Taissumani: April 23, 1914 — Crocker Land, an Arctic mirage

KENN HARPER

When Robert Peary claimed to have reached the North Pole in April 1909, it marked the end of his Arctic career. But for one young man who had accompanied him north, it was the first of many Arctic adventures. That man was Donald Baxter MacMillan. He would return to the far North in 1913, obsessed with finding a land that Peary claimed to have seen as early as 1906.

In July of that year, Peary was at Cape Thomas Hubbard on northern Axel Heiberg Island. He believed that he saw snow-capped mountains on the horizon to the northwest and convinced himself that he had discovered new land. He named it after one of his wealthy benefactors, George Crocker. Thus the belief in Crocker Land was begun.

Three years after his alleged attainment of the Pole, Peary still believed in his discovery. He wrote, “Crocker Land easily takes first rank among problems demanding exploration, now that the Poles have been reached and that the insularity of Greenland has been determined.”

The following year, his young acolyte, MacMillan, rose to the challenge. He organized the Crocker Land Expedition, a four-year affair sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History, the American Geographical Society and the University of Illinois.

From the base he established at Etah, near the point where Greenland and Ellesmere Island are at their closest, MacMillan and his parties explored northern Ellesmere Island, the coasts of Axel Heiberg Island, and as far west as King Christian and Ellef Ringnes islands.

But MacMillan had a problem that he had not anticipated. He had assumed that, because he had been with Peary and Henson, to whom the Inughuit had shown intense personal loyalty as a result of eighteen years of association, the Inughuit would automatically transfer their loyalty to him. He was mistaken. He could not command the authority of Peary. And, although he had brought quantities of trade goods with him, the Danes, Knud Rasmussen and Peter Freuchen, were now operating their Thule Station, a trading post at North Star Bay, so the Inughuit had an alternative reliable source of goods. The older, more experienced and influential Inughuit did not give MacMillan the deference and unquestioning loyalty he demanded. They questioned his judgment and his decisions. As a result, he fired many of them, deciding to make the difficult trip across Ellesmere Island and onto the ice of the Arctic Ocean with a mix of experienced and inexperienced travellers.

On March 10, 1914, MacMillan, two white men and six Inughuit left Etah in search of Crocker Land. The first and most difficult task was to mount the almost perpendicular face of the Beitstad Glacier on Ellesmere Island. With that accomplished, they sledged north to Cape Thomas Hubbard, the point on which Peary had stood eight years earlier when he surveyed the horizon and first caught sight of Crocker Land. By the time the party reached that point, five men had been sent back or had turned back. The party was down to four men: MacMillan; Fitzhugh Green, an American; Ittukusuk, who had travelled in these very parts with Dr. Frederick Cook in 1907-08; and Piugaattoq, a respected hunter and traveller who was married to the woman who had been Peary’s long-time lover.

The Inughuit were reluctant to travel out onto the sea ice north of Axel Heiberg. The season was late and there was much open water. But MacMillan badgered them into continuing, and in doing so endangered the lives of all of the party. Finally, on April 21, Fitzhugh Green sighted Crocker Land. “There it was as plain as day,” wrote MacMillan, “hills, valleys, and ice cap — a tremendous land extending through 150 degrees of the horizon.”

MacMillan was ecstatic. His name would be famous forever for confirming the existence of this new land to the north. He asked Piugaattoq for advice on the best route through the ice to reach the new land. To his astonishment, the Inuk replied that there was no land, only mist. After studying the horizon for some time more, MacMillan had to concede, “As we watched it more narrowly its appearance slowly changed from time to time so we were forced to the conclusion that it was a mirage of the sea ice.”

But the next day, the foolhardy MacMillan insisted on proceeding further. The Inughuit reluctantly agreed. The day after that, Fitzhugh Green calculated that the point on which they stood should be Crocker Land. As they were standing on sea ice with no land in sight, the conclusion was obvious — Crocker Land did not exist. MacMillan wrote, “My dreams of the last four years were merely dreams, my hopes had ended in bitter disappointment.”

MacMillan, as Peary before him, had been deceived by a mirage, a trick played on him by the atmospheric conditions of an Arctic spring and the vagaries of shifting sea ice. Crocker Land was nothing more than ice and snow, reflected and refracted through the lens of an Arctic mist.

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History recounts a specific event of historic interest, whose anniversary is in the coming week. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.