The distribution of remains and artifacts across the landscape told a partial story of the march’s disintegration: the group had split, men had died at intervals, some had turned back toward the ships, others had pushed south. The specific order of deaths, the specific decisions made as the group fragmented, and the specific circumstances of individual deaths are not established with precision from the archaeological record.
Fitzjames himself, based on the DNA identification, died at or near the Erebus Bay site — a location roughly 80 kilometers south of where the ships were abandoned. He died before at least some of the other men at the site, based on the conclusion that the cut marks on his jaw indicate that others were still alive and conscious when his body was processed.
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## Inuit Testimony and What It Recorded
The first systematic accounts of what had happened to the Franklin expedition came not from British search expeditions but from Inuit witnesses.
John Rae, a Scottish doctor employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company, traveled through the region in 1853–1854 and spoke with Inuit at Pelly Bay who had information about the expedition. The Inuit described groups of Europeans — some dozens of men — marching south across King William Island and the adjacent mainland during a period that corresponded with the late stages of the expedition’s survival attempt. They described the men as thin and distressed, some dragging sledges, some falling. They reported finding the bodies of approximately thirty to forty men near a large river that corresponded with the Back River. Some of the bodies, they said, showed evidence of cannibalism.