Fort Vancouver Historic Structures Report

Construction details

a. Dimensions and footings. On the different versions of the Vavasour map of 1845 the site presently known as Building No. 21 is labeled "Indian Trading Store" and "Indian Shop" (see Plates VI-VIII, vol. I). On the two original drawings, the scale indicates that this structure measured eighty by thirty feet. The traced version printed in the Oregon Historical Quarterly gives the dimensions as eighty by thirty-two feet. The inventory of Fort Vancouver structures taken in 1846-47 listed the building as "Indian trade shop," eighty by thirty feet. [75]

Exploratory excavations in 1952 revealed that the area of the Indian shop apparently had been considerably disturbed by post-1860 plowing, grading, and other activities. None of the east and west wall footings could be found, but eight (all but one) of the north wall footings were in place as were six south wall footings, though they were somewhat out of line. The long axes of most of the footings appear to parallel the lines of the walls. Mr. Louis R. Caywood, who supervised the 1952 excavations, interpreted his findings to indicate that the Indian shop measured eighty by thirty-two feet. [76]

The site of Building No. 21 was completely excavated in 1973, but at the time of this writing the final results are not available. Project Archeologist J. J. Hoffman has reported the preliminary findings as follows:

Despite modern destruction of evidence, we have defined lines of wooden footings at the north and west walls; evidence at the south and east walls is ephemeral. Foundation plan of the building appears to [be] 79 ft. long and either 30 or 35 ft. wide. Artifacts found within the building position clearly indicate its function as the Indian Trade Store.

In a later memorandum, Mr. Hoffman stated his belief that the building measured eighty by thirty-five feet. [77]

In view of the almost invariable accuracy of the Vavasour ground plan, architects will wish to study the final excavation drawings, when available, with great care. Meanwhile, Mr. Caywood's estimate of eighty by thirty-two feet, made before the footings were disturbed by his excavations, seems reasonable.

b. General construction. It has been seen that Building No. 21 began to serve as the Indian shop at an undetermined date between mid-1841 and late 1844. Available pictures showing the structure during its Indian shop period range in date from 1845-46 to about 1860 (Plates IX, X, XIV, XV, XVI, XVIII, XX, XXI, XXII, and XXVI, vol. I). Unfortunately these views are not in complete agreement when it comes to such details as the number and placement of doors and windows. But there is unanimity concerning the main profile of the building.

All picture the Indian trading store as a long, low structure with a gable roof. In fact it seems to have been approximately the same height as, or only slightly lower than, the nearby Bachelors' Quarters, and markedly lower in profile than the other principal ware houses. The eave line apparently was lower than the tops of the pickets, although the evidence on this point is conflicting.

If it is assumed that the Indian shop of 1844-60 was the same structure as the so-called "Missionary Store" of the 1841 Emmons plan, a certain amount of additional information becomes available, because the Eld drawing (Plate IV, vol. I) and that attributed to Agate (Plate LIII, vol. I), both depicting Fort Vancouver in 1841, show the roof and west gable very clearly. In those pictures the eave line definitely is below the top of the nearby stockade.

The import of this pictorial evidence is clear. The Indian shop could only have been a one-story structure, almost certainly with a low garret or loft above.

Walls. The lack of satisfactory pictorial evidence is no bar at all to a flat declaration that the Indian trade store was constructed in the usual post-on-sill or Canadian style. The footing pattern alone would prove the point even if there had not been witnesses who testified that the Granary, the Powder Magazine, and the later Kitchen were the only structures not built of squared logs or slabs. [78]

As shown by the footings, there were nine upright posts framing the north and south walls and four in the east and west walls, counting the corner posts in each case. Because the walls were low, these grooved uprights probably were not more than about twelve feet high. Whether the sills they rested upon were raised off the ground evidently has not been revealed by the archeological findings.

The spaces between the uprights were undoubtedly filled with horizontal squared filler logs to a height of about six to seven or even eight feet, at which point particularly large horizontal timbers were fixed in place by being notched or pegged into the uprights. These timbers served as lintels for the doors and windows and sometimes also as supports for the ground floor ceiling beams (which were also the garret floor joists). The height of the lintels above the floor depended on the method of setting the ceiling beams. Sometimes these rested on top of the lintels, often being morticed entirely through the next timber above so that the ends of the tenons were visible from the outside. At other times the ceiling beams were morticed into or through the tops of the lintels or into the tops of the next timbers above the lintels. [79]

Above the lintels the horizontal filler logs continued to the tops of the uprights and to the heavy plates into which the uprights were morticed. This type of construction resulted in a very solid building in which diagonal bracing was seldom required. Occasionally tie beams were run between the intersecting plates at the corners of the walls (see Plate LXXX, vol. I), but diagonal knee braces between plates and uprights or between girts and uprights were almost never employed. Their use in reconstructions to meet present-day building code requirements defeats the entire purpose of historic preservation--to re-create a past scene with absolute fidelity, at least to the extent available knowledge permits.

There is no information available as to whether the timbers for sills, walls, and plates were sawed or axe-hewn. However, an examination of a clear print of the 1860 photograph of the Bachelors' Quarters, which must have been built at about the same time as the Indian shop (assuming the 1841 "Missionary Store" was identical with the later Indian Trade Shop), reveals a remarkable uniformity in the size of most of the infill timbers, leading to the conclusion that they were sawed. Probably the Indian shop had timbers of the same type.

One of the 1841 drawings of Fort Vancouver (Plate LIII, vol. I) distinctly shows that the walls of the gable ends of the "Missionary Store" above the plates were closed in with vertical board siding. This type of gable closure was very widely employed in Hudson's Bay Company construction. Sometimes battens were used to cover the cracks between the boards. [80] Frequently, however, battens were absent (see Plates XIX and XX). Perhaps in such cases tongue and groove siding was occasionally used. In at least one extant Canadian-style, gable-roofed structure, the vertical siding under the gables was nailed directly to the outside of the cross-tie beam and end rafters. [81]

Roof. The 1841 drawings of Fort Vancouver depict the "Mission Store" with a gabled roof of vertical boards capped by ridge boards. Post-1844 views do not permit a determination of the type of roof covering subsequently employed. One frequent visitor to Fort Vancouver later testified that he believed the roofs of all the buildings within the stockade were shingled by 1846. [82] In view of this uncertainty concerning the type of roofing used on the Indian shop during the 1845-46 period, there would seem to be little danger in adding interest to the entire reconstruction project by employing boards to cover this reconstructed building. The method of applying such boards has been described on pages 114-15 in volume I of this report.

This seems to be an opportune place to make a few general remarks about roof construction at Hudson's Bay Company establishments and, in fact, at most fur trading posts manned largely by French Canadians. In 1832 a Yankee missionary wrote a detailed description of the construction technique employed by the American Fur Company at its posts in the present State of Wisconsin. His remarks concerning the roof were as follows:

A post is placed at the center of each end of the building which is continued above the beam [plate] as high as the top of the roof is intended to be. A stick of timber is then laid on the top of these posts reaching from one end of the building to the other, and forms the ridge pole. The roof is then formed by laying one end of timbers on this ridge pole and the other on the plate till the whole is covered. These timbers answer the purpose of boards on the roof of English buildings. [83]

This type of construction, employing a ridgepole and with or without the extension of the center end-wall upright timbers to the ridge line, was used quite often at Hudson's Bay Company posts west of the Rockies. A fine example at Fort St. James during the 1860s is illustrated in Plate XXXV in volume I of this report. A ridgepole would have been a necessity when vertical boards were employed for covering the roof, unless horizontal boards were applied under the vertical ones.

Apparently, however, the more usual construction technique for both gabled and hipped roofs at Company establishments did not require a ridgepole. Each pair of principal rafters formed a truss. The rafters were tenoned to the plate at the foot, and at the peak they were half-lapped and fixed by a wooden peg. Collars, or cross ties, further strengthened the trusses. Trusses seem to have been spaced at about five-foot centers. At least such was the case at Fort Langley. On the surviving warehouse at Fort St. James, however, the rafters are somewhat less than three feet apart on centers, while those on the old granary at Fort Nisqually are spaced at about four-foot centers. Horizontal board sheathing was then spiked to the rafters, seemingly providing the principal longitudinal bracing. [84]

Doors. The Emmons ground plan of 1841 shows only two doors in the "Missionary Store" that then occupied the site now known as Building No. 21 (Plate III, vol. I). They both were in the north wall. If this structure did in fact become the 1845-46-period Indian Trade Shop, the information about the doors is extremely useful, because no other reliable information is known to exist that would indicate the number and locations of the Indian shop doors. Lacking additional data, it would seem safest to follow the Emmons plan in the placement of the doors in the front or north wall of the reconstructed Indian shop.

In addition, there may have been one or two doors in the south wall. As has been seen, during the 1973 archeological excavations the remains of a privy were found behind the Indian shop. A map of the excavations was not available when this report was written, and therefore the exact location of this facility was not known to the writer. Convenient access to the privy from at least the dispensary and living quarters, if there were such, might be expected, though this reasoning does not by any means assure that rear doors actually existed. The locations of the two barriers that, as shall be seen in a later section of this chapter, linked the rear wall of the Indian shop with the south stockade wall might have been related to the positions of both the privy and any possible rear doors, because if these barriers enclosed the privy the only access to it would have been from inside the shop building.

Purely on the basis of reasoning, because it would seem logical to have the door to the Indian trading store proper close to the southeast fort gate, the more westerly of the two north-wall doors probably entered into the Indian shop portion of the building. The other north-wall door perhaps gave entry to the dispensary/ doctor's quarters section.

Undoubtedly the door or doors leading to the Indian shop proper were of heavy plank construction, much like the doors in the other warehouses. They probably were wide, single doors much like that shown in Plate XXI. Security was always a matter of much concern at Company trading shops and warehouses, and the Indian trade store at Fort Vancouver is known to have been broken into at least once. [85]

It is possible, however, that the front door giving access to the Dispensary and doctor's quarters was somewhat more elaborate. It may have been a six-panel door with a light or window over it similar to those in the Bachelors' Quarters (see Plate XXVII, vol. I).

Windows. There is no reliable information available as to the number of windows in the Indian shop building. Three 1850-60 drawings show the north and west walls of this structure, but they are not entirely clear and seem not to be in total agreement. Only that by Sohon in 1854 (Plate XXI, vol. I) and that by Lieutenant Hopkins, ca. 1860 (Plate XXVI, vol. I) are sufficiently distinct to provide useful data.

The Sohon drawing seems to show seven openings (doors and windows) across the front or north face of the Indian store, while the Hopkins sketch appears to show only four. In the west wall Sohon indicates that there were two windows in the gable and two on the ground floor; Hopkins shows one window in the gable and two on the ground floor. It should also be noted that the Eld and Agate sketches of 1841, in both of which the upper portion of the west wall of the "Missionary Store" is visible, show no windows whatever in the gable.

In view of these discrepancies one can only make a logical estimate as to the number and placement of the windows, based on the Sohon drawing, which seems to be the most reliable of those available, and modified on the basis of the probable interior lighting requirements. [86] Purely upon such slender authority, the writer suggests that the window and door openings in the north and end walls be as shown in Figure 1. In the south or rear wall there might be seven windows placed to correspond with the seven openings in the north wall, with one or more doors being substituted for windows if the privy location appears to indicate rear-door access.

Figure 1
Suggested Placement of Door and Window Openings in North and End Walls of Indian Trade Shop.

The windows across the front of the building and those on the east wall, where the living quarters may have been located, probably were double-hung like those on the front of the Bachelors' Quarters Plate (see XXVII, vol. I).

Probably those on the south wall (except possibly those lighting the Dispensary and living quarters) and on the west wall were smaller and side-hung like those in the warehouses generally. These smaller windows most likely would have been protected by solid wooden shutters on the outside and horizontal iron bars on the inside.

It might be opportune at this point to call attention to the fact that the design of Canadian (and perhaps English) double-hung windows in the early nineteenth century differed somewhat from that employed in the United States today, particularly as regards the meeting rail. The construction of a typical Hudson's Bay Company window of the 1840s is a much too technical subject to be treated in this historical data report. (It is suggested that architects concerned with the reconstruction project at Fort Vancouver consult the following two drawings prepared by the Canadian Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Technical Services Branch: (1) Restoration Fraser House, Lower Fort Garry National Historic Park, Drawing No. 8, Main Floor Window Details; and (2) Restoration for Blacksmith's Shop, Lower Fort Garry National Historic Park, Drawing No. 3, Window and Door Details).

Despite the great length of the garret, there should be no windows on that floor other than the two at each end.

Exterior finish. Apparently there is no direct evidence concerning the exterior appearance of the Indian Trade Shop. Based upon what is known of the other warehouses, however, it is fairly safe to assume that the outside surface was unpainted and without weatherboarding. But on the assumption that the Indian shop and the Dispensary would merit somewhat more attention than, say, the New Store, it probably would not be too much in error to follow the pattern shown in the Coode watercolor sketch for the Priests' House and paint the doors, door and window trim, and shutters the prevailing Spanish brown. The window sash, however, including the lights or transoms over the doors, should be white. [87]

It might also be well to repeat here the observation that there evidently was no visible chinking between the horizontal infill timbers at Fort Vancouver, except possibly where large gaps developed due to shrinking. A close examination of an enlarged photograph of the New Store (Plate XIV) and of the photograph of the Bachelors' Quarters (Plate XXVII and the original, untrimmed print of Plate XXIX, vol. I) reveal no, or few, signs of chinking, at least to the eyes of this writer.

And should there be a temptation to make the exterior trim too finished and neat, the description of a typical Hudson's Bay Company Indian Trade Shop during the 1840s given by Robert Ballantyne might be kept in mind."The trading-store, " he wrote,

is always recognisable, if natives are in the neighbourhood, by the bevy of red men that cluster round it, awaiting the coming of the store keeper. . . . It may be further recognised, by a close observer, by the soiled condition of its walls occasioned by loungers rubbing their backs perpetually against it, and the peculiar dinginess round the keyhole, caused by frequent applications of the key, which renders it conspicuous beyond all its comrades. [88]

c. Interior finish and arrangement. As with most Fort Vancouver structures, there is no known record of the number of rooms in the Indian shop or of their arrangement. The reasoning behind a speculation that the western portion of the building might have been devoted to the Indian shop proper while the eastern might have been occupied by the dispensary/hospital and doctor's quarters has already been discussed.

Half of the building, with the entire garret, would seem to be an ample allocation of space for the Indian shop, for a stockroom, and for a fur loft. The Indian shop at Fort William in 1816, when that post was an important station of the North West Company, does not appear to have measured more than about twenty-eight by thirty-five feet. [89] Visitors during the 1830s sometimes spoke of the "Indian Hall" at Fort Vancouver. Such a room, for the accommodation of natives while they were waiting to trade or visit, was a customary feature at Company posts. After the Indian shop was moved to the site now known as Building No. 21, however, there seems to be no further mention of such a hall, at least within the pickets, and perhaps it was no longer needed. If so, the space requirements of the Indian trade would have been reduced.

On the other hand, the eastern half of the building, an area of about forty by thirty-two feet, would seem rather small by present-day standards for the apothecary shop, or Dispensary, part of which seems also to have been used as a hospital and for the doctor's living quarters. But at fur trading posts during the nineteenth century expectations were not so high. When Dr. John Sebastian Helmcken reported for duty at Fort Victoria in 1850 he was shown to the "surgery," a room in the dwelling known as "Bachelor's Hall." The apartment, he later recalled, was unique: "It contained a gun case and a few shelves, with drugs in bottles or in a paper in every direction. The tin lining of a 'packing case' served for a counter; there was a cot slung to the ceiling; to this room I was consigned." [90]

Until the report on the archeological excavations of the Indian shop site is available there is little point in speculating on the arrangement of rooms. Evidence of chimney and fireplace foundations will go far toward indicating the locations of apartments used as living quarters, because it would appear from traces of bricks already uncovered that the Indian shop was one warehouse in which the ban against stoves and other means of heating did not apply.

Nevertheless, a very tentative suggested plan for the ground floor is presented in Figure 2. Doors could be substituted for one or two of the windows in the south wall if no other access to the privy is available due to barriers.

Figure 2
Hypothetical Plan, Ground Floor, Indian Trade Shop.
Scale: 1/2" = 10'

Before going into detail concerning the several rooms in the Indian shop building, a few general remarks concerning interior finish seem to be in order. As with the other warehouses, the ground-level floors probably were of tongued and grooved planks, from two to three inches thick. Most likely even those in the doctor's quarters were not planed. The inventory of 1846-47 does not mention this building as being lined and ceiled, but trade shops, fur stores, and living quarters were generally at least lined. Very probably, then, the walls throughout were lined with vertical boards. The ceilings almost certainly were not lined, except perhaps in the Dispensary and living quarters. On much of the ground floor, therefore, the ceiling beams would have been exposed, with the floorboards of the attic forming the ceiling. The garret floor probably was formed of two-inch tongued and grooved boards. There was no ceiling in the garret except the roof.

Interior doors in the trade shop area probably were of solid planks, beaded at the vertical joints. In the Dispensary half of the building the doors may have been paneled. The stairs to the garret must have been much like those shown in Plate XCIII, volume I.

It is almost certain that the interior of this building was not painted, even in the living quarters.

Indian shop. No specific description of the Fort Vancouver Indian shop proper is known to exist. From accounts of the trade stores at other posts, however, a general picture can be assembled that must fairly well reflect the situation at the Columbia depot.

At Fort Garry during the 1840s the counter enclosed a space just wide enough to admit a dozen men. [91] In most Indian shops drawers under the counter contained the smaller articles of trade goods, while larger items were piled on shelves around the walls. These shelves often contained small or medium-sized compartments or divisions for articles of small or in-between sizes. [92] Pots and other difficult-to-store items frequently hung from nails in the walls and ceiling beams.

In short, the Indian shops at posts where the natives presented no threat were much like the regular trade shops that have been described in detail in Chapter XI in volume I of this report. A typical Company Indian store of the 1840s is illustrated in Plate XXII. The restored general trade store at Lower Fort Garry National Historic Park, shown in Plate XXIII, has many features that might have been found in an Indian shop of the 1840s. Plates XCVI and XCVII in volume I illustrate well the types of shelving in Company shops.

Stockroom. Possibly there was a separate room behind the shop proper for the storage of that part of the annual Fort Vancouver Fur Trade outfit that could not be displayed in the shop or shipped out to the shop's subsidiary posts. Perhaps this room looked something like the one pictured in Plates XXIV and XXV, although the goods shown in for trade with the those photographs are not all of the types used natives.

Fur loft. No record has been found to indicate how long the Indian shop retained the furs it traded before turning them in to the depot Fur Store. But, as has been seen, it is probable that the returns were allowed to collect for some time where they were first received from the natives. Storage methods and treatment undoubtedly were the same as in the main Fur Store, and the furs could have been kept both on the ground floor and in the garret. Plates XXVI and XXVII provide further illustrations of the methods used by the Company for storing furs, and incidentally, they furnish excellent views of the type of garret and roof construction that may have been employed in the Fort Vancouver Indian Trade Shop.

Dispensary. As with every other portion of the Indian shop building, the historical record provides no information at all concerning the size, location, or appearance of the Dispensary (apothecary) shop that very probably was situated in that structure. Even the use of a portion of the 1845-46 Dispensary as a hospital for the Company's "gentlemen" and important outsiders is hypothetical. But because it is known that the doctor occasionally treated and examined the wives of Company employees, missionaries, and settlers, it would seem logical to assume that he had a separate room or office where such consultations could be conducted with some degree of privacy. Also, such a separate room would permit medicines to be dispensed without the necessity of disturbing any patients who might happen to be in the main Dispensary. From the inventories of articles in use in the Dispensary, it would appear that surgery--a not infrequent necessity--was performed in that apartment.

At any rate, all that is known about the size, appearance, and interior finish of any Dispensary at Fort Vancouver is in the description of "Apothecary's Hall" entered by Dr. William F. Tolmie in his journal soon after his arrival at the depot in 1833. As has been seen, this room was not then located in the Indian shop.

Nevertheless Tolmie's words provide much useful information concerning the arrangement of a dispensary at one of the Company's posts:

Our apartment is 13 paces long by 7 broad and extends in E. and W. direction, the roof about 20 feet from floor supported by two rafters and 2 transverse beams. In front is the door and a pretty large window--posteriorly--a window and back door one on each side and in the middle a large fire place, without any grate, built of stone and lime. The walls are formed of rough, strong horizontal deals attached at their extremities to perpendicular ones.

Against the northern wall are placed our bedsteads, between them a large chest and in front a small medicine shelf. Strong shelves of unplaned deal occupy two posterior thirds of south wall and contain the greater part of medicines. Anteriorly there is a small heater and a painted shelf on which have today placed small quantities of medicines most frequently in use. [93]

The deals composing floor are in some places two and three inches distant from each other, thus leaving wide apertures. This is also true of the deals in the walls and the chinks are numerous; by those to N. can look into school room. The house to S. is unoccupied at present. Shall close all apertures with brown paper pasted, or leather. The partition is to extend from the foot of my bed to extremity of large shelves on left and the abutment [apartment] in front to be the surgery. The posterior [is] our bed room and I expect we shall have it busy soon [very snug].

Our attendant is a Sandwich Island boy named Namahama. He is slow in his motion as a sloth, but quiet and docile and will improve. Keep up a blazing pine fire usually; our only fire iron is a pole about 5 feet long with six inches of iron rod fitted to its extremity and is a good apology for a poker. Filled some 8 or 10 quart [corked] vials [phials] with few tinctures on hand and arranged them on front shelf. There is an excellent supply of surgical instruments for amputation, 2 trephinning, 2 eye instruments, a lithotomy, a capping [cupping] case, beside[s] 2 midwifery forceps and a multitude of catheters, sounds, bandages [flexible & silver bougies], probangs, 2 [tooth] forceps, etc., not [yet] put in order. [94]

Doctor's living quarters. There is no certainty that the depot surgeon and his family lived in the Indian shop building, but such has here been tentatively assumed for planning purposes.

As the quotation from Dr. Tolmie's journal makes abundantly clear, the surgeon at Fort Vancouver was accorded no special privileges as far as living accommodations were concerned. He could expect no more and no less than his fellow clerks.

The rooms of the subordinate officers and clerks are described in as much detail as the historical record affords in Chapter IV of this report, and this information is not duplicated here. Suffice it to say that the floors were probably rough boards, and the walls almost surely were lined with unpainted vertical or horizontal fir boards. The ceiling probably was covered with the same material. When analysis of the archeological findings has been completed it may be possible to say whether the quarters were heated by a fireplace, by stoves, or by both.

d. Connections with the stockade. One version of the Vavasour ground plan of 1845 (Plate VII, vol. I) depicts a line connecting the southwest corner of the Indian shop with the south palisade wall. This same line shows on the "Line of Fire" map of 1844 together with a similar linkage located to the east about two-thirds of the distance along the south side of the Indian shop (Plate V, vol. I). These lines probably indicate barriers, palisades, or fences of some type intended to protect the Indian shop from thieves. Thus far archeological excavations have not produced any trace of these barriers.