My attainment of the Pole

by Frederick Albert Cook

The result was that many checks I had given out went to protest. Harper & Brothers had agreed, before starting, to pay me $1,500 for an account of the expedition, whether successful or not. On my return this was paid, and went to meet outstanding debts—debts to pay which I embarrassed myself. Instead of "profits" from this alleged "fake," I suffered a loss of several thousand dollars.

As is quite usual in all exploring expeditions, some of the members of my Mt. McKinley expedition, who did not share in the final success, were disgruntled. Chief among these was Herschell Parker. Owing to ill-health and inexperience, Parker had proved himself inefficient in Alaskan work. Climbing a little peak forty miles from the great mountain, when he was with me, he had pronounced Mt. McKinley unclimbable. Climbing a similar hill, four years later, he stooped to the humbug of offering a photograph of it as a parallel to my picture of the top of Mt. McKinley. This man was so ill-fitted for such work that two men were required to help him mount a horse. But I insisted that we continue at least to the base of the mountain. At the first large glacier, Parker and his companion, Belmore Brown, balked, halting in front of an insignificant ice-wall. The ascent of Mt. McKinley, still thirty-five miles off, they said, was impossible. Parker returned, and in a trail of four thousand miles to New York told every press representative how impossible was the ascent of Mt. McKinley. By the time Parker reached New York a cable went through that the thing was done. At a point four thousand miles from the scene of action, he again cried, "Impossible!" When I returned to New York, however, a month later, and Parker learned the details, he publicly and privately credited my ascent of Mt. McKinley. Nothing further was said to doubt the climb until two years later, when he lined up with the Peary interests.

Using Parker as a tool, Peary's Arctic Club, through him, first forced the side-issue of Mt. McKinley. With the Barrill affidavit, made later, were printed other affidavits by Barrill's friends, who had not been within fifty miles of the mountain when it was climbed. This act, to me, was a bitter climax of injustice. But I have since learned that Printz got $500 of pro-Peary money; that both Miller and Beecher were promised large amounts, but were cheated at the "showdown." Printz afterwards wrote that he would make an affidavit for me for $300, and at Missoula he made an affidavit in which he attempted to defend me.[26] This he offered to sell to Roscoe Mitchell for $1,000.

While easy pro-Peary money was passing in the West, Parker came forward with his old grudge. His chief contention was that, because he had taken home with him in deserting the object of the expedition a hypsometer, I could not have measured the high altitudes claimed. The altitude had been measured by triangulation by the hydrographer of the expedition, but I had other methods of measuring the ascent.

I had two aneroid barometers, specially marked for very high climbing, thermometers, and all the usual Alpine instruments. The hypsometer was not at that time an important instrument. Parker also showed unfair methods by allowing the press repeatedly to print that he had been the leader and the organizer of the expedition. This he knew to be false. I had organized two expeditions to explore Mt. McKinley, at a cost of $28,000. Of this Parker had furnished $2,500. Parker took no part in the organization of the last expedition, had given no advice to help supply an adequate equipment, and in the field his presence was a daily handicap to the progress of the expedition. Heretofore, this was never indicated. But when he allows himself to be quoted as the leader of an expedition upon which he attempts to throw discredit, then it is right that all the facts be known.

In the press reports, when Parker was first heard from, came the news that on the Pacific coast, at Tacoma, a lawyer by the name of J. M. Ashton was retained by someone. To the press Ashton said he was engaged "to look into the McKinley business," but he did not know by whom—whether by Cook or Peary. He was "engaged" in a business too questionable to tell who furnished the money.

In the final ascent of Mt. McKinley there was with me Edward Barrill, the affidavit-maker. He was a good-natured and hard-working packer, who had proved himself a most able climber. Together we ascended the mountain in September, 1906. To this time (1909) there was not the slightest doubt about the footprints on the top of the great mountain. Barrill had told everybody that he knew, and all who would listen to him, that the mountain was climbed. He went from house to house boastfully, with my book under his arm, telling and retelling the story of the ascent of Mt. McKinley. That anyone should now believe the affidavit, secured and printed for Peary, did not to me seem reasonable.

Parker, filling the position of betrayer and traitor to one who had saved his life many times, had decided, as the Polar controversy opened, to direct the Mt. McKinley side-issue of the pro-Peary effort.

The first news of bribery in the matter came from Darby, Montana. This was Barrill's home town. A Peary man from Chicago was there. He frankly said that he would pay Barrill $1,000 to offer news that would discredit the climb of Mt. McKinley. Other news of the dishonest pro-Peary movement induced me to send Roscoe Mitchell, of the New York Herald, to the working ground of the bribers. Mitchell was working under the direction of my attorneys, H. Wellington Wack, of New York, Colonel Marshal, of Missoula, and General Weed, of Helena, Montana.

Mitchell secured testimony and evidence regarding the buying of Barrill, but was unable to put the conspirators in jail. At Hamilton, Montana, there had appeared a man with $5,000 to pass to Barrill. Barrill's first reply was that he had climbed the mountain; that Dr. Cook had climbed the mountain; that to take that $5,000, in his own words, he "would have to sell his own soul." Barrill's business partner, Bridgeford, was present. He later made an affidavit for Mr. Mitchell covering this part of the pro-Peary perjury effort.