My attainment of the Pole

by Frederick Albert Cook

If this coterie had received from the Eskimos such information as is claimed by them in their statement of October 13, then they must have received it from the Eskimos before Peary and his party left Etah on their return to America. If they had the information when they left the Eskimos at Etah, on their return to America, then they had it when they arrived at Indian Harbor, and before their statement of September 28 was made.

In their statement of October 13, 1909, Peary, Bartlett, McMillan, Borup and Henson state, and sign their names to the statement made to the world and copyrighted, that they had a map on which E-tuk-i-shook and Ah-we-lah, Dr. Cook's two Eskimos, had traced for them the route taken by Dr. Cook, and that this was also supported by the verbal statements of the two Eskimos, that Dr. Cook had reached the northern point of Heiberg Land, or Cape Thomas Hubbard; that he had gone two sleeps north of it, had then turned to the west or southwest, and returned to the northern headland of Heiberg Land, but on the west or northwest side, and had sent back one of the Eskimos to the cache left on the headland, but on the east side of the point, and remained at this new place on the west side of the point for four or five sleeps. Then, all the time that Peary was challenging and impugning that Dr. Cook had reached even the northern point of Heiberg Land, according to their own statement of October 13, they had in their pockets the map and information from the Eskimos that Dr. Cook had not only reached the northern point of Heiberg Land, but traveled above it and turned around the point. In so challenging that Dr. Cook had reached even the northern point of said land, and thereby discrediting Dr. Cook with all the force and influence at their command, when, according to their own later statement, they had then and at that time, and before such time (since they left Etah on their return to America), the statements, trail of route and testimony of the Eskimos entirely to the contrary, Peary and his coterie deliberately and knowingly perpetrated on the public the grossest of falsehoods and impositions.

There are several other contradictions in the statement of October 13. One is the statement that Pan-ic-pa (the father of E-tuk-i-shook), was familiar with the first third and last third of the journey of Dr. Cook and his two Eskimos. Pan-ic-pa may be familiar with the territory of the last third of the route, but not with the journey made by Dr. Cook and E-tuk-i-shook and Ah-we-lah over this part of the route, for these three alone made the journey from Cape Sparbo to Annoatok. Pan-ic-pa went only as far as the northern point of Heiberg Land, and returned from there nearly a year before Dr. Cook and his two Eskimos arrived from Cape Sparbo. This is shown by Peary and his party themselves in their statement that Pan-ic-pa, the father of E-tuk-i-shook, a very intelligent man, who was in the party of Eskimos that came back from Dr. Cook from the northern end of Nansen's Strait (Sound), came in and indicated the same localities and details as the two boys. Of course Pan-ic-pa could only indicate the localities that he had himself journeyed to with Dr. Cook, and not any after he had left Dr. Cook and the two Eskimos at the northern point of Heiberg Land, or the northern end of Nansen's Sound, which is the same thing.

Another contradiction, a very serious one indeed, as important as the first of the foregoing contradictions is, that if Peary and his party had such information from the Eskimos as they claimed in their statement of October 13, then they knew that the little sledge of Dr. Cook which they saw at Etah was not the sledge that made the trip to the Pole. The printed reports show that long before October 13 Peary and all his henchmen were challenging and charging to the public that the little sled in question left with Whitney, could not possibly have made the trip to the Pole. In the statement of October 13, Peary and his party state that, according to the Eskimos, Dr. Cook and his two Eskimos started from the northern point of Heiberg Land with only two sledges. Further on in the statement, that the dogs and one sledge were abandoned in Jones Sound, and that at Cape Vera—western end of Jones Sound—Peary and his party say that E-tuk-i-shook and Ah-we-lah, Dr. Cook's two Eskimos, informed them that (quoting Peary and his party's statement verbatim), "here they cut the remaining sledge off—that is, shortened it, as it was awkward to transport with the boat, and near here they killed a walrus."

During all the time then, before October 13, that Peary and his party were belittling this sled, and referring to its character as a positive proof that Dr. Cook could not have reached the Pole, and stating that it would have been knocked to pieces in a few days, they, according to their own statement of October 13, knew, even while using such argument against Dr. Cook, that the little sled was not the original sled, but only a part of one which the desperate and fearfully hard-pressed wanderers had themselves—having no dogs—dragged their food for three hundred miles over one of the roughest and most terrible stretches of the frozen zone, never before traveled by man. According to their own statement of October 13, Peary and his clique convict themselves of boldly and deliberately perpetrating gross falsehoods against Dr. Cook and upon the people. Then shall we believe anything further from them?

There is only one rational view to take of their statement of October 13. That, knowing their first charges were certain to fail, the statement of October 13 was concocted for their own base purposes. No sane person can believe that if they had had such exceedingly damaging information as is claimed by them in their statement of October 13, they could have instead made use of charges far less damaging and known to them to be false.

W. J. Armbruster.

St. Louis, Mo., April 13, 1910.

[25] One of the meanest and pettiest charges concocted for Mr. Peary at a time when personal veracity was regarded as the test of rival claims was that I had attempted to steal the scientific work of a missionary while I was on the Belgica Antarctic Expedition. Director Townsend, of the New York Aquarium, who, like Mr. Peary, was drawing a salary from the taxpayers while his energies were spent in another mission, declared I had taken a dictionary, compiled by Thos. Bridges, of Indian words, and had put it forth as my own work. Dalenbagh, of the American Geographical Society, and of the "Worm Diggers' Union," polly-like, also repeated this charge. "Of the other charges against Dr. Cook we are at sea," he said, "but here is something that we know about." By expending five cents in stamps, five minutes with the pen, both Townsend and Dalenbaugh might have learned that the dishonor which they were trying to attach to some one else was on themselves.

Under big headlines, "Dr. Cook Steals a Missionary's Work," the New York Times and other pro-Peary papers printed columns of absolute lies in what purported to be interviews with Townsend. Dalenbaugh, pointing to this gleefully, said "Dr. Cook has been guilty of wrong-doing for many years."