The Long Arctic Search - The Narrative of Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka, U.S.A.

The search of Terror Bay was an extremely difficult one owing to the many long finger-like points that constituted its interig outlines. While only about ten to twelve miles between its bounding capes its contour furnished me with nearly ninety miles of very bad walking, which took seven days to complete. The game (luckily for us) was very plentiful in the neighborhood. On one day alone I saw no less than thirty-four reindeer grazing among the different valleys through which I passed. Colonel Gilder killed five. Without leaving the route of my other duties I killed three. Some had an abundance of substantial food and, better than all, its condition was rapidly improving from the lean stringy quality which characterized our spring supply of venison. 

The Arctic reindeer is an awkward clumsy animal, and when trotting along, unless closely pursued, it goes stumbling over the grough ground in a manner that often leads the amateur hunter, (who perchance has risked a long shot at him) into the belief that his fire has been effective. But the reindeer was the most reliable game in which dependence for regular continuous subsistence can be placed. Without the reindeer my expedition of from nineteen to twenty-two souls and forty to fifty dogs could not have accomplished the journey it did, having only about a month's ration when it started at Camp Daly. I have never enountered a larger band than some three  or four hundred which I saw on the Seroy Lakes, near North Hudson Bay in the autumn of 1878. During the subsequent autumn on King William Land, I saw no less than a thousand in a single day. 

When first thrown wholly upon a diet of reindeer meat, it seems inadequate to properly nourish the system and there is an apparent weakness and inability to perform severe exertive, fatiguing journeys. But this soon passes away in the course of two or three weeks. At first the white man takes to the new diet in too homeopathic a manner, especially if it be raw. However, seal meat which is far more disagreeable with its fishy odor, and bear meat with its strong flavor, seems to have no such a temporary debilitating effect upon the economy. The reindeer are scattered during the spring and summer which is the breeding season, but as the cold weather approaches they herd together in vast bodies. 

Toolooah, my most excellent Innuit hunter, never failed to secure one during every hunt. I knew him to kill seven out of a band of eight reindeer with the eight shots in the magazine of his Winchester before they could get out of range. On ten different occasions he killed two deer at one shot and once three fell at a single discharge. The number of times he dispatched one and wounded others, or wounded two or even three at a single shot, which he afterwards secured, seemed countless.

That he supported an average of nine souls (not counting double that number of dogs dependent upon him for about ten months), coupled with a score of 232 reindeer during that period, besides a number of seal, musk-ox and polar bear, demonstrates his great abilityas a hunter in these inhospitable climes.

On our journey a thorough search was made of that portion of the coast that Frank and Henry had not previously looked over,  but nothing rewarded either our or their labors except an oar found

near the head of Washington Bay. Our trip was also our first continued experience with a raw meat diet and, whenever the weather was sufficiently cold to freeze it into a hard mass, we

found it not altogether unacceptable. Raw versus cooked meat brings up the interesting subject of the different methods of eating by the Innuits, and we no longer considered ourselves aliens in this

foreign land.

Our canvas tent becoming very uncomfortable, on account of the intense cold, we had a large ice igloo constructed into which we moved on the first of November, and found it decidedly more habitable. The last cold snap commenced to bring in the scattered native hunters to erect their winter quarters and Camp Daly, a la glace began to assume a very lively aspect. A summation of the autumn's hunting showed that between two and three hundred deer had been killed, so we felt relieved of all anxiety in regard to a winter's supply of the very best of all Arctic meat. A plentiful supply of reindeer skins was assured for winter clothing and bedding, and of the very best too, for the skins secured in October are superior to those taken later in the year, the hair being less liable to come out, and not so heavy as to render the clothing impliable. After January the reindeer skins are worthless and are thrown away by the native hunter until about the middle of August, when all of the winter's hair has shed and the short summer coat is then in its prime. From it is made all the native underclothing, or that which is worn with the hair towards the body. For about the middle of September until the first of October the skins are valuable for outside clothing, worn hair-side out, and for bedding and from this later they steadily deteriorate,

By February 1, 1879, the few Inuits at Camp Daly had moved over to Depot island, it being more available for walrus hunting in the ice-flow, which season was then just commencing. For the first time among these savage sons of old Boreas I was brought in contact with one of their superstitions that caused me no little annoyance. When the reindeer hunting season is over the walrus and seal come into the Esquimaux market, completely excluding the reindeer, which from that date becomes forbidden fruit. The Inuit who has relinquished reindeer meat tears down his old igloo and builds a new one, as he must not hunt or eat walrus or seal or work on sealskin clothing in an igloo where the now discarded deer has been eaten or clothing made from his hide. 

Now I found it impossible to procure any reindeer meat for self or for dog-feed while I lived in my present igloo. If I would only build another, which they beseeched me to do, even on the site of the present one, they would bring me plenty. Natives came over daily but brought no meat and we finally had to take the dogs over to Depot Island, where the natives allowed them to be fed. 

This superstition is founded on the belief that there exists two Gods antagonistic to each other, one ruling the seas and all in them, and the other the land with all its beasts and birds, and they must appease their respective divine jealousies by holding true allegiance to only one at a time. 

Leaving Camp Daly on the 10th of February I arrived at Marble Island on the 14th. I shall not dwell long on the various commonplace incidents encountered, the kindnesses of the officers of the whaling ships, the wonderful but pleasant change to a civilized abode once more. However, it was a suffocating feeling which first accompanied that change, as I had left the temperature of the igloo for that of the ships, generally kept at about 77 * F. I found a great deal of scurvy, that bane of the Arctic sailor, prevailing among the ships and the large number of crews. 

The greater variety of animal life in the frigid zones over the vegetable (the latter having hardly an edible representative in the whole arctic flora) makes it the main dependence on which the polar voyager must rely to secure exemption from that disease. Every exertion should be made to make the procurement of game as certain as possible by being well provided with the very best of arms, ammunition, and hunting implements and above all good native hunters. 

Sir John Ross thought scurvy was produced by the want of fresh bread, yet my party was without fresh bread for two years, and nearly a year without bread of any kind, certainly a fair enough test to exclude it from any of the essential causes. Still the use of fresh bread as an auxiliary prophylactic can not be too strongly dwelt upon. Sir Edward Perry believed that scurvy's principal cause was in the clammy moisture of the ships' quarters, especially when the crew were compelled to sleep in damp bedding. Yet I found no dampness whatever in most of the whaleships suffering with the disease. Innumerable cases where large parties of men have been long subjected to this inconvenience without incurring it makes it a mooted question whether such value can be attributed to it as was by such eminent authority as Sir Edward. 

In the employment of a fresh animal food in the Polar zones a great obstacle is the antipathy with which such a diet of fish- eating animals is received. The flesh of the reindeer and musk-ox is at once acceptable, but the walrus, seal and polar bear, have peculiar flavors which with some people it is almost impossible to overcome. The most tenacious epicures are to be found in the forecastle. The educated officer, whose mess table in the past may have been a animated market report, can, with an honorable incentive ahead of him, more readily relinquish his bill of fare than can the foremast hand with his hard tack, salt junk and bitter coffee, to which he is so firmly wedded.

CHAPTER V 

THE LONG SLEDGE JOURNEY BEGINS 

As everything was ready for the start quite a number of days before the day set- April 1, 1879 - we waited with a strange, lonesome anxiety for that date. All the stulf that was to remain had been boxed up carefully and Ahmow, its custodian, was removing it to his igloo on Depot Island. Life in a half deserted house is enough to set one half crazy, but living in a half deserted igloo is amply sufficient to fill an insane asylum. 

Let us take a hurried look at the party before it starts. The officers were: Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka (myself) and Colonel William H. Gilder, second in command. Frank Klutshak, our scientist and Frank Melms, the only one of us white men who had previously lived in the Arctic, completed the white members in our party. The Esquimaux included Joseph Ebierbing ("Esquimaux Joe") who, as has been stated, had been with Captain Hall and Captain Hayes on their Arctic journeys, and his wife Nipschank or Hannah; Toolooah, hunter and chief sledge driver, and his wife Tooloohalek or Susie, and their two-vear-old boy Iyow- kawank, or Jack; Ikqueesik, our chief guide; (Nachilluk Joe) and his wife, Lizzee and three-year-old daughter Koodleuk; Ishoowark (Jerry) and his wife, and two Innuit boys, brothers of Ikqueesik, aged eighteen and fourteen, named Milkolilluk and Awanak respectively. An Iwilli boy, aged twelve, named Koomunah, completed the party of eighteen souls. 

We had three large sledges, well shod with the bone from the jaw of a whale, and forty-four very good dogs. Our arms consisted of 

• two Remington breech-loading muskets, 

• two repeating Winchester carbines, 

• one breech-loading Sharp's sporting rifle, 

• one heavy breech-loading Sharp's sporting rifle, 

• one heavy breech-loading Whitney (Greedmoor pattern) rifle, 

• one 26-shot repeating sporting rifle, 

• (Evans patent), 

• two Smith & Wesson revolvers, 

• and some muzzle-loading muskets. The latter were to be used for trading purposes, if necessary, among the natives whom we expected to encounter. 

Our ammunition supplies were far beyond the greatest ever taken before upon an Arctic sledge journey. But our provisions were extremely limited for so large a party over the nine or ten months we would be absent, so that our caisson was none too large. Dependent as we would soon become upon the game of the country, we had fair reasons to believe such existed in sufficient quantities to support us and our dogs if our hunters were only vigilant. 

Our ammunition boxes showed [turned to bulleted list for readability and unintended pun]

• 700 rounds of Remington cartridges, of 50 calibre and 70 grains powder; 

• 700 rounds Winchester cartridges, cal. 45., 75 grs. powder: 

• 300 rounds Sharp's cartridges, cal. 40., 70 gr, powder; 

• 450 rounds Evans cartridges, cal. 44., 55 grs. powder;

• 220 rounds Whitney cartridges, cal. 44, 95 grs. powder. 

• besides 200 rounds for the Smith & Wesson's revolvers 

• and 100  bullets, 2000 caps and 25 lbs. of powder for the Springfield muskets. 

• I must not forget to mention a breech-loading Remington shotgun, with 100 rounds of filled cartridges,

•  a muzzle loading shotgun with a box of (25 lbs.), duck power and 25 lbs. shot. 

• A sum total shows fifteen guns and about 4000 rounds of ammunition. 

Our only anxiety now was to be able to transport such a heavy load and to find sufficient game upon which to throw it away. 

Without giving an uninteresting list of the provisions with which we burdened ourselves, suffice it to say, counting as a day's ration, three pounds a day for an adult and proportionally less for the others, we had a trifle less than a month's supply. But it was not the intention to depend upon this until it was eaten up and then live upon the country, but to stretch it out as far as possible by the assistance of reindeer meat, as soon as we entered the hunting country. Two thousand pounds of Kow (walrus hide) and our bedding gave our sleds quite a heavy and formidable looking appear ance, as we started, but most of the load was of a nature that stead- ily decreased as the time advanced. 

As the world turned round it brought our appointed date, April 1, 1879, and found us already to start, but like all other first-day starts it was a late one. It was nearly noon as we pulled out on the salt water ice near Camp Daly and, shaking hands, bid our trusty Inuit friends good-bye. We stopped a second to take a last look on that dreary cheerless mass of snow domes that had so long been our home, and seemed doubly like a home now that we were parting with it for a still less cheerless and dreary journey. 

There is something peculiarly depressing in starting upon a long unknown venture, especially if a person has upon his mind all the cares and duties of a commander to warn him that, in case of misfortune, he alone does not suffer. And this was to be an expedition where misfortune might easily befall us. With less than one month's provisions, we were separating ourselves by an icy desert of eight and nine leauges from all chance of rescue, with eighteen human and forty-four brute mouths to be fed in a country reported destitute of game. And in this forbidding land we were to spend possibly a year - under the most favorable cireumstances not less than nine months - to make an extended and laboriously thorough search to determine the sad fate of those that had died here. it brought up the most solemn thoughts to one responsible for the lives and comfort of those who thus willingly joined in this unselfish effort to accomplish such a task. 

My triangulation cairns around Depot Island had not yet faded completely from sight as we stopped for our first camp, about ten miles north of Camp Daly, on the eastern shore of the Winchester Inlet. The weather had been exceedingly fine during the day and the oft-repeated injunctions of our Innuits, that the weather about this time of year was nearly always like this, was cheering news. 

We built two large double igloos, the four white men and Toolooah's family occupying one, and the remainder of the Innuits the other. The next night, however, this latter igloo was again divided. Joe and Jerry, with their respective families, occupying one and Ikqueesik the other. Thereafter this arrangement was continued until we reached King William Land.

...asdog meat was low, it was decided that the morrow should be used in securing as many as possible of these longhaired monsters.

On the morning of the 29th a heavy fog threatened to spoil our sport. We managed to get away at 8:30 A.M., with the two light sleds leading and all the dogs, as the thick clouds seemed to be lifting. At 11 o'clock in the forenoon, after we had been wandering around in the drifting mist, guiding our movements as much as possible by the wind, we came on the trail of some six or seven of the animals apparently not ten minutes old. Great fears were entertained that the musk-oxen had heard our approach and were now probably doing their level best to escape. The dogs were rapidly unhitched from the sled and from one to three given to each of the eleven men and boys present. Taking their harnesses in their hands or tying them in a slip noose around their waist, they started at once on the trail, leaving the sleds and a few dogs with two Innuit women. The dogs, many of them old musk-ox hunters and with an appetite sharpened by hard work, and a diminishing ration, tugged like mad at their harnesses and hurried along at a rate that threatened a broken neck many a time over the rough gorges. We soon came upon them and dispatched ten, including calves. 

The musk-ox of the Arctic is about two-thirds the size of the American bison, but in appearance is nearly as large owing to immense heavy coat of long weeping willow-like hair that covers him down to the knees, as if he was carrying a load of black brush The musk-ox calves are readily captured by dogs. However, it is impossible to furnish them with proper nourishment to sustain life and I believe there are no cases on record where these most curious animals have been exhibited at a museum. 

Again we were compelled to camp without water. The elevated country was getting quite sandy and destitute of the numerous lakes we had been accustomed to travel upon. The first two days of May, prophetic of the month, kept us snugly confined to our igloos while a fierce northwest storm raged without. On May 3rd we found a small lake which promised water and we were not disappointed, although we had to dig through the thick ice to a depth of eight feet and four inches. Reindeer were also getting scarcer through this apparently waterless country and but a few scattering ones were to be seen or secured. Our musk-ox meat came in a very fortunate nick of time.

Chapter VI

Voices from the Past - The Old Eskimaux's Story 

The morning of May 14 1879, began a day which was introduced an unusual situation and ended by becoming one of the most fateful days in our journey. We were continuing our way along the river [Hayes River, named by Schwatka in honor of the president] when we sighted a large herd of reindeer, some two hundred of them. Our sleds were well loaded with meat and so we allowed them to trot by within rifle range without a shot being fired. Singularly curious, they would run a few paces towards us, then halt like a company of cavalry coming into line, gazing at us until one of their more nervous ones would snort and send them off by the flank with measured trot, like well-drilled troopers. 

At two o'clock that afternoon our moment of fate commenced its development. It began with the discovery of a recently upturned block of snow, and soon we came upon an igloo - deserted - but close by were two caches of musk-ox meat and furs. A trail, formed by dragging a musk-ox skin loaded with belongings of these unknown people, led us on. Our natives pronounced this trail as being two days old, and believed that on the morrow we would come upon the trail-makers. 

Bright and early on the morning of May 15 we broke camp, being well on our way for some time when, rounding a sharp bend in Hayes River, we came suddenly in full sight of three igloos, about a mile distant. 

As we approached, a number of the occupants who were standing around fled to their igloos and persistently remained there. According to the custom of the country (as Joe explained it) we armed ourselves, leaving the women and children with the sleds, and marched in line to within about a hundred yards of the igloo. 

Ikqueesik now went forward and commenced shouting at the top of his voice. His words must have reassured them as it had the desired effect of bringing the affrighted occupants out into sight. They formed a line, with bows, arrows and spears or knives and, as we moved up to within a few feet, they began a general stroking of their breasts, calling "Munnik-toomee"(Welcome).

After their fears had somewhat subsided the women and children came peeping out of the igloos and soon afterwards mixed with the throng. Our drivers returned and brought up our sleds and we were soon building igloos alongside, with the help of our new acquaintance. 

They proved to be a band of Ooquesik-Salik Esquimaux, numbered seven or eight men and probably twice as many women. The head man, Ikinnelik-Puhtoorak, an Ookjoolik, was the leader of a once powerful band inhabiting the northern and western shores of the Adelaide Peninsula and adjacent shores of King William land.  Famine and inroads of neighboring bands had reduced the tribe to a handful. Their land was now in the possession of the Netchilluks and Kidnelik Esquimaux. Of the latter they had great fear and had mistaken us for this band when we first appeared.

We were the first white men these natives had ever seen with the exception of the two oldest men in the tribe - and the great importance of this latter fact will soon be shown. Youngsters and adults crowded about us, then staring eyes following every motion that we made. They told us that the river on which we now were travelling would take us two days journey to the northward then, bending directly backwards on its course, would take us two days farther southeast before we would reach Back's River. From the great bend they explained we could reach Back's River in two days by traveling directly westward, and reach it at a point much nearer to Montreal Island, our first objective point. 

In our anticipation of meeting the natives of this unexplored section we hoped to depend upon them for dog food and oil. But now the tables were turned. These natives were so sadly in need of food that, instead of being receivers, we were obliged to give them some of our own. They had had a very severe winter, one old man of the tribe having died about a month before of starvation. They had no oil and their igloos were cold, clammy and cheerless on the extreme. Their food in the summer and early winter is furnished by the numberless shoals of salmon which ascend the smaller river and are speared as they run the gauntlet of the rapids, while the flesh of the musk-ox, which they secure with dogs, bows, and arrows and spears, gives them a precarious substence during the remainder of the year. They were not able to kill enough deer during the summer to supply them with food or clothing. The noise made in crawling up towards them close enough to shoot with bow and arrow (as the twang of the bow travels more rapidly than the arrow) allow the active deer time in jumping out of the way at any distance beyond twenty-five yards.

Continuous bad weather delayed us at Cape Herschel until June 12, when we started off with a single sled, led by Toolooah accompanied by his family and boy Awanak. We left all our heavy luggage. The remainder of the Innuits of the party were to remain at Camp Herschel until our return, unless any delay should occasion my remaining longer than the breaking up of the summer's ice. In this eventuality, at their own judgment they would return to the mainland where the reindeer are more plentiful. 

On June 15 the last of the hard bread was used and the time was now rapidly approaching when our diet would be a la Innuit until Camp Daly was again reached - some six months hence. My intention was to march to the head of Washington Bay, (which I did on the 17th) thence directly northward across land to Collinson Inlet (before the rapidly disappearing snow was too far gone to render sledging impracticable) then my search would be continued on the salt water ice along the coasts, which lasts a month or six weeks longer. By this means I hoped to reach the mainland of Adelaide Peninsula before the latter ice broke up, and not be coming long distance on our way homeward on the autumn snows. My route across land to Colinson Inlet would, according o the Admiralty charts, take me some wener or twenty-five miles.

On June 23...Arctic aquatic fowl were now getting quite plentiful, and, to vary our monotonous diet of reindeer and seal meat, we secured many. 

The best summation of the Expedition is in Schwatka's own words, delivered at a dinner in his honor given by the American Geographical Society at Chickering Hall, New York City, on the evening of October 28, 1880. In his Address, he stated: 

"It was the longest sledge journey ever made both in regard to time and distance, having been absent from its base eleven months and four days, and having traversed 2709 geographical or 3124 statute miles if estimated to Marble Island, our nearest point where we returned to civilized food). 

"It was the first sledge journey conducted through the heart of an Arctic winter, and a winter pronounced by the natives to be exceptionally severe as the meteorological table will fully confirm. Not but that quite a number of sledge journeys have been undertaken by white men in the Polar midwinter, but I know of none before this encompassing the whole duration of that unfavorable season; and, in fact, they have been generally very short and under circumstances where comfort commensurate with the exposure could be easily attained at some suitable base."

 "It was the first expedition wherein the white men of a party lived solely upon the same diet, voluntarily assumed, as its native allies. This fact, coupled with those already stated, shows that white men are not only able to live the same as Esquimaux in the Arctic, and with equal comfort, but also to prosecute any projects that their superior intelligence may dictate or their ambition may desire, and under all the circumstances that the natives themselves would similarly venture to undertake for less laudable objects. 

"In its searches the party was the first to make an extended summer's exploration over the ground covered by the unfortunate Franklin Party crews in their deplorable endeavors to reach aid although a glance at the map will show that their base was in a far less favorable position for such an undertaking than that of the greater majority of the numerous searchers who proceeded us. "It established the loss of the records of the Franklin Party beyond all reasonable doubt. As these alone have been the main incentive to the many expeditions since Dr. Rae's in 1854 (who established the loss of the party) this success, although unfortunately of a negative nature, is of no small character, since this fact, coupled with the loss of the party, and the burial of their dead, must necessarily settle the Franklin problem in all its important aspects."