Fort Vancouver Historic Structures Report

Furnishings

Indian Trade Shop proper. As was the case with the general depot trade shop, the "furnishings" of the Indian store consisted largely of the trade goods stocked there and of the returns taken in barter. Fortunately, available inventories provide a reasonably adequate picture of the goods offered, the products received, and the equipment required for the operation of the shop.

Before presenting the detailed lists, however, a few general remarks may be useful. The goods offered were, on the whole, of the same quality and types as those sold to employees and settlers, except that the range or variety of items was more limited. There were many articles of European civilization for which the natives had little use. On the other hand, the Indians were excellent judges of quality, and once they accepted a certain brand or pattern they demanded it year after year.

Robert Ballantyne has left an excellent description of a Company Indian shop during the 1840s:

It contained every imaginable commodity likely to be needed by Indians. On various shelves were piled bales of cloth of all colours, capotes, blankets, caps, &c.; and in smaller divisions were placed files, scalping-knives, gun-screws, flints, balls of twine, fire-steels, canoe-awls, and glass beads of all colours, sizes, and descriptions. Drawers in the counter contained needles, pins, scissors, thimbles, fish-hooks, and vermilion for painting canoes and faces. The floor was strewn with a variety of copper and tin kettles, from half-a-pint to a gallon; and on a stand in the furthest corner of the room stood about a dozen trading guns, and beside them a keg of powder and a box of shot. [95]

In another description of a Company trade shop, Ballantyne mentioned tobacco as being sold from "a coil of most appalling size and thickness, which looked like a snake of endless length." [96] Undoubtedly the Fort Vancouver Indian shop contained a similar roll. A visitor to the "shop" at Fort Simpson in 1868 noted that this place where the skins were bartered and goods delivered in exchange presented a curious jumble of all kinds of articles; there were even Indian weapons, knives, muskets, hunting and fishing gear which served . . . as pledges in respect of deals not yet completed." [97]

The inventories of goods on hand and "articles in use" in the Fort Vancouver Indian Trade have one major drawback when considered as guides for refurnishing the Indian shop: they include items at the Umpqua post and Fort George as well as the "Fort Vancouver Indian Trading Shop." This fact is not of great significance when it comes to the trade goods, because what is needed is a good account of the types of items carried in stock. The inventories are not satisfactory indicators of quantities of items in any case, because they only show the amounts remaining on hand when the count was made. Apparently there are no available records that show the full stock at the beginning of each outfit.

When it comes to the equipment employed to operate the Indian shop, the inventories of "articles in use" are of little utility. Both the Umpqua post and Fort George, as operating establishments, required tools, eating utensils, agricultural implements, and many other items for which the Fort Vancouver Indian shop had no need. To identify those articles that might have been used in the Indian shop at the depot is virtually impossible. Therefore, no attempt is made here to reproduce the annual lists of "articles in use" in the Fort Vancouver Indian Trade. Suffice it to say that of the many items listed, an axe or two, a common trading gun, a hammer, one "hand Steelyard," and a few beaver traps perhaps would have been "in use" in the Fort Vancouver Indian shop. [98] The account books that would have been employed in this same shop have been described earlier in this chapter.

As for the trade goods, the following inventories will provide an excellent view:

Inventory of Sundry Goods, property of the Honble. Hudsons Bay Company, remaining on hand at the Umpaqua [sic], F. George & F. Vancouver Indian trading Shop

Inventory of Sundry Goods, property of the Honble Hudsons Bay Company, remaining on hand at the Umpqua, Fort George and F. Vancouver Indian Trading Shop, forming the Fort Vancouver Indian Trade, Spring 1845

An earlier inventory of country-made articles and country produce perhaps gives a better picture of the diverse items that from time to time might have been received in barter or traded to natives in the several shops of the Fort Vancouver Indian Trade The following list is from the "Columbia District, Country Produce & Country Made Articles Inventories Outfit 1840/41":

Fort Vancouver Indian Trade

Fur loft. A list of the types and numbers of skins taken in at the Fort Vancouver Indian Trade Shop for Outfits 1844 to 1846 has been given earlier in this chapter. That information, together with Plates XXVI and XXVII, should provide sufficient guidance for the organization of a fur exhibit in the restored structure.

Apothecary shop or Dispensary. Fortunately, detailed inventories are available not only for the equipment of the Dispensary but for the medicines and "surgical apparatus " carried in stock at the depot for sale or for use at other posts in the Columbia District. Although it is obvious from Dr. Tolmie's journal of 1833, already quoted, that a sizeable quantity of medicine was kept on hand in the Dispensary, it is not certain that the entire depot stock was stored there. Also, the inventories show that a certain number of medicines were carried on the accounts of the depot Sale Shop, but whether they were physically stocked there is not apparent.

Because the depot surgeon was responsible for making up the packets of medicines that were sent out annually to the various posts, and because presumably sales of medicines by the Sale Shop were made under his general supervision, it is not impossible that the combined stocks of medical supplies were actually kept in the Dispensary where the doctor could get at them with minimum distraction from his duties as Indian trader. Such an assumption is purely hypothetical, however, and in furnishing the reconstructed Indian shop it perhaps would be best to display merely a generous representative sampling of the inventoried medicines and apparatus, distributed between the Dispensary proper and the doctor's office.

Inventories are also available for the "Hospital" at the depot. Almost certainly these lists refer to the hospital that was outside the fort stockade near the bank of the Columbia River. Because the Dispensary inventories do not include such items as beds, blankets, bedpans, dishes, glasses, and other articles that might be expected where patients are hospitalized, two conclusions are possible. Either no bed patients were housed in the Dispensary, or the hospital inventories included certain items that were physically located in the Dispensary.

As has been seen, the assumption that persons of a certain rank or class were hospitalized in the Dispensary is quite speculative, yet it is logical. And there is some historical evidence that points in that direction. In 1844, when the captain of the Belgian bark L'Indefatigable was forced to remain at Vancouver for nearly seven weeks because of "dysentery and other diseases," it is recorded that he remained "in the Fort during his illness." [104] Such would not have been said if he had been confined in the hospital. Also, there may be some evidence to support the view that the hospital inventory included some articles physically situated in the Dispensary. The inventory made in the spring of 1848 p laced items in both "Dispensary & Hospital" in a single list. [105] At any rate, for what it is worth, one of the hospital inventories is included below.

The following are representative inventories and requisitions (orders to London) pertaining to the "Medical Department." They are not always exact copies of the originals in the Hudson's Bay Company Archives, because prices have been omitted and occasional ditto marks have been replaced by complete words. But amounts and items are complete as far as the records were legible, and no corrections have been made in spelling except as indicated by a few notations in brackets.

The lists are arranged in the following order: inventories of articles in use in the Dispensary, requisitions of medical supplies, inventories of medicines and medical apparatus remaining on hand at the end of outfit, and a hospital inventory. From an examination of several lists in each category, it seems that the following provide an adequate sampling:

Inventory of Sundry Goods . . . remaining on hand at Fort Vancouver depot.
Spring 1844

In addition to its quite ample stocks of medicines and medical apparatus, the Company also kept on hand at Fort Vancouver a small reference collection of medical books. Although these were generally inventoried as part of the fort library, it seems reasonable to believe that they may have been physically housed in the Dispensary where they would have been available for ready reference.

An inventory of property at the North West Company's western depot at Fort George in the spring of 1821 listed the following medical books:

1 Edinburgh Dispensatory
2 Murray's Elements of Chemistry
1 Harper's Medical Dictionary
2 Cullen's Practical Physic
1 Cooper Dictionary of Surgery
1 Hamilton's Midwifery
1 Hamilton on Female Complaints
2 Murray's Pharmacy
1 Ruberand's Physiology
1 Reid on the Mind
1 Saunders on the Liver
1 Arbuthnot on Air
1 Cullen's Nosology
1 Hooper's Vade Mecum Physician
2 Pharm. Chirurgica
1 Translation Titus Lucretius Corns (Cornelius)
1 Botany
1 Huxham on Fevers
1 Modern Practice of Physic (Thomas)
1 Hunter on Venereal
1 Sharp's Surgery do [112]

A second inventory, taken in the fall of that year, included the works listed above and also the following titles that represent either additions or more complete descriptions of works already noted:

Murray's System Materia Medica and Pharmacy
Hamilton's Botany
Buchan's Medicine
Hooper's Medical Dictionary
Smith's Botany [113]

The inventoried items were transferred to the Hudson's Bay Company after the North West Company merged with the former firm in 1821. Presumably the medical books were moved with the other Fort George property to Fort Vancouver during the first half of 1825.

What apparently are some of the same books appear in the inventory of the Fort Vancouver library made in the spring of 1844. The medical titles on that list are the following:

1 Thomas on Physic
1 Medical Dictionary
1 Huxtrain on fevers
1 Sharps Surgery
1 Materia Medica
1 Thomas practice on Physic
1 Dispensatory
2 Vols. Cattle Doctors [114]

In addition to these works belonging to the Company, it is probable that the depot surgeon had a small collection of medical books of his own that would have been housed in his office or living quarters. Nothing is known about Dr. Barclay's personal library, but there is a fairly good record of the books owned by his immediate predecessor at Fort Vancouver--Dr. William F. Tolmie. The latter's collection perhaps reflects the reference material a physician would have been likely to have had at hand on such a distant frontier.

Among Dr. Tolmie's books now preserved at McLoughlin House National Historic Site in Oregon City are the following medical works published prior to 1845:

Elements of Pathology and Practice of Physic, by John Mackintosh, M. D. 2nd ed. 2 vols. London: Longman Rees, Orme, Brown & Green; Edinburgh: John Carfrae & Son, 1831.

Principles and Practice of Midwifery, by James Blundell, M. D., carefully revised and corrected by Alexander Cooper Lee and Nathaniel Rogers, M. D. London: Joseph Butler, 1840.

Human Physiology, by John Elliotson, M. D. 5th ed. London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1840.

A System of Operative Surgery--etc., by William Hargrave, A. M. Dublin: Hodges and Smith, 1831.

The Retrospect of Medicine and Surgery. Edited by W. Braithwaite; a half-yearly journal. No. 4 (July to December, 1841); No. 5 (January to June, 1842). 2 vols. London: Simpkins, Marshall and Co.; Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd; Leeds: G. Cullingworth.

A Manual of Chemistry; containing the Principal Facts of the Science, arranged in the order in which they are discussed, etc., by William Thomas Brande. 2nd ed. 3 vols. London: John Murray, 1821.

Lexicon Medicum, or Medical Dictionary, by Robert Hooper. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown & Green, 1831.

A Dispensatory, or Commentary on the Pharmacopoeias of Great Britain, comprising The Natural History, Description, Chemistry, Pharmacy, Actions, Uses, and Doses of the Articles of Materia Medica, by Robert Christison, M. D. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black; London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1842.

Digestion and Diet, by Andrew Combe, M. D. 3rd ed. Edinburgh: MacLachlan, Stewart & Co.; London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1841.

Ruling Passions of the Mind: Translated from the original work of J. C. Layater, by T. LeMessmeier. 20th ed. London: Thomas Tegg; Glasgow: R. Griffin and Co., 1844.

Lectures on Anatomy, Surgery, and Pathology; including Observations on the Nature and Treatment of Local Diseases, by John Abernethy. 2nd ed. London: F. C. Westley, 1831.

The Anatomist's Vade-Mecum: A system of Human Anatomy, by W. J. Erastmus Wilson. London: John Churchill, 1840.

Neurhypnology; or the Rationale of Nervous Sleep, considered in relation with Animal Magnetism, by James Braid. London: John Churchill; Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black, 1843.

A Dictionary of Practical Surgery, etc., by Samuel Cooper. 7th ed. London: Longman, Orme & Co., 1838. [115]

In addition, Tolmie is known to have ordered the following medical books from London prior to 1845:

The Cyclopedia of Practical Medicine, edited by John Forbes, M. D., Alexander Tweedie, M. D., an d John Conolly, M. D. Tolmie ordered this book in 1836 and requested that it be "In the most compact form & to be full bound."

Johnson's Medico Chir. Review. From the first number published in 1836 up to the latest one issued before the departure of the Company's ship for the Columbia in 1837.

Martinet's Therapeutics.

The Principles of Physiology Applied to the Preservation of Health and to the Improvement of Physical and Mental Education, by A. Combe, M. D. The latest edition, half-bound. Ordered December 1838. [116]

Doctor's quarters. The rooms in which Dr. Barclay and his family resided were probably, at least in 1845-46, furnished in about the same manner as those of the other clerks at Fort Vancouver. Having been brought up in a cultivated and reasonably well-to-do household, he undoubtedly desired better furnishings than the battered deal tables, wooden "sofas," and bunk beds provided at the depot, but it seems doubtful that he would have imported more comfortable and fashionable furniture until he had decided upon the direction of his career. If he remained with the Company he would always be subject to sudden transfer, and as a clerk he could not have expected to take any considerable amount of household goods with him. Probably only after he had decided to retire, which he did in 1850, did he begin to accumulate imported furniture for a more permanent home.

Nevertheless, because of his background, his quarters might have displayed a few more of the amenities of civilization than the rooms of the young bachelor clerks. There may, for instance, have been a tea service, a lamp, brass candlesticks, an d perhaps a family portrait or two. Dr. Barclay did have an appreciation of art, because in 1847 and 1848 he commissioned several paintings from John Mix Stanley. [117]

The furnishings customarily allotted to the clerks at Fort Vancouver will be treated in detail in Chapter IV of this volume. Thus it is not necessary to go into the matter here other than to note that for the 1845-46 period proposed for the reconstruction, the furnishings should be appropriate for a family consisting of one mature, educated male; a frontier-raised wife scarcely more than 19 years of age; and an infant son (born December 13, 1845).

Closets and wardrobes were probably absent from the surgeon's quarters. Yet, if Dr. Barclay was like his predecessor, he possessed a fairly elaborate outfit of clothing; and Mrs. Barclay is known to have had at least several fashionable gowns. Probably most of these clothes were kept packed away in cassettes and trunks--Chinese chests are known to have been imported to Vancouver from the Hawaiian Islands as early as 1830. [118] But, as shall be seen in the discussion of the Bachelors' Quarters, very commonly at Company posts the larger articles of clothing simply hung from pegs on the walls of the bedrooms.

It is of interest, therefore, to know what articles of clothing might thus have been kept in "visible storage." As with the books, nothing is known of Dr. Barclay's sartorial tastes, but some information is available concerning Dr. Tolmie's wardrobe. On November 3, 1838, Tolmie ordered the following articles from London on his own account, because he had found it "more economical to get supplies from home than here":

1 Surtout dark claret col: plain col: with spare velvet one--stout silk facings
1 Blk Cloth Vest rolling Collar
I pr dark grey trousers
2 light Vests rolling collars
6 pr Cotton Drawers--elastic
6 fine woollen Shirts--elastic
6 cotton Shirts 3 Pattern 3 Blue Stripe
2 pr Hickson tanned Gloves
I pr Dundee Kid Gloves
I black silk Stock
I black silk Neck Cloth large
6 prs stout worsted stockings knit expressly
6 prs Socks Do
1 Silk Umbrella
1 tailors measuring Tape
3 pr stout winter shoes iron heeled double soled
1 pr Summer [Do]
1 pr Adelaide Boots
1 Blk oiled silk Cap [119]

As for Maria Barclay's wardrobe, several dresses described as being from her trousseau of 1842 are preserved at the McLoughlin House National Historic Site in Oregon City. [120]