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The earliest inhabitants arrived
about 4 000 years ago, probably emigrating from
Siberia at a time when a land passage existed
to what is now Alaska. The remote and desolate
polar desert must have tested the endurance
of these migratory hunters who seem to have
all but disappeared after a few centuries. As
late as 2500 years ago however, remains of camping
sites at Lake Hazen bespeak a second wave of
nomadic people, who traveled across the arctic
islands relying on the muskox and caribou for
food, clothes, and weapons. The Dorset people
whose greater success was due in part to improved
methods of hunting sea mammals replaced this
second group. Sometime later in this period,
about 1000 years ago, the ancestors of present-day
Inuit, the Thules, came from Alaska where their
ancestors had developed a sophisticated technology
and rich economy based on the hunting of sea
mammals from boats. They had dog sleds for land
travel, kayaks for hunting, and umiaks that
could be used to hunt whales or move an entire
village by sea. The Norse who had established
colonies in Greenland, no doubt encountered
the Thule Inuit and, although hostilities must
naturally have arisen, artifacts tell a story
of much trading between these quite worldly
inhabitants of their arctic domains.
Sir George Nares, who built a base camp on the
northeastern coast on a low mud ledge overlooking
Discovery Harbour, conducted one of the earliest
explorations in 1875-76. In 1880, an American
station, Fort Conger, was built on Nares® former
base, to dispatch planned scientific projects
on Ellesmere Island. It was here that Lieutenant
Adolphus Greely, the expedition leader, made
his fateful decision to take his starving crew
south in open boats to meet a long overdue supply
ship. Only seven men survived. Fifteen years
later, Robert Peary refitted the camp with three
crude wooden huts, digging them into the side
of a ridge where they remain today, a living
museum under the protection of the park reserve.
His attempts to reach the North Pole (1898-1909)
were greatly assisted by survival techniques
learned from the Inuit who accompanied him and
his successors.
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