Fort Vancouver Cultural Landscape Report

Operations at Fort Vancouver
(continued)

Activities within the Stockade

Discussions of life within the stockade has been addressed in some detail in the two-volume work by historian John Hussey, Fort Vancouver: Historic Structure Report, and has since been augmented by various other manuscripts, articles and reports.

One of the central points of activity within the stockade must have been the fur store--in its various locations during this period within the stockade--where furs from the entire department's brigades were collected and stored until shipment to England in the fall. This activity slackened when, in 1845, Simpson directed the bulk of the Columbia Department s furs be shipped to Fort Victoria, signalling the end of Fort Vancouver's role as the main fur repository for the Company. Furs arriving from outlying posts would have been unpacked, cleaned and aired, and then placed in storage in the fur store; they were apparently periodically removed from storage and beaten again to free them of insects, and given a final beating prior to baling on a fur press and shipment to London. Historic sources indicate the fur beatings took place out of doors, presumably in the courtyard, or behind the fur store, in an area enclosed by a fence. [157]

Another early activity would have been trading imported goods--shirts, cloth, tobacco, beads and so forth--for furs brought to the post directly by Indians. It is believed that at Fort Vancouver, natives were allowed access to a building set aside for that purpose, where bartering took place. Periodically, then, Indians would have been allowed access to the stockade interior for the purpose of trading. In addition, the Company maintained a sales shop, where it sold imported items necessary to its employees, both at Fort Vancouver and elsewhere within the department--clothing, pipes, tobacco and so forth. Later, as traffic in the Columbia increased, the shop carried goods for travelers and still later, settlers, most of whom purchased on credit, against wheat crops to be raised. In the 1840s, as settlers increased, the merchandise at the Fort Vancouver sales shop increased in variety and quantity.

Among the distinguishing traits of Fort Vancouver's physical structure was the presence of large warehouses. These were built as part of the post's function as the depot for the Columbia Department, where all goods destined for the subsidiary posts were stored prior to shipment: bales, cases, boxes and barrels of clothing, blankets, hardware, sugar, tea, medicines, and all the items necessary to conduct trade with the natives. In addition, all stock not on hand in the shop at Fort Vancouver was housed here, as well as Fort Vancouver farm products slated for later rations and use, or for distribution to other posts--grain, salted beef, seed. All these items were brought to the warehouses, tallied, stored, prepared for packing and disbursed throughout the year.

As the central depot for the Columbia Department, Fort Vancouver was the site of a great many other activities. A succession of bakeries provided bread for use at the post, and also biscuit for the Marine Department and for the forts on the coast. Blacksmith shops produced everything from hardware to ironwork required to repair and build ships, from agricultural implements to beaver traps. Carpenter shops made furniture, building parts, and probably repaired and made the wooden parts of agricultural implements, including wheels. Coopers made the thousands of barrels in which agricultural produce was shipped. Hamess makers made and repaired the saddles, hamess and pack gear necessary to keep the fur brigades and farm operating. "Everything," Charles Wilkes observed in 1841, "may be had within the fort: they have an extensive apothecary shop, a bakery, blacksmiths' and coopers' shops, trade-offices for buying, others for selling, others again for keeping accounts and transacting business; shops for retail..." [158]

Some agricultural functions were lodged in the fort--storage for salted meat was provided in a Beef Store for a few years in the mid to late 1840s. A granary was erected within the fort to store grain and flour for use at the post and for shipment as part of its export business. At least one root house was built within the confines of the stockade.

Administration of the Columbia Department and the Fort Vancouver farm took place in McLoughlin's office in the "Big House," or "Manager's Residence" (Chief Factor's house), and also in the two successive office buildings within the stockade. An enormous amount of paperwork was involved in the operation of the Department. Among the records required by the Company were journals of daily occurrences; correspondence books; inventories; indents from each post; returns from the fur trade; invoices and other related shipping records; accounts from each post; accounts for employees, and many other records. [159] Clerks and apprentice clerks labored long hours over the documents.

Subordinate officers of the Company, their families, and most visitors were housed in the structure, or range of structures referred to as the Bachelors' Quarters, and at times in various other buildings within the stockade, fitted up to provide housing--William Tolmie, who arrived in 1833, was apparently temporarily lodged in one of the buildings used as a store. When London sent the post a chaplain, in 1836, the Rev. Herbert Beaver and his wife were eventually placed in a small "parsonage," where they lived until their departure in 1838; the building was then used by Catholic priests, and was replaced in 1841 by a larger structure referred to as the Priest's House, or Chaplain's Residence. It appears that adequate lodging was frequently in short supply within the stockade throughout this period: the demolition of the "old" office in the center of the 1846 stockade's courtyard was delayed because Captain Baillie, of the sloop, Modeste, was using the new office as a residence.

Eugene Duflot de Mofrás, a visitor from France in 1841, described activity in the Bachelor's Quarters: "Every evening the young employe's assemble in a room called Bachelor's Hall. Here they smoke and discuss their adventures, journeys and skirmishes with the Indians. One tells how he was reduced to eating leather moccasins; another boasts of such expert rifle-shooting that he aims only at a bear's mouth to avoid damaging the skin. Often Scotch airs will be varied by old French-Canadian tunes when the French spirit of gayety grips these hardy Highlanders." [160]

In 1838, the Rev. Herbert Beaver describing living conditions at the post with a jaundiced eye, reported "...indecent lodging for all classes...eleven persons in the same room, which is undivided and a thirty feet by fifteen in size and in which, with the exception of the man, who takes his meals at the mess, they all eat, wash and dry their clothes, none ever being hung out." [161] However, as de Mofrás observed, "Their quarters resemble barracks and are bare of all comfort reminscent of England. Furniture consists of a small table, a chair or bench, and a hard plank bed infested with vermin and covered with two woolen blankets. And yet this modest furniture seems the height of luxury to men who frequently live out in the open for two years or more at a stretch, of often spend weeks exploring rivers in open canoes, exposed to incessant rains and cold." [162] The Company's servants were, for the most part, housed outside the stockade, in the village now referred to as Kanaka Village.

In 1835 Rev. Samuel Parker wrote, "Half of a new house is assigned me, well furnished, and all attendance which I could wish, with access to as many valuable books. There is a school connected with this establishment for the benefit of the children of the traders and common laborers, some of whom are orphans whose parents were attached to the company; and also some Indian children, who are provided for by the generosity of the resident gentlemen..." [163] The school was established in 1832, with John Ball, a young American who had arrived with Nathaniel Wyeth's first expedition, teaching McLoughlin's son and other boys at the fort to read. Instruction was given under a succession of teachers. Some students boarded at Fort Vancouver, in the schoolhouse--later the Owyhee Church--sent by officers and clerks from throughout the Columbia District For some years the education was apparently free of charge, but by the mid-30s, some students, at least, were required to work on the farm to help defray the expenses of keeping them. It seems the school may have been discontinued for a time, beginning in 1843. There is some evidence to indicate a school on a reduced scale operated under the direction of the wife of clerk George Roberts in 1844, and later under the wife of British engineer Richard Covington, who arrived at Fort Vancouver in 1846-47. Late in 1843 or early in 1844, Chief Factor James Douglas, in consultation with George Simpson, began to plan for a school which would be supported by subscription to pay the salaries of a teacher. [164] Douglas directed the construction of two new school buildings north of the stockade, anticipating the new school, but these structures were still unfinished when the U.S. Army arrived at the post in 1849.

It was Company policy to require all residents of the posts in the Northern Department to attend religious services on Sunday. At Fort Vancouver, two services were held on that day in the dining hall of the manager's residence, or "Big House;" one was conducted in English by McLoughlin or a designated employee according to the Episcopal ritual, and one was read by McLoughlin in French for Roman Catholics. Visiting missionaries were invited to preach at Fort Vancouver after they began to arrive in the mid-i 830s. As noted earlier, in 1836 London sent the Rev. Herbert Beaver, an ordained minister of the Church of England, to Fort Vancouver. During the course of the minister's two-year sojourn at the post, antipathy developed between Beaver and Chief Factor McLoughlin regarding religious instruction of the fort's children and the "fur trade" marriages of the post's employees; when McLoughlin left on leave in the spring of 1838, originally satisfactory relations between Chief Trader James Douglas and the Reverend disintegrated. Beaver and his wife set sail for England upon hearing of McLoughlin's return from his furlough in Europe. [165] On November 24, 1838, two priests, Francois Norbert Blanchet and Modeste Demers, arrived at Fort Vancouver, dispatched by the Bishop of Juliopolis near the Red River in Canada, after negotiations with Governor Simpson and London. The first Catholic mass in "lower" Oregon was held the following day. The priests were given a building to use as a church within the stockade; the building was also occasionally used for Episcopal services. The priests resided at the fort when not administering to the missions and other Columbia Department posts; in 1842, two additional priests arrived in Oregon Country. Around 1844 the Company offered Father Blanchet a tract of land north of the stockade, and in 1845-46 a new church was built beyond the confines of the stockade.