Trade House - Clerk's Office

Shipping boxes waiting to be inventoried stacked in the Clerk's Office.

NPS Photo / Emily Sunblade

Quick Facts

Amenities

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Benches/Seating, Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits

The Clerks Office often served as a meeting place for the Bourgeois and important American Indian leaders. In October 1851, Bourgeois Edwin Denig and Cree Chief Le Tout Pique met, and Fort Union clerk Rudolph Friederich Kurz sketched the event. The sketch shows Le Tout Pique standing in the center with his arm outstretched, while Edwin Denig remains seated in his armchair.

Such meetings were significant events between the tribes and traders. They established the value of hides and trade goods and helped create lasting alliances and friendships. The exchange of gifts and news over a fine meal, coffee, and tobacco preceded discussions of trade and prices and often took several hours. These gatherings were as much a social affair as they were a business, and their success allowed Fort Union to operate peacefully for 39 years, from 1828 to 1867.

Kurz's sketches of Fort Union life offer a glimpse into the past and were instrumental in the fort's reproduction. The furnishings of the room in the sketch of the meeting with Le Tout Pique serve as the basis for the room's actual furnishings. The paintings on display in the room are replicas of Kurz's works. Edwin Denig himself is depicted in the portrait on the east wall, and Denig's dog, Natoh, is seen in the sketch of the October meeting on the south wall.

Despite the lack of modern technology, such as computers and electricity, the Clerk's Office functioned much like a typical office today. The fur company clerks compiled handwritten ledgers in which they tracked inventories, logged expenses, and balanced accounts. This was necessary to keep the fort running and profitable. The clerks had to be literate and able to do arithmetic. They were also required to have a good understanding of the different trade goods and their sources. Every spring, keelboats and steamboats arrived carrying trade goods from around the world. The clerks' job was to inspect every item and ensure they were in good condition. They also tracked the stock of goods in the fort's warehouse and were responsible for placing orders for future deliveries.

Since new supplies from St. Louis took a year or more to arrive, the fort could not afford to run out. If supplies ran out, tribal trading partners would go to American competitors nearby or Canada's Hudson Bay Company. The clerks were paid quite well for the time, making between $800 to $1,000 per year, the equivalent of $25,000 to $30,100 today. They also received a suit of clothes and a top hat annually as part of their pay. Single-room living quarters were provided in the dwelling range on the west side of the fort's interior. The clerks took their meals at the high table in the Bourgeois House, rather than at the low table with the Engagés or other lower status workers. The Bourgeois House was a place of luxury and comfort, furnished with the finest china, silverware, and linens. The Trade House was a place of great importance, where the past and present intersected, and where the future of the fort was decided.

Learn More: 
Watch an interpretive clerks office talk

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Transcript

Hello, and welcome to Fort Union. Welcome to the second most important room in the entire fort. This is the clerk's office. This is where all of the company paperwork would have been done in the historic period. And it is a very special room for another reason, because it is one of the few rooms that we have an actual sketch of the inside. So Rudolf Friedrich Kurz, in 1851, does a sketch of this room. A meeting between Mr. Edwin Denig and Le Tout Pique is recorded in that sketch, as well as all of the items that are inside this room decorating it. From our painting of Mr. Denig, to our beaded bag, all the way up to our trade standard and deer head up above the fireplace, all of these items are noted inside this sketch. And sketches are very powerful because not only do they have the same ability as lists to tell us what is inside somewhere, they also tell us exactly where those things are and how they are hanging up. So this is, by far and away, our most accurate room inside our Fort's reconstruction. Not to say the others aren't accurate, just to say that this one, we know for sure this is what it would have looked like on this day in 1851. What is going on in this room in the day-to-day time frame is not actually meetings, it's actually a space for the clerks of the company to work on the company books, to work on records for the company, and to send letters up and down this river. So when you imagine communication in the 1850s, you've got to imagine they don't have phones, they don't have email. The only way to communicate over a long distance is sending someone with a really good memory, going there yourself, or you've got to send a letter. So because literacy, and particularly good literacy, is a sought after skill in this time frame, being a clerk is every bit as respectable as being someone like a blacksmith. And it's every bit as detailed. You've got to be able to read, you've got to be able to write, and you've got to be able to cipher. And ciphering is your basic accounting techniques-- your addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, and some other banking techniques, things of that nature. Because this is such an involved skill set, it's going to command $600 to $700 a year, somewhere in that neighborhood. And these Fort clerks are going to be elevated up to a fairly high status. They are going to eat at the high table inside the Bourgeois House, along with the traders and some of your other skilled craftsmen. And they are going to be the ones who are actually going to go out and do the Bourgeois' will. So if the Bourgeois wants a area near the Fort cleared for firewood, then they are going to be the ones to actually take those parties out to that area and clear it for firewood. So they are managing the young engages. They're managing the payroll. They're managing everything that's coming up here. And that is what makes this room the nerve center of the Fort. And if the trade house is the heart of the Fort, then this room much very much so is the brain.

Duration:

2 minutes, 59 seconds

Learn how the Clerks Office functioned as the brain of Fort Union Trading Post.