Specific Inuit witnesses whose accounts are recorded in the historical literature include In-nook-poo-zhejook, who described finding bones with flesh removed, and Eveeshuk, whose account Hall recorded in 1869. Ogzeuckjeuwock spoke to Schwatka’s party in 1879 about observing bones that appeared to have been worked on with a saw-like implement. These are named individuals whose testimony, however filtered through translation and transcription into the written record, provides direct evidence from people who had firsthand or near-firsthand knowledge of what they had seen.
The 1997 study by Anne Keenleyside — which analyzed 451 bones from at least thirteen individuals at the Erebus Bay site — provided the systematic scientific confirmation of the Inuit accounts that the archaeological record makes possible. Keenleyside’s analysis found cut marks on a significant proportion of the bones, in locations consistent with the disarticulation and defleshing associated with the removal of meat from bones. The locations and character of the marks fit the interpretation of cannibalism that the Inuit had described 120 years earlier.
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## The Site: Erebus Bay, NgLj-2
The bones from which the DNA identification of Fitzjames was eventually made came from a specific archaeological site on the southeastern coast of King William Island. The site is designated NgLj-2 in the Nunavut archaeological registry.
The site was first visited by a search party in the nineteenth century. It was rediscovered by archaeologist Anne Keenleyside in 1993. The 1993 and subsequent excavations revealed a scattered distribution of human bones across an area that encompassed a former boat location — consistent with accounts of expedition members dragging a boat to this point on the island’s coast. The 451 bones from the site represent the remains of at least thirteen individuals, though the actual number of people who died there may be higher.