But Ada was already beginning to understand that the circumstances were different from what she had been led to expect. She had thought there would be more people. There were five, and she was the only woman. The men’s attitudes toward her were not uniformly welcoming. The island was nothing like Nome. The months would be nothing like anything she had experienced.
## The First Winter: Isolation, Hostility, and Recovery
As the first winter settled in, conditions in the camp became difficult in ways that went beyond the physical demands of the Arctic.
Ada experienced what the available accounts describe as a mental health crisis, sometimes characterized in historical records and subsequent accounts as “Arctic hysteria” — a term that is itself historically loaded and not a clinical diagnosis, but that refers to documented episodes of psychological distress that have been noted in people exposed to extreme polar isolation and conditions. Whatever the precise characterization, she was in psychological crisis, and the men’s response to that crisis was not humane.
By accounts that appear in the historical record, including accounts drawn from the expedition’s own documents, the men withheld food from her, made her sleep in the cold rather than inside with warmth, and at least on one occasion tied her to the flagpole they had planted when they arrived. These are documented accusations, not reconstructions, and they speak to a specific dynamic in the camp: an Indigenous woman in a dependent position, in psychological distress, being punished rather than supported by the men around her.