From Ikinnelikpatolok, the old Ookjoolik, we learned at the interview
that he had only once seen white men alive. That was when he was a
little boy. He is now about sixty-five or seventy. He was fishing on
Back's River when they came along in a boat and shook hands with him.
There were ten men. The leader was called "Tos-ard-e-roak," which Joe
says, from the sound, he thinks means Lieutenant Back. The next white
man he saw was dead in a bunk of a big ship which was frozen in the
ice near an island about five miles due west of Grant Point, on
Adelaide Peninsula. They had to walk out about three miles on smooth
ice to reach the ship. He said that his son, who was present, a man
about thirty-five years old, was then about like a child he pointed
out--probably seven or eight years old. About this time he saw the
tracks of white men on the main-land. When he first saw them there
were four, and afterward only three. This was when the spring snows
were falling. When his people saw the ship so long without any one
around, they used to go on board and steal pieces of wood and iron.
They did not know how to get inside by the doors, and cut a hole in
the side of the ship, on a level with the ice, so that when the ice
broke up during the following summer the ship filled and sunk. No
tracks were seen in the salt-water ice or on the ship, which also was
covered with snow, but they saw scrapings and sweepings alongside,
which seemed to have been brushed off by people who had been living
on board. They found some red cans of fresh meat, with plenty of what
looked like tallow mixed with it. A great many had been opened, and
four were still unopened. They saw no bread. They found plenty of
knives, forks, spoons, pans, cups, and plates on board, and afterward
found a few such things on shore after the vessel had gone down. They
also saw books on board, and left them there. They only took knives,
forks, spoons, and pans; the other things they had no use for. He
never saw or heard of the white men's cairn on Adelaide Peninsula.
Peowat, son-in-law of the previous witness, a man about forty, said
that when about fourteen or fifteen years old he saw two boats come
down Back's River. One had eight men in it, and the other he did not
notice how many. He afterward saw a stone monument on Montreal Island,
which, when he opened it, was found to contain a pocket-knife, a pair
of scissors, and some fish-hooks, which he took away. He saw no papers
anywhere about it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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