What the record shows is that the first months were reasonably workable. Game was present on the island: foxes, birds, seals in the coastal waters, bears moving through the terrain. The men hunted with the success that the initial season allowed. The camp was cold, particularly as the autumn deepened into winter, but it was functional.
Ada’s experience of this period includes the episode that is variously described in subsequent accounts as an “Arctic hysteria” episode or a mental health crisis. The available evidence does not provide a clinical description of what she experienced; what is documented is that she was in distress, and that the men responded to that distress with actions that were punitive rather than supportive.
The withholding of food, the forcing of outdoor sleeping in cold conditions, the flagpole incident: these are documented in the expedition record. They are not rumor or reconstruction. They appear in the materials that were available to Jennifer Niven in her research and that are held in the Dartmouth archive.
The group eventually reconciled — the accounts suggest a period of improved relations as the first winter deepened and the practical necessity of cooperation became clearer. Ada continued her domestic work, continued sewing and cooking, continued being the functional center of the camp’s material maintenance.
The first winter passed. Spring came. Game continued through the spring of 1922. The summer approached, and with it the expectation of the relief ship.
The Teddy Bear did not arrive.
The ship had been sent — Stefansson’s organization had made the attempt — but the ice conditions in the Chukchi Sea in the summer of 1922 prevented the vessel from reaching the island. The ship turned back. Nobody on Wrangel Island knew this. They watched the summer pass without the ship, and when the summer ended and the autumn began, they entered their second winter on the island with full knowledge that their resupply had failed and with no understanding of why or when a ship might come again.