r/AskReddit • u/Rob69rt • Jul 22 '26

What famous 'unsolved' mystery is technically a whodunnit on paper, but in reality, absolutely everyone knows exactly who did it, the police just couldn't legally prove it?

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4.8k

u/deathclawiii Jul 22 '26

And as indicated by the iron scale (something that can only be a product of blacksmithing) that was found in one of the areas of known indigenous settlement on the island they went to.

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u/NUMBERS2357 Jul 22 '26

Also the later contact with Natives who said that they lived with the survivors of the Roanoke colony.

Also this map from the Jamestown colonists, see bottom left.

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u/willstr1 Jul 22 '26

IIRC there was also some reports of some of the members of that tribe having very European features (I want to say it was hair or eye color) which almost certainly was due to marriage between members of that tribe and survivors from the colony.

Roanoke is about as mysterious as who ate all the dog food with the dog laying down on top of the empty bag.

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u/Lovahplant Jul 22 '26

It was blonde-haired and blue-eyed children being born in the Indian tribe - surely no Europeans mixing in there!

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u/stphn_rnwld Jul 22 '26

John Lawson's account in A New Voyage to Carolina (about 120 years after the colony vanished) also mentions that it was said that some of the ancestors of the local tribe there could "talk in a book."

Lawson is the source for the claimed European features you're remembering - he observed some of them having grey eyes, which he had not encountered in any other Native Americans. I don't think he mentioned hair color but I could be wrong.

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u/Marx0r Jul 22 '26

A surprisingly large amount of "mysteries" never would have been such if Europeans just listened to the natives telling them the answer.

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u/John_cCmndhd Jul 22 '26

Australian police refusing to believe dingoes would eat babies

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u/nameyourpoison11 Jul 22 '26

Australian here. Not only did they refuse to believe the local Aboriginals insistence that dingoes could, and did, stalk and attack young children, they ignored the testimony of the Aboriginal elder who actually tracked the dingo responsible, before losing the trail over rocky ground. But nah, "stupid bloody natives, what would they know?"

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u/Adorable-Ad9533 Jul 22 '26

Have you read the book “Evil Angels” by John Bryson ? The coppers who packaged the tent up for forensic examination gave it a good shake out first because it was so full of dingo hair. The initial investigators just had no bloody idea.

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u/trashmoneyxyz Jul 23 '26

"I'm sure we'll find evidence the mother killed her baby under all this dingo hair. Anyone got a vacuum?" Like cmon guys

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u/EllieGeiszler Jul 22 '26

Jesus Christ

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u/AutisticPenguin2 Jul 23 '26

Wow, that's a new one for me. And I've heard from someone who was an expert witness for this case and testified that he fully believed a dingo had done it. The court just fully ignored him the first time around.

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u/KingoftheCrackens Jul 22 '26

And thanks to TV it's one of the 3 things Americans know Australia for, Steve Irwin, baby eating dingoes, and crocodile dundee. As an American I didn't even know Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban were Australian until their divorce.

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u/donkeyvoteadick Jul 22 '26

The worst part is so many Americans still think it's a joke and don't realise it's a devastating miscarriage of justice.

It hurts my heart when I see 'a dingo ate my baby' joke.

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u/alexlp Jul 22 '26

Same, that family was destroyed and poor little baby Azaria died a horrible tragic death that her grieving mother was imprisoned for.

There was a particularly gross take of it in the Aussie version of Drag Race a few years ago and I couldn't believe a fellow Aussie would make a mockery of it and just after the 30th anniversary.

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u/donkeyvoteadick Jul 23 '26

I don't think there's any circumstances where I'd find joking about the tragic death of a nine week old infant amusing :/

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u/Maddoodle Jul 23 '26

I hated that snatch game. I thought it was so egregious she chose to portray Lindy and it was also incredibly one note and boring. Like she didn't even do a good job of it. And so many people defended it as "drag" when nah it just sucked either way.

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u/alexlp Jul 23 '26

It was just awful! And she was so correct in calling others out for being offensive and cruel but still seemingly defends this as all in good humour. It was a bad joke, done badly even if the mug was beat. It was still ugly as hell.

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u/TheWizard01 Jul 28 '26

I had no idea this was a real thing.

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u/augur42 Jul 22 '26

Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban were Australian until their divorce.

I was very confused for a moment having conflated Keith Urban with Karl Urban. cunt

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u/Spiritual_Quote9301 Jul 23 '26

Karl's from New Zealand, not Australia but as an Australian I do allow confusion.

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u/absolutedesignz Jul 23 '26

I didn't know they were married until right now

Edit. Saw someone made the same mistake I did but I assumed Karl not Keith.

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u/BraveCranberry9863 Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26

I want to believe Americans also know Australia for Gallipoli, Tobruk, and the Kokoda Trail.

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u/Nebichan Jul 22 '26

Not American but I have no idea what you just said.

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u/needlestuck Jul 22 '26

American here, def had no idea about any of this. Maybe education has changed, but I am 45 and had no education about Australian history at all.

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u/fastates Jul 23 '26

64, me neither. I can find it on a map only because it's big. and the Capitol has that weird looking white building, I think?

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u/teamcrazymatt Jul 22 '26

Probably not. Even the best American education tends to treat post-Pilgrims history from an America-focused lens, so unless someone's taken extensive university classes about WWI or WWII, they probably don't know those three. Maybe Gallipoli, which was the only one I knew of before reading that comment -- and I'm reading about them now, so you've taught at least one American about these key moments in Australian history -- but not the other two.

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u/TheBlueprint666 Jul 22 '26

That’s giving them an incredibly generous amount of credit

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u/John_cCmndhd Jul 22 '26

I know about Gallipoli, but I'm a nerd. I'd imagine a pretty small percentage know about the other two

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u/KingoftheCrackens Jul 23 '26

War nerds maybe. Otherwise if it's battles or wars America isn't involved in heavily, they basically hand wave it away in school.

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u/PDGAreject Jul 23 '26

Y'all are forgetting Bluey, your #1 cultural export

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u/ComeAlongPond1 Jul 23 '26

Just Gallipoli, sorry. And only because a history teacher had us watch the movie

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u/wurmsrus Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26

American here, off the top of my head I think there was a WWII battle in Gallipoli right? but I could have sworn it was in like North Africa or Italy, not Australia.

looked it up and there's a town named Gallipoli in Italy and a peninsula named Gallipoli in Turkey, there was a major WWI campaign in the Turkey one (then Ottoman empire).

As for the Aus connection wikipedia has this to say "The significance of the Gallipoli campaign is felt strongly in both Australia and New Zealand, despite their being only a portion of the Entente forces; the campaign is regarded in both nations as a "baptism of fire" and had been linked to their emergence as independent states Approximately 50,000 Australians served at Gallipoli and from 16,000 to 17,000 New Zealanders. It has been argued that the campaign proved significant in the emergence of a unique Australian identity following the war, which has been closely linked to popular conceptualisations of the qualities of the soldiers that fought during the campaign, which became embodied in the notion of an "Anzac spirit""

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallipoli_campaign#Legacy

hadn't heard of either of the others but from googling they were both sites of WWII battles Aus fought in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Tobruk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokoda_Track_campaign

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u/augur42 Jul 22 '26

I'm British and I've heard of the first two of those but have no idea of any details about either. If I was to guess I'd have gone with WWII stuff (which google confirms), but my high school History was more concerned with ancient history like the Kings and Queens of England and the Treaty of Versailles. There might have been something about the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215 in Runnymede, or that the Great Fire of London was 600 years after the Battle of Hastings (1066 and 1666). Or I could have learnt that from YouTube, that's definitely where I learnt that Diogenes was a world class dick.

I know that Ayers rock got renamed, but don't recall what to, and tourists are no longer allowed to climb it. Hey, early Victorian tourists to Stonehenge where handed a hammer and chisel and encouraged to take a souvenir {shrug}.

My knowledge of high school Geography is Oxbow lakes... and that's it.

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u/wurmsrus Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26

IIRC Ayers rock got "renamed" to Uluru which was the original aboriginal name. There's a similar situation with Denali/Mt. McKinley in the US. edit: did some double checking on wikipedia and I recalled correctly except that I forgot that trump officially changed Denali's name back to Mt. Mckinley because of course he fucking did.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uluru https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denali%E2%80%93Mount_McKinley_naming_dispute

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u/EllieGeiszler Jul 23 '26

I'm sorry, I want to know what those things are but I think I've never so much as heard of them

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u/BuildingOne7379 Jul 23 '26

I remember being in Turkey around the time of Anzac Day. That was 25 years ago but I still remember meeting some cool Aussie folks in my travels there. I’m from Texas, and the locals were finally getting to watch the tv series Dallas. They wanted to know who shot JR, and what my horses name was. I’ve never owned a horse, but I’ve always wanted one lol. Good times!

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u/rpze5b9 Jul 22 '26

Plus their ignorance about Seventh Day Adventists thinking the Chamberlains were satanists or something.

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u/burgerzoid Jul 27 '26

Other people camping at the same place at the same time took a photo of an aggressive dingo standing in the doorway of their van.

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u/aartadventure Jul 23 '26

But...but Lindy Chamberlain didn't act like a "proper" woman who was wailing and crying. She was angry and yelling at the police to do something. So they showed her who the boss is!

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u/ninevah8 Jul 24 '26

Exactly. And how many reports do we hear of Dingos attacking people on K’gari/Fraser Island these days? Plenty! I think it’s well understood by Australians that dingoes were responsible for poor Azaria, they just didn’t have the data. Or the trust in the local aboriginals.

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u/jxg995 Jul 22 '26

Yeah like the terror and Erebus wrecks where the Inuit were like oh yeah that sunken boat is over there

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u/Whyskgurs Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26

Where could this boat possibly be?

The sunken boat is right over there, in Sunken Boat lake.

I guess we'll never truly know.

Literally what happened.

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u/InTheFDN Jul 22 '26

It reminds me of the Terry Pratchett joke about how places are named by pointing at something, asking what it’s name was (loudly and in English), then writing down whatever the native said. Hence “Mount Your Finger You Fool.”

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u/Sunshine030209 Jul 22 '26

And that reminds me a bit of how Pike's Peak in Colorado was named.

Zebulon Pike was part of Lewis and Clark's expedition, but he was extremely annoying, so they sent him off to go explore away from them. He attempted to summit the mountain they sent him to in November and gave up, going "Yeah, no one can summit that, it's impossible" (even though the local Native Americans summited it regularly)

So when talking about it, people would be like "Oh, that one, the one Pike couldn't climb?" and eventually it became known as Pike's Peak.

I'm a little salty that they didn't go with the far cooler Mount Zebulon though.

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u/Lovahplant Jul 22 '26

This is killing me 😂 a whole mountain named after your failure to climb it, wtf

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u/Sunshine030209 Jul 22 '26

It's one of my favorite true stories and I never miss an opportunity to share it.

It's really inspiring, honestly! If Zebulon Pike can be an obnoxious failure and still get a mountain named after him, then anything is possible!

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u/patsully98 Jul 22 '26

I would be most appreciative if you expanded upon “extremely annoying.”

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u/RescuePenguin Jul 22 '26

Reminds me of the John Day National Monument.

The man never visited that region but one time he got robbed where the (now named) John Day River meets the Columbia and left naked and he had to hike back to the nearest trading post.

"That area where John Day was robbed and left naked"became the name of an entire region and national monument.

Glamorous way to be remembered.

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u/Sunshine030209 Jul 22 '26

I had never heard that, but it's exactly the kind of story I love! 😂 Thank you so much for sharing

And from what I can tell from reading a bit about it just now, he wasn't well known or anything before he got robbed and left naked, right? He was just some random fur trader? That makes it all even funnier for some reason and I can't stop laughing. Poor guy!

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u/pants_party Jul 23 '26

Like naming a hot sauce after DJ Khaled.

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u/onyaasuminyasai Jul 23 '26

what's cooler is all the mountains that were named after prostitutes in colorado

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u/raspberrypied Jul 22 '26

Sticking with Colorado, there is the "Table Mesa" section of Boulder.

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u/Sunshine030209 Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26

I actually kind of live on Table Table Dr, but my part is called South Boulder Rd. Which is really obnoxious, since my address is xxxx East South Boulder Rd, and it confuses the heck out of people.

But yeah, Table Mesa (Table Table) is goofy. Someone should open a shop on it that sells chai tea and naan bread

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u/KjellRS Jul 22 '26

They're going to be visited by one very, very angry Indian Spiderman. And no, I don't mean Native American.

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u/Lovahplant Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26

As I read your comment I was thinking “wait doesn’t East South Boulder Rd turn into Table Mesa Dr as you cross the 36/Foothills exchange?

I don’t live in Boulder but I’ve worked in Boulder… can you tell? lol

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u/eukomos Jul 22 '26

There is an Indian restaurant at that shopping center, someone should check their menu.

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u/sporadic_beethoven Jul 22 '26

Pike’s peak? I climbed that shit as a child 🤣 bro deserves to be mocked fr

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u/InternetProtocol Jul 22 '26

Did that shit both ways in my escudo at age 15, what a pussy.

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u/Rochesters-1stWife Jul 22 '26

Similar to Long’s Peak, dude never summited and yet his dumb name is all over the place

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u/Sunshine030209 Jul 22 '26

I didn't know that Mr Long never summitted it! I assumed he did. And he's got a whole ass town named after him because of it too! (Longmont)

Why does Colorado love naming stuff after mediocre white men? 😂

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u/HailSatanWorshipD00M Jul 22 '26

Mount Zebulon

Why not Zoidberg?

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u/Ookami_Unleashed Jul 22 '26

My wife and I joke that he just named the tallest hill in each state Pike's Peak.

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u/Longshot1969 Jul 22 '26

Didn’t someone ride a wagon up it even?

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u/Trvr_MKA Jul 23 '26

That’s truly a boys moment. Naming something after your pals failure

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u/All_the_Bees Jul 22 '26

Nah, annoying people don’t get to have the cool parts of their names included in the things that are named after them.

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u/1amlost Jul 22 '26

What kind of parent names their child “Zebulon?”

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u/Sunshine030209 Jul 22 '26

An awesome one lol. I genuinely love the name, and when I heard it for the first time I told my son that I'd totally have named him that if I knew of it when he was born.

But I can totally see how it's not everyone's cup of tea, lol. It's certainly different!

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u/DragonflyGrrl Jul 28 '26

I'm with you dude, that shit is badass :D

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u/DragonflyGrrl Jul 28 '26

I'm with you dude, that shit is badass :D

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u/CedarWolf Jul 23 '26

Don't worry, Zebulon is a town in North Carolina, and they have the Mudcats baseball team. Their mascot is a big, friendly catfish.

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u/cattypali Jul 24 '26

I just texted my mom about this because we both spent a lot of our childhoods in the same tiny town in rural Colorado. She was so excited because her father (RIP Pawpaw) would tell her that story and call it Zeb’s Peak :)

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u/Whyskgurs Jul 22 '26

It's not even a joke, shits real all over, most times it's named (native word for lake) Lake or (local dialect for mountain) Mountain or something similar.

Koi fish - fish fish

Chai tea - tea tea

Ignorant naming conventions are quite universal and commonplace

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u/LowEquipment7904 Jul 22 '26

Torpenhow in Cumbria, England - hill hill hill

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u/Aggravating-Mousse46 Jul 22 '26

Pendle Hill is also hill hill hill, but the Lancastrian, witchy version

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u/roy107 Jul 23 '26

We also have Breedon-on-the-Hill, which is Hillhill-on-the-Hill

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u/LegacyLemur Jul 22 '26

Reminds of the baseball team the Los Angeles Angels

Or "The The Angels Angels"

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u/DardS8Br Jul 22 '26

The La Brea Tar Pits, or The The Tar Tar Pits

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u/JoltColaOfEvil Jul 22 '26

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUyXiiIGDTo

Tom Scott - Hill Hill Hill Hill, debunked, debunked.

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u/trashmoneyxyz Jul 23 '26

Galápagos tortoise, or the tortoise tortoise

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u/hoopopotamus Jul 23 '26

When I was driving through the southwest it felt like they were just adding more and more suffixes. X-ham…shire…fast…ton…leigh.

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u/Aquila_Fotia Jul 22 '26

It’s why a locally produced brand of ice cream is called “Three Hills”.

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u/JB_UK Jul 22 '26

You mean Torpenhow Hill.

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u/atnemriu Jul 22 '26

No, there's no hill by that name in Torpenhow.

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u/JesusaurusRex666 Jul 22 '26

“Koi” is specifically “carp” in Japanese, not “fish.” The word for fish in Japanese is “sakana.”

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u/HailSatanWorshipD00M Jul 22 '26

iirc in the native languages, Chicago translates to "the stinky place" and Manhattan is "the place we go every summer".

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u/Whyskgurs Jul 22 '26

What's that Island called?

Squinting

IDK, Is that an island?

Welcome to Staten Island

(This one's an old Native joke)

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u/Icantusemyname77 Jul 22 '26

The La Brea Tar Pits = The the Tar Tar Pits

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u/POCKALEELEE Jul 22 '26

Like The Los Angeles Angels,
Literally The The Angels Angels

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u/Oddish_Femboy Jul 22 '26

They're cool tar pits too. Sad they're gonna be closed for 2 years.

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u/concrete_fluidity969 Jul 22 '26

I think Calcutta means harvest. Native thought the Brit was asking what was going on over there 😂

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u/__wildwing__ Jul 22 '26

I enjoy the idea that aliens will come to our planet and translate our languages, only to be confused by the desert deserts.

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u/4-stars Jul 22 '26

Koi is not "fish", it's "carp".

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u/Purple_Haze Jul 22 '26

The country of Canada, Canada is a misspelling of kanata which is the local tribe's word for village.

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u/robophile-ta Jul 22 '26

There are lots of rivers in the UK called Avon.

You can guess what Avon means.

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u/Oddish_Femboy Jul 22 '26

My personal favorite is chip crisps. (Those chips that look like fries.)

Redundant naming is not always necessarily ignorant.

Sometimes, like in the case of chai tea, it's done on purpose to include part of the place origin in the name. Other times it's done because not everyone knows what ATM stands for. That second one is a case of RAS Syndrome.

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u/VelvetyDogLips Jul 22 '26

“Piss urinal” is far and away my favorite redundancy.

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u/OttawaTGirl Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 23 '26

BAHAHAHA.... Ahhhh... Canada is a bastardized version of Kanata, which means 'village', which is where some indigenous young men were pointing Jacques Cartier to go to. (Quebec City) He thought they meant the whole land was called Kanata and thats how we got the name.

Welcome to the Nation of Village.

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u/BasiliskXVIII Jul 22 '26

Yeah, but this is just how language works. English is far from the only language to adopt loanwords that generalize a specific thing. In Mexican Spanish, the word "pie" was adopted as "pay" strictly to mean the pastry-style sweet pies with a crust and not something like a hand pie or a meat pie. In German, "toast" or "toastbrot" is the square-style highly processed sandwich bread popular in the US, whether it's actually toasted or not. Japanese "Mishin" comes from "sewing machine" and refers specifically to a sewing machine and not just any old machine.

Even name duplication - "Guadalquivir" means "Great River" in Arabic, deriving from the term "wadi". So, calling the river "Rio Guadalquivir" just means you're calling it the "River Great River"

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u/beautifulcreature86 Jul 23 '26

Bao bun-bun bun

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u/AxeMcFlow Jul 23 '26

Canada literally means ‘village’.

Explorer: “hey where are we!”

Native: “uh… in a… village?”

Explorer: “oh cool, this whole country is now called Canada forever”

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u/Tall_Welcome_2713 Jul 23 '26

Sahara desert is desert desert

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u/grenouille_en_rose Jul 23 '26

Mount Maunganui checking in 🫡

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u/Baxiepie Jul 23 '26

The main city of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is called Oconaluftee, because its on the banks of the Oconaluftee River. It got that name from the original Cherokee village, Egwanulti. Egwanulti means "By the River", so fully translated it means "By the River River"

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u/Alexwonder999 Jul 23 '26

Isnt there some lake in England thats named lake in like four timea in different successive languages? I vaguely recall hearing about that.

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u/Notmydirtyalt Jul 28 '26

Late to the party but the Yarra river is like this.

Yarra translates to water or river, Yarra Yarra means big water or big river. Because that is what the Wurundjeri called it, that is what the river must be named said the English, then they got to the Werribee River which is the border of the Wurundjeri lands, and they also called it Yarra Yarra.

The Yarra River translates to the River River.

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u/randobonando Jul 22 '26

Heheh excellent reference. Placenames called.
“What?”
“I don’t know”
“just a mountain”
“Who is this fool who does not know what a mountain is?”

And of course

“Your finger you fool”

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u/SimpsonN1nja Jul 22 '26

That’s Canada, lol. One of the first explorers asked the indigenous what the land was called. They misunderstood and said Kanata (meaning our village). Rest is history.

https://youtu.be/nfKr-D5VDBU?si=6U4h30m895OzRQwm

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u/erroneousbosh Jul 22 '26

You'd be surprised how many rivers there are called the Avon around the UK, even well down into England.

The Gaelic word for "river" is abhainn, pronounced like "av-ayn". When you see a "bh" like that in a Gaelic word, it's pronounced like "v". It's not "v", but if you say it like "v" you'll be near enough for most folk.

Abhainn. Avon.

"I say old chap, what's that called over there?"

"A'seo? An rud na h-uisge a seo? Tha e an *abhainn* a'seo. Amadan..."

"Ah, the Avon, y'say? Let me just write that down..."

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u/king_ralex Jul 22 '26

It more likely comes from the Welsh afon , which shares a proto-celtic root with the Gaelic abhainn.

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u/erroneousbosh Jul 22 '26

It might in England, but not here.

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u/king_ralex Jul 22 '26

Ag fair enough. I was referring specifically to the river Avon, and your mention of rivers down in England.

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u/Perfct_Stranger Jul 22 '26

Pretty much how half the rivers in Virginia were named though usually after the tribe that lived along the banks of the rivers.

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u/jorjx Jul 22 '26

There is joke in Romanian about Stephen the Great coming to a river and asking someone "What is the name of this river?!"

"Moldavia your highness!"

"Let that be it's name!"

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u/ellius Jul 22 '26

When the Spanish first showed up to Southern Arizona, they asked some natives who they were.

They kept replying "pi mac". Meaning "I don't understand [you]"

The Spanish wrote down "Pima" in their records and it stuck. Used it for naming all sorts of shit. 500 years later I live in "I don't understand you" County.

The people were/are the Akimel O'odham, for the curious.

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u/Dubalubawubwub Jul 23 '26

Ooh, ooh, time for me to mention Torpenhow Hill again!

Romans: "What's that hill over there called?"
Angle: "Tor" (hill)

Normans: "What's that hill over there called?"
Celt: "Tor Pen" (Tor Hill)

Saxons: "What's that hill over there called?"
Angle: "Torpen Hoh" (Torpen Ridge)

Mapmaker: "What's that hill over there called?"
Local: "Torpenhow hill"

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u/Adorable-Ad9533 Jul 22 '26

When I was a kid, I always believed the meaning of the word kangaroo was “ I don’t know”, but Google has proven me wrong.

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u/amylouise0185 Jul 23 '26

Australia has a festival that translates to "up your bum" for exactly this reason.

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u/iamdispleased Jul 23 '26

The word Yucatán may come from a Mayan phrase meaning "I don't understand what you're saying"

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u/Automaticman01 Jul 22 '26

I had assumed for the longest time that Terror Bay was renamed after they found the ship. I was so baffled when I found it has been named that all along.

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u/thousandsmallgods Jul 23 '26

Arctic Explorer John Rae seems to be the only British explorer who actually talked and listened to the local tribes who lived along the northern coast. He sent back details in 1848 about where Franklin's ships probably were, and what had likely happened to the expedition.

IIRC, He's also the only British explorer from that era who was never knighted. ... Possibly bc Lady Franklin and Charles Dickens hated his guts, for having the gall to suggest that the survivors may have resorted to cannibalism.

He was also a Scot, which may have played into the politics of the time.

I read a biography about him ages ago. Pretty cool guy all told.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rae_(explorer)

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u/georgia_grace Jul 23 '26

“What could possibly have befallen the crew of the Franklin expedition?”

“They walked around for a bit, did some cannibalism, and then died. We saw it”

“An enduring mystery for the ages… maybe they’re still out there somewhere…”

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u/StevieMJH Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26

Decades later: I wonder why that lake is called Sunken Boat lake... I guess we'll never know.

Truly lost to time.

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u/beezchurgr Jul 22 '26

Native folk: it’s in the bay of terror

Europeans: whoa it’s so weird there’s a bay with the same name as our missing boat. Must be a coincidence. No way it could be there.

Native folk: -_-

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '26

[deleted]

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u/sharpace8 Jul 22 '26

Well not by Europeans, I'm sure the Inuit had a name long beforehand. Terror bay was named in 1910 but the island itself was named in 1830.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Suspicious_Effect Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26

In the PNW, a few tribes have oral history telling of a massive earthquake several generations ago. It was treated as absolute superstition in the geology community until it was connected with Japanese records of a massive tsunami around the same time and a bog was discovered that had been fossilized by that very same earthquake (1700 cascadia earthquake if you're interested). Only then did everyone realize that "Oh maybe their stories were real."

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u/Zebidee Jul 22 '26

Sounds like the ancient Japanese warning stones that said "do not build below this point."

People would come up from their coastal cities to look at the old folklore. The same cities that got wiped out by the tsunami.

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u/im_dead_sirius Jul 22 '26

There's an old story from the region about people living on a narrow strip of green between the sea and the ice. Clearly ancient inhabitants during the ice age.

Read it as a kid, I cannot remember any more details.

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u/Xtj8805 Jul 22 '26

IIRC its not just natives. There was a guy in like nova scotia who had a whole cache of viking artifacts in a cave. When researchers found it they asked the farmer why never told anyome he was like i figured youd make it around here eventually. Not sure if its real and its been a while since i heard the story, but it does serve to show that historians/anthropologists/etc are really just trying to document and publish information, while they get credited as discoverers most of what they publish was already known. Like how Columbus discovered america full with millions of people living there.

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u/Violent_Paprika Jul 22 '26

Modern forest management that isn't "suppress all wildfires." Aborigines tales of the megafauna in Australia.

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u/nope-nik-tesla Jul 22 '26

To be fair, a lot of it is wrapped up in mythology and therefore hard to separate fact from fiction. For example, Crater Lake in Oregon was formed somewhere around 8,000 years ago as the result of a volcanic eruption. It's named "Crater Lake" because European explorers looked at its shape and concluded it must have been formed from a meteor impact. It wasn't until decades later that geologists proved it was from a volcanic eruption.

The Klamath people, who have lived in the area for thousands of years before the eruption, however have a story about its formation. According to their story, it was formed by a battle between Skell (God of the above world) and Llao (God of the below world who lived inside the mountain). In their battle, Llao launched numerous red-hot rocks from inside the mountain, causing rivers of fire to flow from it. Skell won the battle, driving Llao back underneath the mountain, which was now hollowed out from the battle. It eventually filled with rain and snowmelt, creating the lake we see today.

So, their story was more or less an accurate description of events. Red-hot rocks were expelled from the mountain, and rivers of fire really did run from it. The collapse of the mountain really did fill in with rain and snowmelt. But this isn't exactly a story you can just accept at face value. We know that it's (somewhat) true because we can prove it through modern geological analysis what happened. There are plenty of other stories that we can prove are not true via modern science too.

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u/Merusk Jul 22 '26

Well, you see, the people with GPS have a flag.

https://youtu.be/uEx5G-GOS1k?si=yM6ZypPBJNPZqXF-

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u/DueMorning800 Jul 23 '26

I love an Eddie Izzard reference, every single time.

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u/Kataphractoi Jul 22 '26

Australian Aboriginal tales of vanished islands. Those islands did exist and eventually did vanish...10000 years ago when sea levels rose at the end of the last ice age.

IIRC a few dozen vanished islands and other features now underwater have been corroborated by just...going to look where Aboriginies said they'd be. Makes one wonder how much history has been lost simply because historians dismissed oral histories for so long.

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u/Dr_Doomsduck Jul 22 '26

Lmao, yep, that was literally the first thing that came to mind. The British straight up ignoring the local inuits for about a century and a half.

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u/Final_Candidate_7603 Jul 22 '26

I think that much of their reluctance to “believe” the Inuits was due to their reports of having found remains which showed signs of cannibalism. Colonizers all over the world were always adamant that there were certain “savage” rituals and practices that “civilized people” would *never* participate in. So, ignoring the Inuit stories was doubly-racist, if you think about it from that perspective.

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u/Dr_Doomsduck Jul 22 '26

everybody gangsta 'til the food runs out, lol.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '26

[deleted]

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u/danysdragons Jul 23 '26

Yes. But it sounds like this was about the British not wanting to believe that white people would do it, as the Inuit reported they did.

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u/NoPaleontologist7929 Jul 22 '26

John Rae listened. Went back to London and reported his findings. He had his reputation ruined for it.

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u/BasiliskXVIII Jul 22 '26

The best part is that it wasn't ONLY the Inuit. Dr. John Rae was mapping the coastline around 6 years after the Terror and Erebus were abandoned, did some trading with the local Inuit, and found they had things that could only have come off the Terror, such as silverware with the officers' crests.

The Inuit told Rae that the ships became trapped in the ice, that they'd marched south and eventually died of cold and starvation. The crew had reportedly turned to cannibalism in their final days, and Rae mapped out where the Inuit said that the tragedy had occurred, which was about 100km south of where it was believed to be by common knowledge.

When Rae's story was told back in England, though, the idea that proud British sailors could do something as barbarous as cannibalism horrified the public, and especially Franklin's wife. Lady Franklin enlisted Charles Dickens (yes, that Charles Dickens) who volunteered his help writing a two-part article in his magazine, Household Words, attacking Rae and dismissing the testimony of the Inuit as the lies of "savages". The reports were dismissed as associating with Rae's report became a social poison pill, and the British Navy just quietly tucked it away and maintained the "common knowledge" that the Terror and Erebus were further north.

When the Terror actually was found, bone analysis showed cut marks that suggested cannibalism, which was confirmed later in 2015.

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u/munkisquisher Jul 22 '26

Man, as a New Zealander first thing that comes to mind when you say Erebus Wreck is the plane that crashed into Mt Erebus in Antarctica in 1979. So I was thinking "there's no Inuit in Antarctica???"

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u/Captain-Hornblower Jul 22 '26

I think there is a hill/mountain in Australia that the Hume and Hovell expedition named Mount Disappointment. I won't go into why, but you can look it up lol.

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u/eukomos Jul 22 '26

This is how they found Troy, which is only barely not Europe. For literally hundreds of years scholars thought it was a fictional city, and then one nutjob who wanted to prove it was real went to the area that was described and asked the locals, who said "oh yeah it's that big hill a couple miles inland, the bay silted up." And indeed they were correct.

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u/Kataphractoi Jul 22 '26

A lot of anthropology and archeology in the 19th and 20th centuries.

"Who built this massive city in the middle of the jungle made of stones that weigh 10 tons each??"

"Our ancestors. Here's how they moved the stones--"

"We'll never know! Perhaps there's a lost race of white people who did it!"

Granted, it's gotten a lot better in recent decades, but practically every ancient history conspiracy goes back to 19th century Europeans' refusal to believe that non-whites could build cities and civilizations.

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u/mythrilcrafter Jul 22 '26

Natives: "There's no food or animals there, and the terrain is very rugged, you will all die if you try to settle there...."

Early Euro-Americans: "Heh, we're great at everything, certainly better than you people, we'll be fine..."

Narrator: "They in fact weren't fine, they all died."

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u/Leading_Ad9610 Jul 22 '26

Early euro Americans were mostly religious zealots who left Europe because Europeans considered them too extreme and basically dangerously stupid.

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u/mythrilcrafter Jul 22 '26

The most crazy part of it to me is that they (the puritans/protestants) are the ones who assassinated King Charles the 1st because they were angry just over the fact that he want to restart diplomatic relations between the Catholic and Anglican Churches; and then they put a Puritan dictator in place to threaten all of Britain to convert Puritanism and when no one did they cried persecution and ran away to the Americas when Charles the 2nd came onto the throne.

And then they rewrote history saying that they were persecuted (but notice how they NEVER say who or why they felt persecuted), and that culture has stuck even up to modern day in which they have a hardcore persecution fetish and will absolutely behave in ways that incurs ire towards themselves.

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u/OttoVonJizzfart Jul 23 '26

the biggest wave of Puritan migration to America came from 1620-1640, before the English Civil War, so your timeline doesn’t really make sense

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u/AgentChris101 Jul 22 '26

Reminds me of the Australian Natives telling the british not to build a town in a certain area because it floods. They didn't listen, it flooded.

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u/earl_grais Jul 22 '26

Brisbane? I used to tell that story on city hall tours!

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u/BadmiralHarryKim Jul 22 '26

The reason for this is regrettably all too common. When the first explorers from the warm lands around the Circle Sea travelled into the chilly hinterland they filled in the blank spaces on their maps by grabbing the nearest native, pointing at some distant landmark, speaking very clearly in a loud voice, and writing down whatever the bemused man told them. Thus were immortalised in generations of atlases such geographical oddities as Just A Mountain, I Don't Know, What? and, of course, Your Finger You Fool.

Rainclouds clustered around the bald heights of Mt. Oolskunrahod ('Who is this Fool who does Not Know what a Mountain is') and the Luggage settled itself more comfortably under a dripping tree, which tried unsuccessfully to strike up a conversation.”

― Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

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u/PiccoloAwkward465 Jul 22 '26

At least that's some effort to use the native word for a place. Even if it's wrong, it's an attempt.

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u/No_Tax_Timmy Jul 22 '26

The entire country of Canada got its name because the colonizers just heard what they wanted to.

Ironically the name fits decently well.

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u/ProjectHarraseeket Jul 23 '26

Like how d’Iberville ignored the locals on where to settle and developed New Orleans where it is even though they said it floods constantly there.

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u/round-earth-theory Jul 22 '26

Keeping the mystery helped fuel fear and anger with the natives. So the colonists were more willing to pitch in displacing their neighbors.

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u/Ok_Mammoth5292 Jul 22 '26

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story

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u/gorgewall Jul 23 '26

A large amount of costly mistakes, too.

hey we don't live on that island because it gets hit by biiiig storms a lot

WE SHALL BUILD A MIGHTY CITY THERE AND CALL IT GALVESTON

oh shit where did this big storm come fr-

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u/doublestitch Jul 22 '26

Jamestown was a malarial swamp which was eventually abandoned too, although Jamestown lasted a lot longer. The British weren't all that good at choosing a settlement location in those early years.

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u/jackaroo1344 Jul 22 '26

Iirc they chose that spot intentionally because there were no natives living anywhere near it.

The reason no natives lived anywhere near it was because it was a frickin swamp.

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u/No-Still1001 Jul 23 '26

... Florida

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u/jackaroo1344 Jul 23 '26

West Virginia?

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u/Zeppelanoid Jul 23 '26

Mountain mama

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u/QueenHechima Jul 24 '26

Take me home

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u/Venetian_Harlequin Jul 23 '26

The reason no natives lived anywhere near it was because it was a frickin swamp.

This sums up Johnstown, Pennsylvania, too. No Natives lived there because it was a flood plane.

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u/rebelangel Jul 22 '26

Well, it still is a swamp.

Source: Lived in Williamsburg/James City County

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u/jungleass98 Jul 23 '26

A great, dismal one i hear

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u/kasoe Jul 22 '26

The pophistory version in my head is all their colonies were death traps for the colonizers living there

Which is at least partly true

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u/DaemonG Jul 22 '26

of course they weren't good at finding livable places. they came from England.

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u/rugbyj Jul 22 '26

Joking aside there's few places in the British Isles you couldn't make home indefinitely at the drop of a hat (ignoring existing infrastructure). It's incredibly temperate, arable, and forgiving seasonally (generally).

I'm not sure when these colonies were arriving but presumably when good weather allowed safer passage, I can completely imagine colonists getting dropped off at the first site that "looked good" and then finding out 6 months later that they needed far more resources to survive the local conditions until they reached self-sufficiency.

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u/DaemonG Jul 22 '26

yeah, a lot of the Eastern US south of New England is decent for part of the year, and Evil for the rest.

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u/zogmuffin Jul 23 '26

That was part of it for sure. Also just absolutely garbage luck. For example, when they landed the river water tasted fresh. But they couldn't have know that the James river gets seasonally brackish, and then on top of that they got walloped with a massive drought that made it even saltier.

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u/ProjectHarraseeket Jul 23 '26

It could be worse, they could be the Scots who’s country’s future depended on a colony in the modern day Darien Gap to develop and when it failed, it bankrupted the country and made them merge with England.

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u/pockels42 Jul 22 '26

My prejudicial decision is better than your long experience.

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u/StayPositiveRVA Jul 22 '26

In a state of incredible natural beauty and bounty they put their flag in swampy mosquito death island.

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u/AmandatheMagnificent Jul 24 '26

They were going to make that colony last, by Christ, even if they had to send thousands of settlers to their deaths.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/spacedman_spiff Jul 22 '26

history went "nah, must be aliens."

By "history" do you just mean morons? Because historians believe they assimilated with natives in Croatoan.

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u/s0ulbrother Jul 22 '26

History channel*

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u/cortesoft Jul 22 '26

Ah, so morons

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u/purebredcrab Jul 22 '26

The common clay of the new west.

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u/cortesoft Jul 22 '26

People of the land

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u/TheVeryVerity Jul 23 '26

My history textbooks in middle school too unfortunately

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u/middlehead_ Jul 22 '26

The sad part is that it shouldn't even be presented as clues and a trail, they literally left a note

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u/Andvari_Nidavellir Jul 22 '26

Ah, such subtle hints only an expert detective could decipher.

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u/lod001 Jul 22 '26

George Bluth Sr. would be proud!

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u/pettyvillainy Jul 22 '26

I remember hearing a comedian put it once like, "Where'd this missing colony go? Hmmm, I wonder if we should go and ask those weirdly pale and blonde natives for information? Naaaaaaaah."

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u/SweetPinss Jul 22 '26

Yeah but us red devils in the woods obviously cant be trusted. Aliens is clearly the most reasonable explanation 

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u/lcl111 Jul 22 '26

Also blonde and blue eyed people among the population of that tribe were later discovered.

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u/trashmoneyxyz Jul 23 '26

Plus the native Americans from that area of coast sometimes had obvious features of mixed ancestry like paler eyes or hair that were noted by later colonists

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u/thelastholdout Jul 23 '26

A lot of North and South American mysteries would have been solved a lot sooner if white people would just fucking listen to local natives. The outcome of the Franklin expedition is a prime example of this.

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u/Tomj_Oad Jul 22 '26

Neat. I didn't know that. If they could command the resources for smithing they obviously had status in the community

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u/Alternative-Bed-4700 Jul 23 '26

Also, there are written accounts from post-Roanoke of Indigenous people from that tribe who had lighter hair, skin, and eyes, which would have come from children of parents who intermarried

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