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THE VILLAGE THAT DISAPPEARED
In November, 1930, a trapper named Joe Labelle happened upon one of the most baffling unsolved mysteries of the Arctic. Joe was very familiar with the little Eskimo village that lay about 500 miles north of Churchill in Manitoba, Canada. He had been there many times.
On this winter day, Joe had deliberately gone out of his way to visit with his friends in the village. When he arrived, however, he was surprised to find no one around.
He called out a greeting to anyone. No reply. He began to investigate the huts and tents of the village, but what he found only deepened the mystery.
For an hour, Joe searched every inch of the village. He found pots containing food hanging over fires that had long since burned out. He found a half-sewn child’s garment with the needle still in place, as if the sewer had abruptly abandoned the project.
Had they all gone hunting? No, the owners’ rifles were all standing in their places near the entrances of their huts. No sane Eskimo would leave his village without the protection of his rifle. Had they gone out on the nearby lake? No, the village’s kayaks were there on the beach, although they were battered by wave action, obviously neglected for quite a while.
Joe brought the mystery to the attention of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who conducted their own investigation. Still more mysteries surfaced. They found several of the village’s dogs – also essential to their way of life – tied to some scrubby trees about 100 yards away.
They were all dead from starvation. Unexplained, too, was the burial mound found nearby. For some reason, the stones had been removed from the mound, the body removed, and the stones replaced in two smaller piles. Such a desecration would have been unthinkable to the Eskimos, and a predatory animal could not have re-piled the stones.
The investigation concluded that the village had been abandoned for about two months when Joe Labelle came upon it. No trace of the men, women and children of the village has ever been found – alive or dead. And no satisfactory explanation has ever been offered for how and why the Eskimo village seems to have disappeared from the face of the Earth.
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THE VILLAGE THAT DISAPPEARED
In November, 1930, a trapper named Joe Labelle happened upon one of the most baffling unsolved mysteries of the Arctic. Joe was very familiar with the little Eskimo village that lay about 500 miles north of Churchill in Manitoba, Canada. He had been there many times.
On this winter day, Joe had deliberately gone out of his way to visit with his friends in the village. When he arrived, however, he was surprised to find no one around.
He called out a greeting to anyone. No reply. He began to investigate the huts and tents of the village, but what he found only deepened the mystery.
For an hour, Joe searched every inch of the village. He found pots containing food hanging over fires that had long since burned out. He found a half-sewn child’s garment with the needle still in place, as if the sewer had abruptly abandoned the project.
Had they all gone hunting? No, the owners’ rifles were all standing in their places near the entrances of their huts. No sane Eskimo would leave his village without the protection of his rifle. Had they gone out on the nearby lake? No, the village’s kayaks were there on the beach, although they were battered by wave action, obviously neglected for quite a while.
Joe brought the mystery to the attention of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who conducted their own investigation. Still more mysteries surfaced. They found several of the village’s dogs – also essential to their way of life – tied to some scrubby trees about 100 yards away.
They were all dead from starvation. Unexplained, too, was the burial mound found nearby. For some reason, the stones had been removed from the mound, the body removed, and the stones replaced in two smaller piles. Such a desecration would have been unthinkable to the Eskimos, and a predatory animal could not have re-piled the stones.
The investigation concluded that the village had been abandoned for about two months when Joe Labelle came upon it. No trace of the men, women and children of the village has ever been found – alive or dead. And no satisfactory explanation has ever been offered for how and why the Eskimo village seems to have disappeared from the face of the Earth.
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