A Report on the Second Season's
Excavations at Waiilatpu
1948 Report, Part 5:
Fort Waters & Conclusions
THOMAS R. GARTH
Published in
Oregon Historical Quarterly June, 1948.
Volume XLIX, Number 2, pages 117-136.
|
|
|
|
Table of Contents 1948 Report
FORT WATERS
We encountered abundant evidence of Fort Waters
built in 1848 out of the ruins of the Mission House. As stated previously,
most of our evidence of Fort Waters starts on the floor 3A level
(see Figure 1: soil
cross-section). Frequently its features modified or obliterated
portions of the old Mission House. Several of the soldiers who participated
in the 1848 campaign give us brief accounts of their fortifying
operations as follows:
S. A. Holcomb: ". . . we went up the Walla Walla
River to this Whitman
Mission station.... Then we built a fort of rails gathered from
the farms
set on end and surrounded by trenches.... Then we scoured the
country round looking for property of the Mission, and stock taken
from it.... We got back to the fort we had built, which we called
Fort
Waters, and rested a while."
N. G. McDonald: "I was shot thru the right lung.
. . . I was taken from
that place to Dr. Whitman's Mission building on a litter."
Alonzo A. Phillips: "On ariving there [Waiilatpu]
the first thing was to
gather the adobes from the ruins of the Mission building and make
a
fort, by building walls and filling in with earth. This fort we
called Fort Watters."
Alvan C. Brown: "We arranged a kind of fort
and a hospital for the
wounded and some sick with measles."
W. W. Walter: we tore down the Mission buildings
and built a small
fort of the sun-dried bricks which had formed the walls of the
Mission.
We also built a stockade for the horses."44
The Fort's most salient feature consists of a
series of trenches which must originally have supported stockade
posts forming an enclosure a hundred feet or so on a side. No doubt
these are the trenches referred to in the accounts above. The charred
remains of some of the stockade posts were found in the trench which
ran along the west side of the Mission House. What was apparently
the west entrance to the Fort occurs about in the same location
as the front door of the Mission House. It is flanked on the south
by a secondary adobe wall placed 2 feet outside the wall of the
house, with a stockade trench running between. To the north of the
doorway is a rectangular excavation 2 feet deep by 4 feet wide and
9 feet long with an exceptionally hard-packed floor. This was probably
a bunker with logged up sides used possibly as a sentry post. There
was evidence of rotted logs running the long way of the bunker.
Eight feet farther north another secondary adobe wall had been built
by the Volunteers parallel to the long axis of the bunker. Just
beyond is what may be a gun emplacement. A rectangular area 6 feet
long by 4 wide had been leveled off, one side having been cut 6
inches below the surface to make it level with the other side, where
two heavy stakes had been driven. The Volunteers may have placed
a small howitzer here, the ground being leveled for this purpose.
A short distance to the north were two post holes indicating heavy
posts, also parallel to the bunker. Still farther on, a stockade
trench takes off in a northwesterly direction at about a 45-degree
angle to both the bunker and the house. We excavated only the first
10 feet of this trench. It may ultimately have joined the mission
irrigation ditch.
A 30-inch-wide opening had been cut through the
adobe wall of the house nearly opposite the gun emplacement. This
may have been an auxiliary doorway. From here across the house and
through the partition wall between the kitchen and pantry is what
seems to be a pathway. It probably started near an excavated area
through the pantry wall where there is an indication of another
entrance. In two of the window areas along the west wall large posts
had been planted to block off the openings. From the northeast corner
of the Indian Room (D) (see Figure
3: Main House floor plan), another stockade trench runs 19 feet
toward the east, where it comes within 3 feet of another rectangular
excavation. This may originally have been intended for a bunker,
but it was never completely excavated at its center. Apparently
it was filled in after the digging had been three-quarters finished.
Perhaps there was a change in plans or a confusion regarding the
initial order to dig. Such occurrences would not be unexpected in
a volunteer army of some 400 or more raw recruits. At the bottom
of the pit was a hard rubber button with the inscription, "Goodyear
P-N-T.45 It seems
likely that the large mission irrigation ditch, which ran about
30 feet north of the building, was incorporated into the trenching
system and stockade. However, considerably more excavating has to
be done before we can determine the full size and location of the
stockade. It must have enclosed a fairly large area, as it had to
be large enough to accommodate wagons, baggage, and riding animals,
as well as some cattle captured from the Indians.
The north adobe wall from the pantry (F) to the
east end of the cellar (H) must have fallen down when the building
was first burned. The part forming the north wall of room G fell
out, nearly filling up two Indian house pits which were dug next
to the wall. On the Fort Waters level (floor 3A) there was a heavy
deposit of ash along this wall line with numerous pieces of charred
and uncharred cottonwood bark lying the long way of the wall. It
seems patent that the soldiers must have rebuilt this wall with
cottonwood logs laid horizontally. James Longmire tells of seeing
what was probably the Fort in 1853:
A log house covered with straw, held in place
by poles crosswise
of the roof, stood near the bank of the Walla Walla, and a little
garden and orchards were enclosed near the houses.46
Longmire probably viewed the building from the
north where the log wall was most prominent.
In the Fort Waters ground plan the arrangement
of post holes seems to make no logical pattern. Yet when we remember
that some of the Mission House walls were standing with posts buried
therein, probably at 4-foot intervals, the system of posts added
by the soldiers becomes intelligible. These posts were added primarily
where the adobe walls were damaged or weakened. The most obvious
line of posts added by the soldiers occurs in rooms I and K, which
served as a hen-house and storeroom. The posts here were placed
as close to the adobe wall as possible, sometimes cutting into the
face of the wall slightly. It seems apparent that, though these
walls were standing after the 1848 fire, they contained no wooden
framework. In other words, the missionaries had not deemed it necessary
to bury uprights in this part of the house. It had only a dirt floor,
making a framework for the attachment of floor joists unnecessary.
The soldiers, on the contrary, floored this part of the house and
so found it necessary to add upright posts. They had a wood framework
set just inside the adobe walls.
In room H the soldiers did extensive remodeling.
Apparently the fireplace for this room, if there was one, was beyond
repair, for the soldiers built one of their own out of adobe bricks.
To do this they laid up an 18-inch-wide adobe wall along 9 feet
of the north side of the cellar depression and built their chimney
and fireplace against this wall. On the opposite side of the cellar
they laid up another wall 10 inches wide, the bricks set in mud
mortar. The room was floored with planks, no doubt brought from
Dr. Whitman's sawmill 20 miles away on Mill Creek. There was more
than 25,000 board feet of lumber at the sawmill at the time of the
massacre.47 As the
soldiers had wagons, they must have had lumber in abundance once
the Indians had been driven from the valley. There was no evidence
of another fireplace in the east end of the building, although this
area, too, was floored. The building may well have been completely
ceiled with boards. C. W. Cooke, one of the Volunteers, wrote the
following while at the Fort:
The corn is silking, and our wheat is ripe for
harvest. The boys
are cutting today. I think we will have between two hundred and
three hundred bushels. I find some half dozen commissions among
the wastepapers in the loft....48
His reference to "loft" probably applied to the
attic or upper half-story of the reconverted Mission House, though
another building could have been indicated.
Part of the east wall of room B either had fallen
in 1848 or was removed when the Volunteers dug their cellar. It
is likely that a cottonwood log wall similar to the north wall filled
in the gap, and there was probably a corner post at the southeast
outside corner. However, a large locust tree growing in this area
has obliterated signs of the post hole. In the cellar dug by the
Volunteers under room B were numerous pieces of cottonwood bark
that could well have come from this cottonwood log wall which bordered
it on the east. In the cellar, too, were 1-inch-thick pine planks
which probably represent flooring for room B above as reconstructed
by the Volunteers.
Much of this remodeling must have taken place
during the tenure of the sixty-two men who decided to stay on after
the main body of the army had returned to the coast. It was they
who probably dug the cellar for storage of their crops, and they
could well have been the ones to install windows. Evidence of windows,
especially in the rear half of the building, is abundant. Much of
this glass is of the thin Hudson's Bay Company type, though there
is also some that is thicker and similar to modern single- thickness
glass. The window glass could easily have been obtained from the
Hudson's Bay Company post at Wallula, which was in operation at
this time. From the exceptionally fire-warped and amorphous character
of much of the window glass, it seems likely that the windows were
mostly intact when the building was fired in 1855.49
The installation of glassed windows is a further indication that
the sixty-two Volunteers intended to make a permanent establishment
out of the Fort.50
It might be contended that the flooring of much
of the building, the installation of windows, and the establishment
of an additional fireplace was the work of the three stockmen who
lived in the buildings from about 1852 to 1855. This is hardly logical,
as three men would not need the tremendous amount of space afforded
by the 99-foot-long building. They would, no doubt, have been satisfied
with two or three rooms. The same argument applies to the building
of an additional fireplace. On the other hand, the sixty-two Volunteers
with ample time on their hands and a plentiful supply of lumber,
tools, etc., could easily have accomplished the project. Certainly
they needed the space. We know that they set the gristmill in operation,
and it is highly possible that they also reconstructed the Mansion
House, another adobe building 400 feet east of the Mission House.
The Mansion House ruin has yet to be completely excavated.
Top of Page
Partially because of an appalling lack of information
about the period from 1848 to 1860, the artifacts found on floor
3A are of much more doubtful origin than those found lower down.
A large percentage is, no doubt, mission property which was re-used
by the soldiers or the stockmen who followed. The soldiers of 1848
found books and other mission property scattered about the grounds.
They likewise recovered some $2,000 worth of mission property from
the Indians, although there is nothing in the records to indicate
what this might consist of. They mention having ". . . blacksmith's
anvils and bellows, tools and irons, plows, harrows, and hoes.
. ."51 Most of these things must
have come from the mission ruins. In fact, we found more heavy iron
objects on floor 3A than on floor 4, the mission level. The Volunteers
may even have recovered some of the mission chinaware as missiontype
shards were found in abundance on the 3A level.
The most diagnostic items include several hand-made
tin cans, indicating possibly that some of the army rations were
in tins, several conical powder horn tips probably for use with
a cow's horn, wagon parts, a horn hardy and other blacksmith iron
and tools, many Indian beads, etc. Quantities of charred coffee
beans and corn kernels, as well as some wheat and beans in the rear
half of the Fort on the 3A level, suggest that the stockmen, Bumford,
Brooks, and Noble, may have left the premises in a hurry at the
onset of the second Cayuse war in 1855. They also failed to remove
windows and other property of considerable value. They no doubt
considered it impossible for only a few men to defend the Fort successfully.
Top of Page
We have now completed excavations of three of
the ruins at the old mission site. Only the Mansion House ruin and
the gristmill are not yet completely excavated. The fact that even
in a short 100-year period a building up of ground layers may occur
that has an intrinsic connection with the history of the site is
perhaps one of our most important discoveries. Of course, to interpret
properly the layering involved, an intimate knowledge of the history
of the site is needed. This we are fortunate enough to have. It
is quite possible that such layering may occur in other historic
sites and be an important criterion for comparison with and interpretation
of the history of these sites.
Top of Page
ENDNOTES
44Sworn statements
by various Oregon Volunteers in 1889 to substantiate their claim
for a pension for fighting in the Cayuse war of 1848. 51st Congress,
1st Session, Executive Document No. 6, 1-18.
Back
45Goodyear patented his process for
hardening rubber in 1825.
Back
46J. Longmire, "Narrative of James
Longmire," in Told by the Pioneers, I (1937-38), 129-30.
Back
47Spalding inventory. Richardson, op.
cit., 149.
Back
48Frances F. Victor, Early Indian
Wars of Oregon, Compiled from the Oregon Archives and Other Original
Sources: With Muster Rolls (Salem, Oregon, 1894), 223.
Back
49Window glass from the Mission House
burned in 1848 was not nearly so fire warped. This was probably
because the windows were broken by the Indians, the glass failing
to the floor or ground outside and so escaping the full effect of
the fire. Some of this glass still had putty clinging to it.
Back
50Later it was contemplated locating
a sub-Indian agent at the Fort, where he would have military protection.
Oregon Spectator, August 8, 1850, p. 2.
Back
51Victor, op. cit., 216.
Back
Top of Page
Privacy
& Disclaimer
Webmaster: Renee Rusler
Last modified on:
February 24, 2004
|
