Unravelling the Franklin Mystery by David C. Woodman

Author:David C. Woodman [Woodman, David C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: myepub, Non-Fiction, History, Franklin Expedition, Arctic, Canada
ISBN: 9780773582170
Publisher: McGill-Queen’s University Press
Published: 2015-01-15T12:00:00+00:00

It is hard to follow this line of reasoning. Untouched caches of meat along the south shore of King William Island to the west of Ok-Bar (Mount Matheson) would prove that Aglooka’s party were either excessively honest or unobservant, but little else. Only if the caches had been untouched to the north-east of OkBar would this serve as evidence that Aglooka’s party had not travelled beyond Keeuna. Even so, this would not necessarily imply that they had crossed to the continent - perhaps the last man died on the western spit of Keeuna itself, perhaps they manned the boat and went somewhere else. If this evidence was the basis of the belief held by the Inuit that Aglooka’s boat was found at Starvation Cove, it is very flimsy indeed.

Pooyetta’s widow, Tooktoocheer, could have confirmed where the boat initially discovered by her husband was found. Klutschak’s record of her testimony records her exact words in describing the location “near the beach in a small inlet,” but it is left for a later commentator to conclude that this inlet was Starvation Cove. The description could easily refer to Douglas Bay - the inlet that is west of the island of Keeuna (where the five bodies were found), rather than the inlet that is west of Montreal Island (where the five bodies were thought to have been found). Gibson remarked that most of the remains here were found “close to the high water mark.”[10]

Schwatka described Pooyetta’s widow as “decrepit and wrinkled with age,” but admitted that “her memory seemed to have survived the general wreck with the least impairment.” He told that she related a tale of “a central place, or last resting place, in which the vital records of the Franklin Expedition had been placed by the last survivors,”[11] but he offered no opinion as to where that place actually was.

What Tooktoocheer actually said was both ambiguous and interesting. She spoke of “six skeletons on the main-land and two on the island. This she pointed out on the southern coast near ninety-five degrees west longitude.”[12] Here she is undoubtedly speaking of Keeuna and the “main-land” of King William Island. But her story abruptly changes locale. In the next sentence but one she remarks “this was when she was at the boat place west of Richardson Point. In fact, she seemed to have the two places somewhat mixed up in her mind.”[13]

Certainly someone had these two places “mixed up,” but whether it was Tooktoocheer or the white men has yet to be shown. Hall apparently could not make entire sense of the stories which he had been told about Pooyetta’s boat either, for he wrote that “there is something mysterious connected with the history of this boat & the many dead men found in it that needs to be solved.”[14]

Tooktoocheer’s testimony was so confusing that her son, Ogzeuckjewock, who had been a mere lad at the time, was interviewed in preference. According to Schwatka, “he gave a concise report, speaking with no hesitation

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