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DELINE/FORT FRANKLIN
In the fall of 1978, Doug Whiteman travelled to Great Bear Lake to help a family finish building a log cabin.

Parks Canada archeologists document a yard truss last month from HMS Investigator on shore of Mercy Bay of Banks Island. Finds such as this one are sparking an interest in archeology in the NWT and is part of the reason a Deline man wants a building discovered near Caribou Point studied. - photo courtesy of Parks Canada

While hunting ptarmigan one day, he and a friend found a structure inland from the shore of Caribou Point. It was three-metres square and one-metre high.

"It was square in shape, it wasn't a natural formation. It was man made," Whiteman said. "It was all made out of lakeshore stones."

Whiteman said he was incredibly intrigued because the stones must have been carried from the lake, which was a considerable distance from the site.

"They had been carried inland a fair distance to create either a grave or a cache," he said.

Whiteman said he and his friend concluded that aboriginal people didn't build the structure.

"He believed it was made by white people, too," he said. "The way it was built."

Whiteman said, traditionally, people didn't often talk about structures built by people in the past.

"The beliefs are that things like that may hold negative or positive powers," he said. "You stay away and you don't talk about it. You respect however it was they came about being placed there."

But since the renewed interest in the Franklin Expedition, Whiteman said he started thinking about what he had found.

"Every time I read about somebody looking for the Franklin Expedition, this formation comes to my mind," he said.

Sir John Franklin established Fort Franklin, now known as Deline, during his second Arctic land expedition between 1825 and 1827, according to the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre.

Whiteman said Caribou Point is an ideal crossing place for anyone heading to the Arctic coast from Deline.

"There are a number of explorers that used that area," he said.

Deline resident Raymond Taniton said a friend of his, Jimmy Dillon, has spoken about another site near Great Bear Lake, between Good Hope Bay and Mcgill Bay.

While building a cabin in the area in the 1980s, Dillon said he found what looked like a food cache.

When he inspected it, he discovered a human body inside.

"I asked him about the description and he said it's a white person with reddish hair," Taniton said.

According to Dillon, elders had found the site before he did and discussed it with him when he asked about it. Taniton said the elders told Dillon that the individual looked European and described exactly what Dillon had seen, except the buttons from the body's uniform were missing when Dillon saw the body.

"They said the person had a black, navy jacket with yellow buttons on them," Taniton said. "When he checked it himself in the 1980s, the yellow buttons were not there anymore."

Taniton said no one in the area seems to know who the person could be. Even Taniton's grandfather, who was 105 years old when he died in 2005, didn't have any answers.

"I asked the same questions about it. There are no stories about it," he said.

He said he believes the person must have died long before his father's birth in 1900.

Tom Andrews, the territorial archeologist and manager of the NWT Cultural Places Program with the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife, said the individual's appearance doesn't necessarily mean he was of European descent. While Andrews said he was unable to provide much information without actually seeing the site, he said the natural process of decay can make a person look very different years after their death.

"It's more likely it's an indigenous person's grave and the effect of time has had an impact on the remains," he said.

Andrews said the Sahtu Dene used the area around Great Bear Lake for thousands of years. The Copper Inuit also travelled to the north shore of the lake to hunt. He said sites left behind are typically small and spaced far apart.

"They had a light footprint," he said. "The sites are small and scattered as a result."

There are approximately 6,377 archeological sites recorded in the territory to date, Andrews said.

"We think that's just a fraction of what's out there," he said. "There are still many to be found and recorded."

Whiteman said he believes it would have either taken a few people a long time to build the structure he found, or a lot of people assisted with its construction.

"If one or two people were trying to build this thing, I would say it would take about a month to carry those stones inland like that," he said. "We're talking about an area where winter comes at the end of August."

He also said its secluded location suggests it wasn't a marker or a sign post. He said if it does turn out to be a grave, its size indicates more than one person was buried in it.

"If it is a grave site, then it leads me to believe it was a fairly large party," he said.

Whiteman said while he respects the age-old rule about keeping silent, he fears that if he doesn't speak about the site, no one will ever know about it.

"There is something out there," he said. "If I sat here and ended my days without saying anything about it, then it would be lost.

You don't have people tramping around in the bush anymore."

He said he hopes to generate interest and get an archeologist to take a look.

"I would want to have someone with expertise, an archeologist to maybe take a piece apart to see what's inside, if there are artifacts in there," he said.

Protecting history

Andrews said while the centre doesn't encourage people to go out searching for sites, anyone who finds a site while out camping or fishing is asked to take photographs and contact the centre. \

He said it is also helpful to pinpoint its location on a map or using a GPS.

Andrews said any archeological site, whether they have been reported or not, are protected by law under the Northwest Territories Act.

"It's really important that people don't disturb them," he said. "It's not only against the law, but it may be disrespectful."

Whiteman agreed. He said while he has not yet contacted archeologists about his find, he knows exploring the site would have to be done with the utmost care.

"It has to be approached with respect," he said.

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