The journals and reports of the time suggest that women played numerous important roles in Fort Vancouver life. Women often participated in fur trapping expeditions, often serving in such capacities as fur dressing and food gathering and preparation. On June 29, 1836, John Kirk Townsend wrote a vaguely hyperbolic summary of native women married to Fort employees:
“She is particularly useful to her husband. As he is becoming rather infirm, she can protect him most admirably. If he wishes to cross a stream in traveling without horses or boats, she plunges in without hesitation, takes him upon her back, and lands him safely and expeditiously upon the opposite bank. She can also kill and dress an elk, run down and shoot a buffalo, or spear a salmon for her husband’s breakfast in the morning, as well as any man-servant he could employ. Added to all this, she has, in several instances, saved his life in skirmishes with Indians, at the imminent risk of her own, so that he has some reason to be proud of her.†(Townsend 1839: 179).
Not wanting to eliminate this essentially free source of labor to the HBC, fort supervisors seldom seem to have discouraged the practice. Yet, close to home, women also played a critical role in the Fort Vancouver Village community, in a way that echoed both Native and European customs. The women of this community were responsible for much of the Village cleaning and upkeep, the preparation of food, and the rearing of children. Women’s gathering of traditional foods in the vicinity of the fort sometimes provided important supplementation to the meager diet afforded by the wages of the fort’s lower-status employees. Post records indicate that Native women acquired fabric from the fort for the sewing of clothing. Their roles were as diverse as any women of their time and perhaps, being uniquely situated as they were at a cross-cultural nexus, even more so.
Topic: Native Women’s Roles at Fort Vancouver (Read 57 times)