damian building the fort

The fort was built in 1827, but back then this was very much the wilds of western north America. The rockies were a natural barrier. Lots of first nation villages up and down the rivers and where they gathered summer berries, fished, hunted, but nothing like Europe. This was very much the wild and you had to be totally self sufficient. The first europeans had to rely on their peaceful associations with first nations or they all would have died. If it wasn't for the first nations groups showing them how to live on the land they would not have made it. The HBC encouraged their employees to marry into the first nations families and those that did tended to be successful in living here. Their wives taught them how to gather food, where to find fish, how to trade peacefully.
This hands on exhibit shows the notched out up rights that made it easy to put in the boards without using nails. nails were a valuable community when you are out in the bush. apparently many settlers would burn down their cabins to gather the iron nails if they were going to move house. First nations houses were made using similar technology but they would have their boards held in place with cedar rope.
we had to make sure that the boards overlapped to allow the rain to flow away from the structure. First nations did the same from an exhibit we saw up in Whistler.Read more