denial of permission to allow him to independently confirm it, he refused to sign the alleged Inuit statement issued by Peary against Cook’s claim.

After his return, Goodsell, using his diary, wrote a book on his experiences in the Arctic which he called “There and Back Again.” Due to the fact that Peary had raided Goodsell’s diary so extensively for his own book, Peary used all kinds of delaying tactics to discourage the publication of Goodsell’s, including failing to return his manuscript for more than a year, which Goodsell had sent to Peary as a courtesy for him to read. By the time Goodsell regained his manuscript, publishers were no longer interested in his account, and it was never published. Only in 1983 was a heavily edited version of Goodsell’s book published under the title On Polar Trails. Here’s what it said relative to the subject at hand:

Goodsell

Matt Henson

Henson’s comments on the Inuit testimony are largely in the form of interviews published in the newspapers after the Roosevelt returned to civilization. One appeared in the New York World on September 22:

“[Dr. Cook] ordered [his Inuit] to say that they had been at the North Pole, [but] after I questioned them over and over again they confessed that they had not gone beyond the land ice.” In another interview he said, “It’s a joke to talk about Dr. Cook’s experience. He never had any experience with sea ice in his life. What the old man said about him in that book [Northward over the Great Ice] just meant that Dr. Cook was a good strong sort of a fellow to work around on land ice . . . . The old man has taught me to take observations almost as well as he can. I took a lot of them on our trip to the pole . . . The commander took me to the pole because I knew latitude and longitude so well and all about sea ice.” He then referred to Captain Adams’s letter to Peary: “The next day we got a box of letters at Cape York. That was the 25th [of August]. That’s when we found out that Dr. Cook said he had been at the North Pole. The captain of the whaler had written a letter to the Commander telling how he met Dr. Cook and Dr. Cook said he had been to the North Pole.”

In his ghosted book, A Negro Explorer at the North Pole, Henson said, “At Nerke, just below Cape Chalon, we found the three Esquimo families . . . and it was from these people we first learned of Dr. Cook’s safe return from Ellesmere Land.” On August 17, the Roosevelt reached Etah. “At Etah there were two boys, Etookashoo and Ahpellah, boys about sixteen or seventeen years old, who had been with Dr. Cook for a year, or ever since he had crossed the channel to Ellesmere Land and returned again. These boys are the two he claims accompanied him to the North Pole. To us, up there at Etah, such a story was so ridiculous and absurd that we simply laughed at it . . . and the idea of his making such an astounding claim as having reached the Pole was so ludicrous that, after our laugh, we dropped the matter altogether.”

Henson then claims to “quote from my diary my impressions noted in regard to him”:

Henson 2

Henson 3

All of this proves how little we can trust Matt Henson’s reports. First off, as noted by Dr. Goodsell, definite word that Dr. Cook claimed he had been to the North Pole was not received until August 25, in the letter from Captain Adams. So Henson’s statement to have laughed at the “astounding claim as having reached the North Pole” on August 17 implies that Cook’s two “boys” must have told their tribesmen that Cook claimed to have reached it. He all but admits to this in the New York American interview, saying that Cook had “ordered” his Inuit to say he had been to the Pole, but after he badgered them, they “confessed” they had not been beyond the land ice. Yet he then goes on to say they only learned Cook was claiming the pole on August 25th. Yet in his book that claims it quotes from his “diary” entry for August 17, he says that he knew then that Cook was claiming the pole because he learned that Pritchard had revealed Cook’s confidential conversation with he and Whitney. It is very clear that Pritchard did not reveal what Cook had said until about September 20, well after the Roosevelt had reached Labrador.

Other details bring into question Matt Henson’s general truthfulness. According to Dr. Thomas Dedrick’s diary of 1900, Henson could neither read nor write, nor do simple arithmetic. Dedrick prided himself on teaching him that winter. There is much evidence, however, that indicates that Henson never achieved full literacy, even later. Peary himself wrote definitively to General Thomas Hubbard in 1909 that Henson “can not take observations.” No diary of Henson’s from any of the Peary expeditions exists, even though Peary habitually kept at least copies of everyone else’s, so Henson’s quotations from his “diary” are no more than recollections, at best, fabrications at worst. This is shown by the so-called quotations from his diary here. For instance, he says that Whitney had told them that Cook was claiming to have reached the pole, when he did not. All of this, and much else in the record concerning Matt Henson tends to confirm Josephine Peary’s characterization of him in her 1891-92 diary as “a vainglorious braggart.” It should also be noted that Henson says that “if they went out on the ice of the Arctic Ocean, it was only for a very short distance, not more than twenty or twenty-five miles.” This was far more than Peary’s statement implied, or anyone else gave Cook credit for at the time of the controversy.

Captain Bob Bartlett

Bartlett, who had captained the Roosevelt for Peary previously in 1905-06, left a confusing record. The bulk of his papers are reported to be in his hometown of Brigus, Newfoundland. I have never seen any of these, but there are also some in the holdings of Bowdoin College in Maine. Although I had access to these, I did not encounter a diary of the 1908 expedition there or among Peary’s papers either. It might in fact be in one of these places, but I did not see it.

Bartlett, you might say, was Peary’s “Right-hand Man.” He was ever faithful to Peary and was the only member of the crew that Peary deigned to share any honors accruing from his false claim to have been at the North Pole in 1909. Bartlett went with Peary on his victory lap around Europe in 1910 and was awarded several silver medals, both there and in America, and he was co-signer of the British limited edition of Peary’s book, The North Pole.

In the Philadelphia Record on October 1, 1909, appeared an interview Bartlett gave while off Sandy Hook.  In it he asserted that Cook could not have reached the North Pole because “No man in this world can get Eskimos to go out of sight of land except Peary. . . . They wouldn’t budge unless the commander were there to push them.”  Of Cook’s claim, Bartlett said, “While at Etah we didn’t hear that Cook had reached the Pole.  There were rumors that he had been pretty far north, but we never took those reports seriously . . . . Recall the elaborate expeditions as Abruzzi’s and Nansen’s and others, including our own in the past–all these have failed.  And yet two men and a sledge with two dogs, more or less, are said to have done it.”

Bartlett’s sycophantic attitude toward Peary is reflected in his long-after-the-fact account of the North Pole expedition published as The Log of Bob Bartlett in 1928. There are many Newfoundland fish stories in its pages, but the fishiest come in his chapter entitled “A World of Lunatics,” which addresses facets of the Polar Controversy. Although there is positive evidence (see above) of Peary first learning that Dr. Cook had claimed that he reached the North Pole on August 25, via Captain Adams letter, Bartlett claims that when they reached Battle Harbour, Labrador, in early September they were ignorant of his claim. He writes that Borup and MacMillan went ashore and returned with the news that Cook was claiming he got to the pole: “Quickly the meager details came out and in a few minutes the whole ship was buzzing with the astounding news,” he wrote. He says that only Peary took the news calmly, and then foists the blame for Peary’s intemperate telegram in which he accused Dr. Cook of “handing the world a gold brick” on George Borup, saying that in the heat of the moment he blurted this out in response to Cook’s “absurd” claim. Bartlett then relates that Peary used Borup’s expression in the telegram only reluctantly, and then only after no one on the entire ship could think of a more moderate synonym.

This is only one of several apologias for specific notorious actions by Peary during the controversy that Bartlett takes pains to excuse Peary for. Later in the chapter he spins the incredible tale that Peary believed he was sending his first account of his expedition to the New York Herald rather than the New York Times, when it was well known even before the Roosevelt left in 1908 that Peary had signed an agreement with the latter paper for the exclusive rights to his account. In a few words, the book’s account, whether through tricks of memory or the passage of time, is inaccurate, to give it the most charitable evaluation. As to the Inuit testimony, which Bartlett signed off on as a witness when it was released in October 1909, as did Borup, MacMillan and Henson, there is not a word.

George Borup

Among the most interesting evidence is that written in the hand of George Borup. It comes in the form of notes which, from their telegraphic phrasing and their character and content, suggest that they were taken down during, or rewritten shortly after, the interview of not only Etukishuk and Ahwelah, but several other Inuit who accompanied Cook to the tip of Axel Heiberg Island in 1908.

In his book, A Tenderfoot with Peary, Borup devoted only a single paragraph to the Inuit interview:

Borup

But he added, “Though my note-book has something more about our talk with the Eskimos, here’s where I quit.” Perhaps he “quit” because what it contains does not support this statement.

The notes, published here for the first time, are contained in a small pocket notebook bound at the top that is exactly like the one Peary kept his record of his alleged journey to the North Pole in 1909.  Borup cover

All entries are on the lower pages except for the insert noted below, which is on the upper page of the open pair.  The ***** indicate a page change; all the deletions and inaccurate spellings of place names, grammatical errors, etc. are faithfully reproduced below. Words and comments in brackets have been added by me for clarity. Words in parentheses are part of the document.  On the first page are several lines of shorthand written in pencil including the words “he has an ill feeling” and  “N.Y. newspapers.”  The rest of the writing in the notebook is in ink.  The book contains 44 ruled pages, 19 of which have writing on them.  On the front of the back flyleaf is the word “Eskimos” written in Peary’s hand.  The book contains two sections.  The first is titled “Statements of Panikpah, Itookishoo, Aukpillar” and the second “General Summary.”  For context, I’ve reversed these sections in the transcription that follows:

General Summary [The page before the one this is written on has been torn out]

On our arrival at Etah in August 1908, we learnt that Dr. Cook had left Annoratok early in March with the following Eskimos, Panikpah, Egingwah, Aukpillar, Poodlunah, Inughito, Koolitingwah, Itookishoow & Aukpillar.

Later a letter was received from him dated Cape Thomas Hubbard was seen.

From Cape Hubbard the first 6 named Eskimos returned to the Greenland side and 2 boys one of whom had been with me on the ice in 1906 remained with Dr. Cook.

The men and experienced hunters who were in the party and who had returned from Cape Hubbard were asked why some of them had not remained with Dr. Cook instead. They said they did not have confidence in Dr. Cook in going on the ice.

When asked why the 2 boys remained with him they stated that perhaps they were very anxious for the things promised them and perhaps did not know any better.

During the winter at Cape Sheridan [in 1908-09] some of these men who were in my party repeated the above statements.

On our return from the north in August 1909, in our first contact

*****
with the natives August 8th at Nuekky we were told the following.

That Dr. Cook had returned this spring and had gone to Danish Greenland.

That he & his men had come back on foot having lost all their dogs; that they had spent most of their time absence to the southwest and had wintered in a locality which was at once located as Jones Sound; that they & Dr. Cook had wintered told the white men at Anoratok that he had been a long distance on the ice, but they had lied about it.

Arrived at Etah on the 14th of August the 2 boys who had been with Dr. Cook were asked about their experiences as was the father of Itookishoo [Panikpa] one of the older men and most experienced hunters of the tribe who is familiar with the Jones Sound region from his various hunting trips.

These 3 were questioned separately over Sverdrup’s map of his explorations

*****
and the stories of all 3 agreed.

These men were not threatened. They were given no presents to induce them to tell their story nor where they asked leading questions.

They stated that they had been instructed by Dr. Cook not to give me or any member of my party any particulars of the trip.
Omitting minor unessential details their story was as follows.

*****
After the return of the other Eskimos they & Dr. Cook had gone north or northwesterly with 2 sledges & 21 dogs from the land (Cape Thomas Hubbard) for a short distance over the ice. They were at no time out of sight of the land from which they started nor did they see any other land.

They returned to land with both sledges with a large amount of supplies (the natives stating particularly their sledges were still heavy when they reached the land)

*****
They saw no bear upon the ice, they had no meat upon their sledges when they left the land. They killed none of their dogs on [the] ice to feed to the others, they made no caches on the ice. They crossed no leads.

They returned to the land from which they had started & Itookishoo got his rifle which he had cached on the land.

They then went down the west coast of Jesup Land. (Heidelbrug <sic> Land of Sverdrup) to the group of small islands shown on Sverdrup’s chart

*****
from whence they crossed the narrow southern end of of Crown Prince Gustav sea to Rignes Land, followed that across Norwegian Bay to Sverdrup’s Simmon’s Peninsular and Hell Gate. Here they abandoned their dogs took to the boat and followed around the head & south shore of Jones Sound, met ice on the inside of Coburg Bay Island; went back to Cape Sparbo where they wintered and then in the spring followed the coast north to Cape Sabine & thence across to Annoratok.

*****

Panikpah says the ice close to the land was good but as soon as the boys struck the rough ice beyond they & Cook returned.

Panikpah states that besides himself there were the following Eskimos. Poodullunah, Aukpillar, Aukpillar [two different Inuit with the same name] Egingwah, Inughito, Koolitingwah, Itookishoo.

4 of them returned back from the northern end of Nansen Strait i.e. Panikpah, Eqingwah, Poodullunah, Aukpillar.

Inughito & Koolitingwah went one short march on the ice, helped build

*****
igloo in a wind, did not sleep there, but returned to land. They caught the others [4 Inuit who had returned from Cape Thomas Hubbard] at Schei Island. On their return they killed one bears & musk oxen.

Aukpillar’s Statement.

Says they saw no land out on the sea ice.

“Dr. Cook Shag-la-hu-tee shu-tee shu-tee” [This translates roughly as “Dr. Cook is a big liar.”]

They only built 2 igloos on the ice.

They travelled up in Colin Archer Penn.

Points out Cape Sparbo at once as place there they wintered and Cape Clarence as where they killed a bear. [Illegible word]
Itookishoo stated

[Here is inserted on the upper blank page what appears to be an unrelated afterthought about Aukpillar’s testimony]:
Aukpillar said they met a lead of open water & turned back
This was at the edge of the glacial fringe.

[The interrupted narrative then continues:]

*****
the same thing.

Emphatically reiterates they did not go out of sight of land.

Aukpillar had 11 dogs
Itookishoo had 10 dogs.

Both boys say they saw cairn built by Peary. Cook says they did not see it it. Said Peary had never been there.

They landed a few miles west of where they started. And followed west coast of
Itookishoo as soon as they returned to land went after his gun which he had

***** [Here two pages have been torn out of the notebook]

which he had cached with provisions at Cape Hubbard.

Their sledges were still heavy when they returned to land. They took a few tins of pemmican from the cache to increase their loads.

At Cape Hubbard on their return they slept 5 times, the sun being warm enough to dry their cloths.

After leaving Cape Hubbard they only built 3 igloos then used their tent

******
Itook

Itookishoo says he did not see Crocker Land.

Landed Amundsen <sic> Rignes Land. Killed 2 deer there

Came inside Graham Island.

Went through Helvedesportent in their boat.

The dogs were abandoned at Lands End.

From Cape Hubbard they went Northwest slight westward drift.

They did not go out of sight of land.

Borup sample

A sample page from Borup’s notes

*****
Itookishoo who knows the sea ice from his experiences in Matt Ryan’s party says they did not go as far as Ryan went.

States that Cook said he went a long way but that he lied. They went for a short distance and made poor progress.

Many bear in Norwegian Bay.

Musk ox at Cape Sparbo.

1 bear killed at Cape Clarence. Nothing else secured for food till they reached Sabine where a seal cached by Panikpah the year before was secured. [An indeterminate number of pages have been torn out between the last intact page and the back flyleaf.]

The rest of the members of Peary’s crew left no statements or written records that have yet come to light. As one reporter characterized their mood upon the Roosevelt’s return to Labrador, “Speculation is rife over the possibility of a rebellion among certain members of the Roosevelt crew who were sworn to silence concerning Dr. Cook. ” He also noted that some of the men were “bearing themselves as men who had been badgered for weeks over that single issue of fact,” and then added: “There is no doubt of the fact that Peary exercises an almost savage dominance over the members of his expedition. He is a man of tremendous physical energies and said to have a volcanic temper.” [New York World September 21, 1909]

As for Peary himself, an indication of what he knew about Dr. Cook’s journey and when he knew it came at his first interview with dozens of reporters in Sydney. When asked if he had any comment on Pritchard’s “confession” that he had known for months of Cook’s claim to the pole, he said “Not the slightest” with a finality “that made some of the interviewers jump.” And when asked at what time he had first heard of Cook’s claim to have reached the North Pole, he began to answer, “I heard while at Etah that . . .”, but then, according to one reporter, cut himself short: “His jaws snapped together like a bear trap, and he flung himself back in the chair so that it creaked and rocked. Winking his eyelids and working his jaws for a moment, he said more softly than he had yet spoken: ‘I do not wish to say any more yet. Let us waive that.’” [New York World, September 22, 1909]

This indicates, like Henson’s statements, that Peary was aware that Cook’s two companions had initially said that Cook had told them they had reached the North Pole.

Harry Whitney

Harry Whitney confirmed this in an interview printed by the New York Times on September 29, 1909. Whitney, though not a part of Peary’s crew, was the one who first met Cook upon his return to Annoatok and who lived with him in Cook’s box house for the three days before he departed south. Whitney said he had spoken with Cook’s Inuit after Cook left for the Danish settlements and that they said they had been to the pole with Cook. As soon as the Roosevelt reached Etah, Whitney had boarded her but, acceding to the doctor’s request, stated to Peary that Cook had said he had gone beyond Peary’s Farthest North of 1906. Peary made no comment on this, but went straight to his cabin.

The next day Cook’s Inuit companions came to Whitney and asked him what Peary’s men were trying to get them to say. Peary’s men had shown them papers and maps, they said, but they did not understand these papers. When Whitney reached Newfoundland, he told reporters that he had heard nothing of Cook’s Eskimos retracting their statements to him or saying they never went out of sight of land, until he reached St. John’s. To the best of his knowledge, he said, Cook’s two companions never varied their story, though he admitted that Peary’s men could have gotten such a retraction without his knowledge.

It did not take long for Whitney to realize he had come down on the “wrong” side of the Polar Controversy, however. Peary thought Whitney had been lax as his “guest” and lacking in judgment and “gentlemanly feeling” to have had anything to do with his rival. Whitney was even personally chastised by General Hubbard, and bribed by Bob Bartlett with a prospective berth on Peary’s abortive Antarctic expedition to come over to the “right” side. By the time Whitney published his book, Hunting with the Eskimos, in 1910, he had. He recounted his meeting with Dr. Cook, but said not a word about what the Inuit had told him about their journey with him. That same year he accompanied Bob Bartlett to Etah where the records and instruments Whitney had been entrusted with by Cook to return safely to America, but which Peary had refused to transport on the Roosevelt, were apparently dug up from the cache where he and Bob Bartlett had buried them in August 1909 and disposed of.

That leaves Donald MacMillan. MacMillan had so much to say on the Inuit testimony that we must reserve a discussion of it for the next post.

Sources: Goodsell’s original diary is at the Mercer County Historical Society, Mercer, PA, as his unpublished manuscript of “There and Back Again.” A typed copy of Goodsell’s diary is in NARA II, College Park, MD, Record Group XP; Borup’s notebook is also at NARA II. The diaries of Thomas Dedrick and Josephine Peary referred to here are also at NARA II.

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The Cook-Peary Files: The “Eskimo Testimony”: Part 3: The Eyewitnesses

December 15, 2022

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

Dr. Cook’s claim to having attained the North Pole was in the nature of an unwitnessed assertion. True, Cook had with him two Inuit, Etukishuk and Ahwelah, but they were incapable of verifying that Cook had actually reached his goal. This is not to diminish them. They were ideal traveling companions on such a journey, being masters of Arctic travel and survival, which Cook gave them full credit for. In fact, he acknowledged they were superior to any white assistant he could have taken in this regard, but they had no Western scientific skills by which they could verify in any concrete way Cook’s assertion. The only other eyewitness besides these two Inuit was Rudolph Franke, who overwintered with Coook and accompanied him on the first part of his polar attempt. But Franke had been sent back after the first three days when Cook was on a small island off of Bache Peninsula, more than 500 miles from the North Pole. Although Franke truthfully reported this portion of Cook’s journey (more truthfully than Cook did himself, as it turned out), he could say nothing about where Cook went after that. Even if he had gone farther, he, too, lacked the scientific skills necessary to verify Cook’s claims.

Therefore, it was only Frederick Cook who knew for sure if he had reached the North Pole. So, what did Cook himself say? And what did he tell the Inuit and others before he wired his first account to world from Lerwick, Scotland, on September 1, 1909?

Of course, My Attainment of the Pole contains his version of his polar journey in circumstantial detail, and in it, of course, he claimed that he indeed did reach the North Pole on April 21, 1908. In that book Cook also referred to Peary’s interview with Etukishuk and Ahwelah that resulted in his “proof” against him that was published on October 13, 1909. (see the previous post). These references can be found in entries in the book’s index on pages 12, 34, 206, 452 and 488.

Cook claimed in numerous subsequent interviews that, to keep down the tendency of Inuit to panic when they lost sight of land, he encouraged his two companions to believe that the numerous mirages that are common in the Arctic were actual land, and thus the Inuit told Peary that they had never lost sight of it. However, this seems hardly credible. Inuit were masters of their environment. They knew how to read weather signs, interpret ice and snow conditions, and distinguish mirage from reality. Their lives literally depended on these skills.

There seems no doubt that wherever Cook turned back, he told his companions he was doing so because he had reached the North Pole. The Inuit had no such Western mathematical concept as “The North Pole,” and never understood the desire of so many whites to reach it. When shown it on maps, they called it “The Big Navel,” because it appeared to them as a point at the center of concentric circles. This was either misunderstood or corrupted into “The Big Nail” Cook refers to in the subsequent quote from My Attainment of the Pole. Cook talks at length in his book about his companions’ initial excitement when told they had reached their goal. They expected to see something different, even amazing, but he says, they soon showed disappointment that the place looked exactly the same as any other spot on the polar pack ice. Cook also claimed a number of times that he cautioned his companions not to tell Peary they had been at the Pole, and said that their later statements to him reflected his instructions to them, with which they kept faith.

Cook’s most substantial refutation of Peary’s proof came in a footnote on page 452:

Cook statement on Peary Proof

But again, Cook was being disingenuous. Cook had spent two winters with the Inuit in northern Greenland, and had visited them on three other separate occasions. He was an acute observer and had grown familiar with their psychology and cultural norms. He knew swearing an Inuk to secrecy was absolutely futile. Lying was culturally disapproved, and secrecy was as well. Cook knew that his Inuit would tell their fellow tribesmen what Cook had told them as sure as the sun would rise in February.

So, he told the Inuit of his attainment, but what did he say to others after he returned to his winter base in April 1909? Early in his controversy with Peary, Peary suggested it was suspicious that Cook had never told anyone he had reached the North Pole when he returned to Annoatok. There he encountered three white men, Harry Whitney, a rich hunter who had come north with Peary in 1908 and who had spent the winter in Cook’s box house at Annoratok to bag Arctic trophies, and John Murphy and Billy Pritchard, bos’un and cabin boy of the Roosevelt, respectively. After a period of recovery from his grueling journey from Cape Hardy, where he had wintered, Cook told Whitney in confidence, “I have been to the Pole.” Whitney, Cook relates, offered his congratulations. Cook asked Whitney not to tell this to Peary when he returned, however. He didn’t tell him to lie, but, if questioned, asked him to just say Cook had beaten Peary’s 1906 Farthest North record. Cook then discovered that Billy Pritchard had overheard his conversation with Whitney and swore him to secrecy as well. Peary had left Pritchard and Murphy at Etah to trade Cook’s supplies for valuable furs over the winter. Murphy was absent there on this assignment at the time of his conversation and so did not know of Cook’s claim.

Cook then took an interest in Peary’s instructions to Murphy, copying them out in full. He also began an indignant note to Peary expressing his outrage at Peary’s arrangements in regard to his property:

Cook's note to Peary

Cook note

But he then thought the better of it and did not leave it for Peary. But he realized he must now beat Peary to the punch and be the first to put in his claim, even though Peary could not possibly have reached the Pole before he claimed to have reached it. He hurriedly packed up and left Annoatok on April 21.

Despite his injunction to his Inuit companions, Cook expresses no surprise that when he reached Neurke, the first Inuit village as he started on his 800 mile sledge journey to reach the Danish settlements down the coast, that the word was already out:

MAP 1

Meanwhile, third parties with no connection with either Cook or Peary heard from natives particulars of Cook’s journey.

The indignant note is among the Frederick A. Cook papers at the Library of Congress. The hand-written draft of Cook’s telegraphic report that he left with Kraul is now at the Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen. A transcription of this draft, which differs in some respects from what Cook telegraphed to the Herald, can be found in the author’s book, The Lost Polar Notebook of Dr. Frederick A. Cook.

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The Cook-Peary Files: The “Eskimo Testimony”: Part 2: Peary’s Proofs

November 11, 2022

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

At first, General Hubbard seemed reluctant to become involved in the developing controversy. He wrote to Peary: “About the Cook matter—you know the man and know what he probably has in the way of proofs, and you know what you have, and, for these reasons, are the one competent judge as to the treatment the matter should receive. I hesitate to make any suggestions.” But Peary quickly proved he wasn’t competent in meeting the issue of Dr. Cook.

In his first interview with the Press in a fish loft at Battle Harbour, Labrador, Peary reiterated that he had proof Cook had not been to the Pole, but refused to disclose its nature. All he had presented so far was his bald statement that the Inuit who had accompanied him denied his story. Various parties familiar with Inuit culture and psychology thought this inadequate, however. Dillon Wallace, a member of the Explorers Club who had made several trips to Labrador, said “I am rather surprised to see Commander Peary quoting the Eskimos to the effect that Dr. Cook never reached the pole. Their whole idea of life is to say what pleases. . . They are all in awe of Peary and would not like to offend him. They would, for the sake of being agreeable, willing declare that white snow was black.” And Dr. Thomas Dedrick, who had been Peary’s surgeon on his 1898-1902 expedition, and who was intimately familiar with Polar Inuit culture, agreed: “Mr. Peary’s statement that the Eskimos gave him these facts must be judged in the light of the condition under which the statements were made. . . . To please Mr. Peary, in which art of pleasing the Eskimo is most adept, the Eskimos, in expectancy of gifts, could easily say or have their remarks twisted to the semblance of saying that Dr. Cook did not get very far toward the pole. Here was a man on the spot with a ship. Dr. Cook was but a memory to the Eskimos.”

Henry Rood, representing Harper’s Magazine, was one who interviewed Peary in the Labrador fish loft. As a personal friend of Peary’s, he was given papers to deliver to General Hubbard, while Peary continued to bombard the general with telegrams.

When Peary finally arrived back in the United States at the end of September, he met Hubbard at his home in in Bar Harbor. On the train going back to Portland, Peary gave a rambling interview that the Press dubbed his “fourteen points.” Among those he mentioned as evidence against Cook’s claim, besides that the Inuit had said he had not gone out of sight of land, were the fact that Cook failed to retrieve the record at Cape Thomas Hubbard, which Peary left there in 1906, his negative opinions of Cook’s sledging abilities, various criticisms of his provisions and equipment, and his decision to leave his records and flag with Harry Whitney at Annoatok. This last fact rebounded negatively on Peary because when Whitney returned without Cook’s things, it was learned that Peary had refused to allow Whitney to bring them aboard the Roosevelt, and instead ordered that they be buried in a cache near Etah. Peary’s “fourteen points” interview was too much even for his supporters. Henry Rood wired Peary that “you are obviously being misquoted,” and suggested that Peary give no more interviews to the Press.

The public and the Press were appalled at Peary’s behavior and continued attacks on Cook while refusing to provide any hard evidence for them. As one editorialist wrote: “The further this most deplorable controversy is carried the worse is Commander Peary made to appear. It is quite clear now that his mood after returning to Etah from the pole and hearing that Dr. Cook had reached the goal ahead of him was – and still is—blind fury, breaking the bounds of good judgment and good taste, indeed, of ordinary discretion.”

The “fourteen points” interview led to a gag order on Peary, who retired to his summer home on Eagle Island in Casco Bay. Hubbard then became Peary’s spokesman from that point forward. But even so, Peary continued to send him almost daily letters. In one, he went over a number of points concerning the proof he would release, a draft of which he had already sent Hubbard. The first had to do with the crucial matter of the Inuit ability to trace such a route, and their credibility in doing so.Peary notes 1

On October 3, Peary met Hubbard again on the platform of the Portland railway station. The two men walked up and down the platform talking together under the glaring arc lights; occasionally they stopped while Peary emphasized a point. General Hubbard was seen to accept a large white envelope from Peary on which he made a few notes. Hubbard then returned to New York and went into conference with other members of the Peary Arctic Club. After the meeting Hubbard announced that the unanimous decision of the Club was to release Peary’s evidence against Cook to the newspapers the following week.

Through the auspices of the Associated Press, a map, allegedly drawn by his two Inuit companions showing the actual route taken by Dr. Cook on his polar attempt, was mailed out to all the newspapers that were members of the AP. At the bottom it enjoined any release of the map or the forthcoming statement, when it arrived, until the morning of October 13.

Peary eskimo map orig. cropped

But William Randolph Hearst broke faith with the embargo. The New York American and some other papers controlled by Hearst ran a detailed summary of Peary’s forthcoming statement with its own map on October 10.

NYA

Herbert Bridgman, the Peary Arctic Club’s secretary, appealed to the AP’s superintendent to sanction Hearst. But he replied that this was out of the AP’s jurisdiction, because it was the Peary Arctic Club which had copyrighted the Peary statement and map, not the AP. He also claimed that the copyrighted statement had not been delivered by the date the American’s summary was published (though the map had).  Just where the American got the statement was not speculated upon.  Although Bridgman might have considered seeking relief from the courts, but the cat was already out of the bag, and he apparently just dropped the matter.

The official release of Peary’s statement came, as planned, on October 13.

proof 1

The story consisted of three parts: an introduction signed by Peary concerning the manner in which the Inuit statement was obtained, the statement itself, signed by Peary and four other members of Peary’s expedition, George Borup, Matt Henson, Donald MacMillan and Robert Bartlett, and an explanatory follow-up written by Herbert L. Bridgman, containing some of the points Peary had made to General Hubbard in the letter shown above.

According to the statement, the Inuit said that they had proceeded to the tip of Axel Heiberg Land, as Cook had said he had done; they had camped there for some days and then, with two other Inuit, had started north over the pack. These two had returned after one day on the ice. Cook and the remaining two Inuit had camped on the ice for one more day, turned west, then south, eventually reaching Cape Northwest on the west coast of Axel Heiberg Island. The accompanying map claimed to show the route taken from Cape Northwest: “They went west across the ice, which was level and covered with snow, offering good going, to a low island, which they had seen from the shore of Heiberg Land at Cape Northwest. On this island they camped for one sleep.”

From this point, the statement said, the three had traveled southward along the eastern coast of Amund Ringnes Island. After that, in most all particulars, the Inuit story, according to the statement, was broadly similar to Cook’s account, except that the Inuit said they did not cross North Devon Island to reach Jones Sound and that two small islands were discovered southeast of Ellesmere Land on their trek toward Annoatok in the spring of 1909. The full published statement with the accompanying map, as published, can be read at this website: https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83030214/1909-10-13/ed-1/?sp=1 or at the New York Times archives site: https://www.nytimes.com/1909/10/13/archives/cooks-route-far-from-pole-his-eskimos-say-peary-submits-their.html

Many papers which printed Peary’s statement also published counter arguments by Cook’s supporters. After the dust settled, many found Peary’s much delayed and ballyhooed statement distinctly anti- climactic, as an editorial in the Rochester Post-Express was typical:Rochester editorial

Even Peary’s firm supporters doubted that the statement would end the matter. “There might be circumstances under which the evidence of these young men would be of greater value,” admitted Cyrus Adams of the New York Sun, but under the circumstances it was obtained,  “It is not very likely that . . . their evidence will count for very much in the final settlement of the controversy.”

Peary’s note to Hubbard is in the Peary papers at NARA II; the hitherto unknown AP letter was recently recovered by Darrell Hartman, the author of a forthcoming book about the NY Press at the turn of the century to be published by Viking, in the files of the Explorers Club of New York, who supplied a copy.  He also supplied the image of the NYA story from October 10, 1909, which he retrieved from the New York Public Library.

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The Cook-Peary Files: The “Eskimo Testimony”: Part 1: Background and Prefigurement

October 12, 2022

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

Among aficionados of the Polar Controversy, perhaps no single aspect has raised more debate than the truth and value of the testimony Peary allegedly obtained from Cook’s only two eyewitnesses to where he went after he left land on his purported trip to the North Pole. To evaluate this so-called “Eskimo Testimony” properly requires a highly involved process of analyzing a large number of statements made by various parties, some eyewitnesses, some with only hearsay evidence, that bear upon the statement published by The Peary Arctic Club in a copyrighted story that appeared on October 13, 1909 in papers served by the Associated Press. In this post we will examine the events that give background and context to the publication of Peary’s “proof” against Cook’s claim to have beaten him the North Pole.

When John R. Bradley’s “hunting trip” to Greenland got back to New York in October 1907, he posted letters written by Dr. Cook in August. One was marked for delivery to the Secretary of the Explorers Club, Henry Walsh. In it Cook explained why he had not returned with Bradley: “I find that I have here a good opportunity to try for the North Pole and therefore I will stay here for a year. I hope to get to the Explorers Club in Sept of 1908 with the record of the Pole.” A similar letter was received by Herbert L. Bridgman, Secretary of the Peary Arctic Club, a wealthy group of backers who had bankrolled Peary’s attempts to reach the Pole for a decade. When he read the letter, Bridgman called Bob Bartlett, who passed the word along to Peary. When Peary got the news, it set him off on a letter writing campaign of his own.

Peary had planned to begin another attempt on the North Pole that summer, himself, but when his chief backer and president of The Peary Arctic Club, Morris K. Jesup, suddenly died, Peary was unable to raise the immense sum of money he needed to repair the severe damage the Roosevelt had suffered on his 1905-1906 expedition. It soon became clear he wouldn’t be able to go north again until the summer of 1908, and if Cook returned when he told Walsh he would and with what he said he hoped, Peary would be in the Arctic and powerless to respond. Typical of the content of Peary’s letters was one to the International Polar Commission in Belgium, which said in part, “If Dr. Cook returns and claims to have reached the Pole, he should be compelled to prove it.” And since Cook was the sitting president of the Explorers Club, when Peary was offered that position in his absence, Peary only agreed to take the presidency if the Club adhered to the exact same demand.

When Peary’s belated expedition reached Etah, the Inuit’s farthest northern village, in August 1908, he soon encountered Cook’s only white companion, a young German named Rudolph Franke, whom Cook paid to stay with him over the winter of 1907-08. From him and a letter written by Cook that Franke had received from Cook dated the previous March, Peary learned that Cook had reached Cape Thomas Hubbard, near the tip of Axel Heiberg Island, and had set out from there for the Pole.

Before he left for his winter base, Peary dictated letters to his private secretary, Ross Marvin, to be returned to New York by his supply ship, Erik, about “the Cook Affair.” To gain further details of Cook’s doings, before sailing, he took aboard his ship several of the Inuit who had accompanied Cook to Axel Heiberg and had returned from there, leaving him and just two Inuit, Etukishuk and Ahwelah. Among these was Koolootingwah, who had been with Peary when he reached Cape Thomas Hubbard in the summer of 1906.

As an emergency base of supplies to fall back on in case of accident to his ship, Peary took over the boxhouse where Cook and Franke had spent the winter at Annoatok, 25 miles northeast of Etah, and put his bo’sun, John Murphy, in charge of Cook’s supplies that it contained. He also left his cabin boy, Billy Pritchard, there to keep the log, as Murphy was illiterate. A young sportsman named Harry Whitney, who had come north with Peary for a fee of $500, elected to stay the winter at Annoatok as well (see the series of posts “Inside the Peary Expedition” starting in June 2020 for more details).

These three were on hand when Cook and his companions unexpectedly reappeared at their winter base on April 15, 1909. They had spent the winter on Devon Island and were so unkempt that Whitney did not even recognize Cook as a white man until he spoke to him in English. Soon after arriving, Cook told Whitney in confidence that he had reached the North Pole, but asked him not to tell Peary or any of his crew. Instead, he asked Whitney to say only that Cook had been farther north than Peary had in 1906, when Peary claimed to have beaten the Italian record for “Farthest North.” Billy Pritchard, who overheard Cook’s conversation with Whitney, was also sworn to silence, but Peary’s boatswain, John Murphy, was in Etah at the time, and was not let in on Cook’s confidence.

In My Attainment of the Pole, Cook wrote that he had given his two Inuit companions the same rejoinder: they were to say they had gone farther north than Peary in 1906, but not to mention his polar attainment. But Inuit could never keep a secret, and soon news that Cook had reached “the Big Navel” started to spread through the native settlements.

The world did not receive word of Cook’s accomplishment until September 1, 1909, when he wired the news from the Shetland Islands that he had reached the North Pole on April 21, 1908. Cook’s preliminary summary of his attainment was published in the New York Herald the next day. At that time, nothing had been heard from Peary, who was then already on his way home, but who had not yet reached the nearest telegraph office, located at Indian Harbour, Labrador.

On receiving word of Cook’s claim, Herbert Bridgman, heeding Peary’s demands for proof of his rival’s claim, suggested how that might be obtained: “The word of the Eskimos who went with him will be of use in getting at the proof,” he said. “The Eskimos cannot write, but Mr. Peary has told me that they can draw a map of the north pole and the regions surrounding that is remarkable for its accuracy. With this skill, the Eskimos ought to be in position to help Dr. Cook establish beyond doubt his claim.” (New York Times, September 3, 1909).

After Dr. Cook arrived in Copenhagen the next day, he seemed to agree: “An esquimau is a better judge of Arctic conditions and Arctic travel than a white man, and there is no real reason why as witnesses the word of Etukishuk and Ahwelah will not be quite as acceptable to the scientific world as that of any white man.” (New York World, September 5, 1909).

On September 6th Bridgman received a coded telegram from Indian Harbour announcing Peary’s own success. The next day Bridgman gave another interview to the New York Times in which he elaborated on his previous remarks: “I think, when Mr. Peary gives to the world his account of the stories told by the two Eskimo boys who accompanied Dr. Cook their narrations will do much to prove or disprove Dr. Cook’s claim. They are a simple minded people but they have a strange and wonderful intelligence regarding geography.” (New York Times, September 8, 1909).

Peary confirmed this line of attack on Cook’s credibility in a telegram dated September 8: “Cook’s story should not be taken too seriously. The Eskimos who accompanied him say that he went no distance north. He did not get out of sight of land. Other men of the tribe corroborate their statements.” (New York Times, September 9, 1909.)

By then, Peary had moved down the Labrador coast to Battle Harbour, where he lingered for more than a week, all the while sending and receiving telegrams by the score, including, finally, the exclusive account of his own polar journey to the New York Times. Upon reading it, many noticed a remarkable similarity to the preliminary report of Dr. Cook, sent a week before. But of course, Cook claimed to have been to the pole nearly a year before Peary. If Peary was to achieve his long-cherished ambition of being The Discoverer of the North Pole, then Cook’s claim had to be convincingly demolished.

On September 13th Peary wired Thomas H. Hubbard, who had succeeded Jesup as president of the Peary Arctic Club:

telegram for October 2022 post x

The telegram is among the Peary papers at NARA II in College Park, MD.

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The Cook-Peary Files: The Barrill Affidavit, Part 4: Who got what?

September 10, 2022

This is the 21st in a series examining significant unpublished documents related to the Polar Controversy.

As we have already seen, the newspapers carried an account saying Ed Barrill had been bribed with $5,000 to make his affidavit against Cook, but that General Hubbard was quoted several times as denying he had received anything for his signature. James Ashton’s only known public comment appeared in the New York Times on October 30, 1909. There he was quoted as saying that Barrill had received $100-$200 for expenses, but that he would have to look it up in his expense books to be sure.

In his chapter “The Mt. McKinley Bribery” in My Attainment of the Pole, Cook contended that Barrill visited Seattle, and in the presence of Seattle Times editor, Joe Blethen, dickered for sums ranging up to $10,000 for an affidavit that would discredit him. Eventually, Cook said, Barrill failed in this attempt, and decamped to Tacoma to meet with James Ashton. Soon after, Cook alleged, he was seen at a Tacoma bank by a witness who claimed he had been passed $1,500 in large bills. For this and “other considerations,” Cook claimed, Barrill had signed the affidavit published in the Globe.

These statements were based on solid evidence. It came in the form of a long letter from one C. O. Anderson, an attorney in Kennewick, WA, who claimed to have interviewed the witness to the Barrill payoff:

aftermath 1

aftermath 2

aftermath 3

H. Wellington Wack, Cook’s lawyer, followed up by visiting this witness in Indiana. He forwarded a summary of what he had found to assist Cook as he was finishing up the text of his book in early 1911:

wack 1

wack 2

The affidavits Wack mentions here have as yet not come to light.

Early in October 1909, rumors of plans to bribe Barrill had already induced Cook to take countermeasures. He wrote Barrill enclosing $200 and asking him to meet him in St. Louis on October 6, cautioning him to “Kindly give no press interviews whatsoever.” He also sent Printz $500, paying him his full back wages.

When Cook’s serial story of his conquest of the North Pole had begun to appear in the New York Herald, Roscoe C. Mitchell, one of the paper’s reporters, had been assigned to accompany Cook as his “confidential agent” to watch over the Herald’s interests. Cook now dispatched him, under the direction of his attorney to Missoula, Montana.

Savoy

At the new Savoy Hotel there, two local lawyers, Col. Tom Marshall of Missoula, and “General” Elbert D. Weed, of Helena, assisted Mittchell in finding witnesses to counter any potential statements made by Barrill.  The lawyers took affidavits from Barrill’s real estate business partner, C. G. Bridgeford and several others. Fred Printz, who reportedly was doing some dickering himself for as much as $1,000, also was interviewed by Cook’s lawyers at the Savoy.  Mitchell was later joined there by Cook and his private secretary, Walter Lonsdale.

Statements by Bridgeford had been published in the New York Herald on October 12. He claimed that Barrill had shown him his Alaskan diary a number of times, and that the story it contained corroborated Cook’s account. When Barrill’s diary was published in the Globe, this proved to be the case, as was Bridgeford’s physical description of the diary, which was completely accurate, giving evidence that he had indeed seen it. He also testified that Barrill had held forth on the climb a number of times and that his story had been consistently the same: that he and Cook had reached the summit of Mt. McKinley. Others in the community verified this was true as well.

These moves did not go unnoticed by Ashton, who had his own agents working the ground in Montana. He wrote to General Hubbard about what he found out and also sought to discredit Bridgeford.

Cook bribes

In the copy of My Attainment of the Pole that Cook gave to Weed in 1912, the lawyer made a number of annotations in red ink throughout. On page 534 he confirmed Ashton’s statements, but made the Freudian slip of writing “Bridgman” for “Bridgeford” as one of the men from whom Cook’s contingent obtained affidavits.

Dedication

Weed

“In October 1909, Col. Tom Marshall and myself, at Missoula, Montana, took the affidavits of a number of men – among others of Printz and Bridgman – fully sustaining Dr. Cook in the matter.
(signed) E. D. Weed”

Some have assumed, based on press reports and the discovery of the $5,000 Hubbard bank draft drawn by Ashton among Peary’s papers, that Barrill received the full $5,000 (about $150,000 today), but it should be remembered that Ashton had told Hubbard the amount was to cover “everything.” Everything would include paying off not only Barrill, but also the other four persons whose affidavits the Globe eventually published. It also would include the expenses of various parties, including Walter Miller, who sought out and brought the various wintnesses to Ashton, or arranged the taking of their affidavits. Then there was the cost of having Barrill’s lengthy diary accurately deciphered and transcribed, paying for Barrill and his wife’s trip to New York City, and other expenses such as transportation, lodging and meals for the various sworn witnesses, etc. And this is assuming that none of Ashton’s fees were included in the sum, which well they might have been.

It’s probably accurate then, based on the witness, that Barrill actually received only $1,500, but still a substantial sum. Cook claimed that Printz eventually got $500, after being promised more, and that both Miller and Beecher “were promised large amounts, but were cheated at the ‘showdown.’” Just exactly what the others got is unknown. Cook also claimed Printz tried to sell Roscoe Mitchell an affidavit supporting him for $1,000, was turned down, and later solicited $350 in a letter dated October 12. The letter, which is quoted in Cook’s book on page 525, was among the holdings of the Frederick Cook Society before they were transferred to Ohio State, and presumably is there now.

Printz

However, it’s curious that it says it is a “copy” and is on the stationary of the Chittendon Hotel in Columbus, OH, when it is said to have been written at the Savoy in Missoula. For Printz’s part, he denied ever having written such a letter. Because he ended up signing an affidavit for Ashton, we can assume he got nothing from Cook’s side.

The Anderson and Wack letters were in the collection of the Frederick A. Cook Society, presumably now at Ohio State. The undated letter from Cook to Barrill enclosing $200 and the Ashton letter are at NARA II. Weed’s copy of My Attainment of the Pole is the possession of the author.

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