My Attainment of the Pole Part 48

[23] Captain Robert A. Bartlett, of the Peary ship _Roosevelt_, has figured much in this controversy. Most of his reported statements, I am inclined to believe, are distorted. But he has allowed the words attributed to him to stand; therefore, the harm done is just as great as if the charges were true. He allowed Henry Rood, in _The Sat.u.r.day Evening Post_, to say that my expedition was possible only through the advice of Bartlett. Every statement which Rood made, as Bartlett knows, is a lie. He has allowed this to stand, and he thereby stands convicted as party to a faked article written with the express purpose of inflicting an injury.

Bartlett cross-questioned my Eskimos about instruments. By showing them a s.e.xtant and other apparatus he learned that I not only had a full set, but he also learned how I used them. Peary, although having Bartlett's report on this, insinuated that I had no instruments, and that I made no observations. Bartlett knew this to be a lie, but he remained silent. He is therefore a party to a Peary lie.

In the early press reports Bartlett is credited with saying that "Cook had no instruments." A year later, after Bartlett returned from another trip north, faked pictures and faked news items were printed with the Bartlett interviews and reports. There was no protest, and at the same time Bartlett said that books, instruments, and things belonging to me had been destroyed. In the following year Bartlett announced that he was "going after Cook's instruments." Has the press lied, or has Bartlett lied? Next to Henson, Mr. Peary's colored servant, Captain Bartlett is Peary's star witness.

George Borup, in "A Tenderfoot With Peary," after repeating in his book many pro-Peary lies, tried to prove his a.s.sertion by an alleged study of my sledge (P. 300): "Except for its being shortened, the sledge was the same as when it had left Annoatok. It weighed perhaps thirty pounds, and was very flimsy."

This is a deliberate lie, for it was only a half-sled, rea.s.sembled and repaired by old bits of driftwood. After this first lie he says, in the same paragraph: "Yet it had only two cracks in it." The upstanders had been cracked in a dozen places, the runners were broken, and every part was cracked.

Borup shows by his orthography of Eskimo words that he knows almost nothing of the Eskimo language. Therefore he may be dismissed as incompetent where Eskimo reports are to be interpreted. He is committed to the Peary interests, which also eliminates him from the jury. But in his report of my sled he has stooped to lies which forever deprive him of being credited with any honest opinion on the Polar controversy.

[24] Professor Armbruster and Dr. Schwartz, of St. Louis, at a time when few papers had the courage to print articles in my defence, appealed to W. R. Reedy, of the _Mirror_, for s.p.a.ce to uncover the unfair methods of the Pro-Peary conspiracy. This s.p.a.ce was liberally granted, and the whole controversy was scientifically a.n.a.lyzed by the _Mirror_ in an unbiased manner. Here is shown an important phase of the Peary charges, from the _Mirror_, April 21, 1910. As it clearly reveals the facts, I present part of it as follows:

The point made by Dr. Schwartz, that there is a contradiction between Peary's statements of September 28 and October 13, is well taken. The statement of October 13 is a point-blank contradiction of the previous one. Dr. Schwartz notes that when Peary made, on September 28, what Peary called his strongest indictment of Dr. Cook, Peary must have had with him at Bar Harbor the chart with the trail of Cook's route, and infers that, as the later charge was by far the stronger indictment of the two, there must be some other explanation of the contradiction.

a.n.a.lysis of this contradiction develops one of the most serious propositions of the whole Polar controversy. Mr. Peary might now say that he was holding his strongest point in reserve, but such explanation would not be sufficient, for he stated that the indictment of September 28 is "the strongest that has been advanced in Arctic exploration ever since the great expedition was sent there," and no child is so simple as to believe that the indictment of September 28 is at all comparable in magnitude to the one of October 13. Upon a.n.a.lysis, we find that there is indeed another explanation, and only one, and that is, that _when the indictment of September 28 was made, the one of October 13 had not been conceived or concocted_, and it will show that Peary, Bartlett, McMillan, Borup and Henson, _all_ who signed the statement of October 13, perpetrated a gross falsehood and imposition upon the public. All are caught in the one net.

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."

Now what were the facts? Among the scientific collections of the Belgian Expedition, was a series of notes, embodying a Yahagan Indian Dictionary, made by the missionary, Thomas Bridges. Although this was of little use to anybody, it was a scientific record worthy of preservation. In a friendly spirit toward the late Mr. Bridges and his Indians, I persuaded the Belgians at great expense to publish the work.

It was written in the old Ellis system of orthography, which is not generally understood. Working on this material for one year without pay, I changed it to ordinary English orthography, but made few other alterations. The book is not yet printed, but part of it is in press.

The introduction was printed five years ago, and among the first paragraphs appear these words:

"My visit among the tribe of Fuegians was not of sufficient length to make a thorough study, nor had I the opportunity to collect much data from Indians, but I was singularly fortunate in being in the company of Mr. Thomas Bridges and Mr. John Lawrence, men who have made these people their life study. The credit of collecting and making this Yahagan Grammar and Vocabulary belongs solely to Mr. Bridges, who devoted most of his time during thirty-seven years to recording this material. My work is limited to a slight re-arrangement of the words, a few additions of notes and words, and a conversion of the Ellis phonetic characters in which the native words were written into ordinary English orthography.

It is hoped that this study of Yahagan language, with a few of their tales and traditions, will, with a report of the French Expedition, make a fitting end to an important record of a vanishing people."

Then follows a short favorable biography of the man whose work I was accused of stealing.

[26] Letter from Barrill's a.s.sociate:

MISSOULA, MONT., Oct. 12, 1909.

Friend Cook--I am sorry that I can't come at present. But will come and see you in about fifteen days if you will send me Three Hundred and Fifty ($350.00), and I will say that the report in the papers (that Dr.

Cook did not ascend Mt. McKinley), from what I have, is not true.

Hoping to see you soon.

Your friend, (Signed) FRED PRINTZ.

[27] While this book was going through the press, several chapters of the proof-sheets, stolen from the printers, Messrs. Lent & Graff, were found on the table of the Explorers' Club on June 27, 1911. It is important to note that this pro-Peary repository of bribed, faked and forged writings, which were issued to defame me, is also the den for stolen goods. Who are the thieves who congregate there to deposit their booty? Why the theft of a part of my book? What humbug has this club and its shameless president next to offer?

[28] Letter from an onlooker when Mt. McKinley was climbed:

To Dr. Cook's Friends:

Professor Parker says "regretfully" that Dr. Cook's evidence as to the ascent of Mt. McKinley was unconvincing.

I was located in the foothills of Mt. McKinley, and had been for about a year, when Dr. Cook, Professor H. C. Parker, Mr. Porter, the topographer of the party, and Mr. Miller, Fred Printz and the rest of the party, landed at the head-waters of the Yentna River, in the foothills of Mt.

McKinley.

I met Professor Parker and the rest of the party, and saw a great deal of them while they were up there, as I had three mining camps in the foothills from which they made their try for the top of the mountain. I let Dr. Cook have one of my Indian hunters, who knew every foot of the country around there, for a guide. Dr. Cook also had some of his caches in my camps, leaving supplies which he did not take along with his pack-trains. Some of Dr. Cook's party were in our camps nearly every day or so, and consequently I became very well posted in regard to Dr.

Cook's affairs, and very well acquainted with him. Dr. Parker should be the last one to say anything about mountain-climbing or anything else connected with the expedition, or anything where it takes a man and pluck to accomplish results--good results; as he showed himself to be the rankest kind of a tenderfoot while in the foothills of Mt. McKinley, and was the laughing stock of the country. Mt. McKinley and the country around there was too rough for him. He got "cold feet," and started back for the States, before he had even seen much of the country around there.

Looking over my memoranda, I find that Dr. Cook had given up his attempt to climb Mt. McKinley for the time being, and had sent Printz and Miller on a hunting expedition, and the rest of the party was scattered out to hunt up something new.

At that time I came into Youngstown, and the boys were getting ready to strike out on their different routes, and Dr. Cook was going down to Tyonic, in Cook's Inlet, with his launch, to meet a friend, Mr. Disston, who expected to go on a hunting trip with him. The friend did not arrive, so Dr. Cook returned to the head-waters of the Yentna River, to Youngstown, arriving there on Monday, August 27. On Sunday, August 28, he started down to the Sus.h.i.tna River. I went down with him as far as the Sus.h.i.tna Station, and he told me he was going to run up the river and strike Fish Creek, which ran up on another side of Mt. McKinley, and see what the chances were to make the top of the continent from that side. He made it. I was one of the last to see him start on the ascent, and one of the first to see him when he returned after he had made the ascent.

Dr. Cook proved to be a man in every respect, as unselfish as he was courageous, always giving the other fellow a thought before thinking of himself.

Upon his arrival from the ascent of the mountain, although tired and worn and in a bad physical condition himself, he gave his unlimited attention to a party of prospectors who had been picked up from a wreck in the river, and brought into camp in an almost dying condition just before his arrival. He spent hours working over these men, and did not give himself a thought until they were properly cared for.

_Evidence?_ No man who has known Dr. Cook, been with him, worked with him, and learned by personal experience of his courage, energy and perseverance, would ask for evidence beyond his word.

Dr. Cook is one of the most daring men, and can stand more hardships than any man I have ever met, and I believe I have met some of the most able men of the world when it comes to roughing it over the trails in Alaska and the North.

Dr. Cook climbed Mt. McKinley. Of course there are always skeptics--men who have a wishbone instead of a backbone, and who, when wishing has brought to them no good results, their last effort is pushed forth in criticism of the things which have been constructed or accomplished by men, their superiors.

If Professor Parker wants evidence to convince him, I think he can find it, provided he will put himself to as much trouble in looking for evidence as he has in criticising such evidence as he has obtained.

Respectfully yours, J. A. MACDONALD.

VONTRIGGER, CALIFORNIA.

_Author's Note._--It is a curious fact that most men who have a.s.sailed me are themselves sailing under false colors. Hersch.e.l.l Parker was an a.s.sistant professor and instructor in the Department of Physics in Columbia University. This gave him the advantage of using the t.i.tle, "Professor," but, like many others, his university a.s.sociation was mostly for the prestige it gave him. His professorship a.s.sumption was, therefore, a deception. Instead of devoting himself conscientiously to university interests, he was, like Peary, engaged in private enterprises--such as the Parker-Clark light, and other ventures--and employed subst.i.tute instructors to do the work for which he drew a salary, and for which he claimed the honor and the prestige. A man who thus sails falsely under the banner of a professorship is just the man to try to steal the honor of other men. Here is a make-believe professor who is not a professor; whose dwarfed conscience is eased by drippings from the Arctic Trust; who has stooped to a photographic humbug. He is a fitting exponent of the bribing pro-Peary propaganda.