Editing Fort Vancouver (section)

==Fort==

===Description===
[[File:Fort Vancouver dispensary.jpg|thumb|right|Cots in the Douglas Quarters inside the Chief Factor's house]]

An employee of the HBC, wrote a general description of Fort Vancouver and its structural composition as it was in 1843:

<blockquote>The fort is in the shape of a parallelogram, about 250 yards long, by 150 broad; enclosed by a sort of wooden wall, made of pickets, or large beams firmly fixed in the ground, and closely fitted together, twenty feet high, and strongly secured on the inside by buttresses. At each angle there is a bastion, mounting two twelve pounders, and in the centre there some eighteen pounders; ... these cannon have become useless. The area within is divided into two courts, around which are arranged about forty neat, strong wooden buildings, one story high, designed for various purposes...{{sfn|Dunn|1844|pp=143–144}}</blockquote>

The fort was substantial. The [[palisade]]s that protected it were {{cvt|750|ft|m}} long, {{cvt|450|ft|m}} wide and about {{cvt|20|ft|m}} high. Inside, there were 24 buildings, including housing, warehouses, a school, a library, a pharmacy, a chapel, a blacksmith, plus a large manufacturing facility. The Chief Factor's residence in the center of Fort Vancouver was two stories tall. Inside was a dining hall where company clerks, traders, physicians, and others of the gentleman class would dine with the supervising Chief Factor.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.nps.gov/fova/learn/historyculture/chieffactorshouse.htm |title=The Chief Factor's House |access-date=2018-01-04 |archive-date=2018-01-04 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180104132539/https://www.nps.gov/fova/learn/historyculture/chieffactorshouse.htm |url-status=live}}</ref> In general, the entirety of the Chief Factor's House and its meals were typically barred for general laborers and fur trappers.{{sfn|Dunn|1844|p=145}} After dinner the majority of these gentlemen would relocate to the "Bachelor's Hall" to "amuse themselves as they please, either in smoking, reading, or telling and listening to stories of their own and others' curious adventures".{{sfn|Dunn|1844|p=144}} As Dunn recalled;

<blockquote>The smoking room ... presents the appearance of an armory and a museum. All sorts of weapons, and dresses, and curiosities of civilized and savage life, and of the various implements for the prosecution of the [fur] trade, may be seen there.{{sfn|Dunn|1844|p=145}}</blockquote>

Outside the [[Defensive wall|rampart]]s there was additional housing, as well as fields, gardens, fruit orchards, a shipyard, a distillery, a tannery, a sawmill, and a dairy. By 1843, situated roughly 600 yards outside Fort Vancouver were about sixty wooden houses. This small settlement was inhabited by fur trappers, machinists and other laborers of the fort. There they resided with their Indigenous or [[Métis]] wives and families. The dwellings were organized into orderly rows.{{sfn|Dunn|1844|p=147}} The settlement was commonly referred to as [[Kanaka (Pacific Island worker)|Kanaka Village]] because of the many Hawaiians in company employ who lived there. In fact, it has been suggested that the Fort had the "largest single group of Hawaiians ever to congregate outside their home islands".{{sfn|Koppel|1995|p=20}}

===Fur trade operations===
With high demand from Europe for fur-based textiles in the early 19th Century, the HBC was forced to expand its [[North American fur trade|fur trade]] operations across North America to the Pacific Northwest. Prior to the establishment of Fort Vancouver, the HBC's largest westward fort was [[Fort William, Ontario|Fort William]] in present-day [[Ontario]], which the company gained through its merger with the NWC. From its establishment, Fort Vancouver was the regional headquarters of the HBC's fur trade operations in the Columbia District.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.nps.gov/fova/learn/historyculture/furtradefort.htm |title=Founding of the HBC's Fort Vancouver – Fort Vancouver National Historic Site (U.S. National Park Service) |website=www.nps.gov |access-date=6 April 2018 |archive-date=4 January 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180104132542/https://www.nps.gov/fova/learn/historyculture/furtradefort.htm |url-status=live}}</ref> The territory it oversaw stretched from the Rocky Mountains in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and from [[Sitka, Alaska|Sitka]] in the north to [[San Francisco]] in the south. Fur trappers would bring pelts collected during the winter to the fort to be traded in exchange for company credit. The credit, issued by the company clerks, could be used to purchase goods in the fort's trade shops. Furs from throughout the Columbia District were brought to Fort Vancouver from smaller HBC outposts either overland, or by water via the [[Columbia River]]. Once they were sorted and inventoried by the company's clerks, the furs were hung out to dry in the fur storehouse, a large two-story [[Poteaux-sur-sol|post-on-sill]] building located within the walls of the fort. After the furs had been processed, they were mixed, weighed into {{convert|270|lb|kg|adj=on}} bundles, and packed with tobacco leaves as an insecticide. The 270-pound bundle of furs would be placed in a large press and wrapped in [[elk]] or [[American black bear|bear]] hide to create overseas fur bales. The large 270-pound bales were then placed on boats on the Columbia River for shipment to London via the HBC trade routes. The furs would then be auctioned off to textile manufacturers in London. A large demand came from hatters who produced popular [[Beaver hat|beaver felted hats]].

===Personnel===
For most of its existence, Fort Vancouver was the largest non-Indigenous settlement in the Pacific Northwest. The population of the fort and the environs was mostly [[French Canadians]], Métis, and Kanaka [[Native Hawaiians|Hawaiians]]; there were also English, Scots, Irish, and a variety of Indigenous peoples including [[Iroquois]] and [[Cree]]. The common language spoken at the fort was [[Canadian French]], while company records and official journals were kept in English. However, trading and relations with the surrounding community were done in [[Chinook Jargon]], a [[pidgin language|pidgin]] of Chinook, Nootka, Chehalis, English, French, Hawaiian, and other elements.

A survey of the total personnel at Fort Vancouver in 1846 reveals a culturally and materially diverse populace. Notably, the number of employees from the [[Hebrides]], [[Orkney]], and [[Shetland|Shetland Islands]] was 57 men. This is exactly the same number as the combined number of workers from England and mainland Scotland.{{sfn|Winter|1967|pp=186–187}} The number of men hired from [[Upper Canada]], [[Lower Canada]], and [[Rupert's Land]] was in total 91. These men came from English, French Canadian, Métis, Iroquois, Cree, and other cultural backgrounds. Most notable however, was that Kanaka Hawaiians totaled 154 that year, or 43% of the total fort population.{{sfn|Winter|1967|pp=186–187}}

[[Factor (agent)|Chief Factor]] Dr. [[John McLoughlin]] was its first manager, a position he held for nearly 22 years, from 1824 to 1845.{{sfn|Mackie|1997|p=318}} McLoughlin applied the laws of Upper Canada to British subjects, kept peace with the natives and sought to maintain law and order with American settlers as well. McLoughlin was later hailed as the Father of [[Oregon]] for allowing Americans to settle south of the Columbia River. Against the company's wishes, he provided substantial aid and assistance to westbound American settlers in the territory. He left the company in 1846 to found [[Oregon City, Oregon|Oregon City]] in the [[Willamette Valley]].

[[James Douglas (governor)|James Douglas]] spent nineteen years in Fort Vancouver; serving as a clerk until 1834 when he was promoted to the rank of Chief Trader. From October 1838 to November 1839, while McLoughlin was on furlough in Europe, Chief Trader Douglas was in charge. In November 1839 Douglas was promoted to the rank of Chief Factor. Douglas took on several temporary assignments elsewhere, to set up HBC's trading post at Yerba Buena (San Francisco) California in 1841, and to establish [[Fort Victoria (British Columbia)|Fort Victoria]] in 1843, but from 1839 to 1845 there were normally two Chief Factors based at Fort Vancouver, with McLoughlin in charge and Douglas as his subordinate.{{sfn|Watson|2010|pp=340, 673, 1052–1056}}

===Agricultural production===
At its inception, Governor George Simpson wanted the fort to be self-sufficient as food was costly to ship. Fort staff typically maintained one year's extra supplies in the fort warehouses to avoid the disastrous consequences of shipwrecks and other calamities. Fort Vancouver eventually began to produce a surplus of food, some of which was used to provision other HBC posts in the Columbia Department. The area around the fort was commonly known as "La Jolie Prairie" (the pretty prairie) or "Belle Vue Point" (beautiful vista). In time, Fort Vancouver diversified its economic activities beyond fur trading and begin exporting agricultural foodstuffs from HBC farms, along with salmon, lumber, and other products. It developed markets for these exports in [[Russian America]], the [[Hawaiian Kingdom]], and Mexican California. The HBC opened agencies in Sitka, [[Honolulu]], and [[Yerba Buena, California|Yerba Buena]] (San Francisco) to facilitate such trade.{{sfn|Mackie|1997|p=xviii–xxiii}}