Archaeology Magazine - January/February 1988 - 35

Right

from

the

outset,

the

leaky

on the

the Indian massacre, and was within
easy riding distance of six or seven
of the whiskey-trading posts, whose
sale of whiskey was suppressed once
the Mounted Police had arrived.
Battle Creek Coulee can be very
damp in the summer, and receives
more than average snowfall in the
winter- bad enough environmental
factors taken alone. But the construction of the fort itself left much
to be desired. Originally there were
two barracks for the enlisted men,
a residence for the officers, and a
residence for the Superintendent.
All of these buildings were rudimentarily built of skinned, unshaped
logs chinked with a clay-base mixture.
The single-story barracks were built
directly on the ground, and often sloped
with the terrain. The low-pitched
roofs were constructed of split poles
overlaid with 10-15 centimeters
(roughly four to six inches) of thick
clay plaster, which in turn was covered with overlapping planks -an arrangement that did very little to keep
out the rain. Only storehouses were
equipped with shingle roofs.
Right from the outset, the leaky
roofs and damp foundations began to
take their toll on the health and morale of the men. Rheumatism, colds,
respiratory diseases and related side
effects soon had an astoundingly high
percentage of the force -at times
nearly one-quarter of it -reporting
sick.
The medical personnel at Fort Walsh
were taxed by this onslaught. During its first decade of existence, the
North-West Mounted Police never had
more than three doctors on its entire
force at any one time. Before the fort
was dismantled, two of the physicians
had resigned, to be replaced immediately by two others.
In response to the tide of illness,
Police Surgeon John George Kittson
established a tent field hospital outside the walls of the post -a practice
that a number of men would later imitate in the summer months, when living in tents out of doors was preferable
to life in the damp, disease-ridden
buildings. Tent field hospitals had first

roofs

health

and
and

damp
morale

foundations
of the

began

to take

their

toll

men.

been widely used only fifteen years
before, during the American CivilWar:
surgeons had discovered that patients
healed more quickly and were less
susceptible to secondary infection
when they were treated under canvas,
which allowed for better ventilation
and better sanitation than more permanent quarters did. The tent field
hospital of the fort's early years also
enabled physicians to quarantine the
sick, another important consideration
in nineteenth-century medicine.
But the tent field hospital would
soon prove inadequate. Within a year
of its construction, news reached
Fort Walsh that the United States
Cavalry had suffered a decisive defeat
at the Little Big Horn; and within a
few months, some 5,000 Sioux under
the leadership of Sitting Bull arrived
on the Canadian plains, seeking refuge
from American depredations. They
camped along the eastern margin of
the Cypress Hills at Wood Mountain.
The North-West Mounted Police
moved quickly to control a potentially
volatile situation. Initially,force headquarters had been at Fort Macleod,
much farther to the west, within sight
of the Rocky Mountains. Now headquarters were moved to Fort Walsh
and the strength of the garrison more
than doubled from 50 to 100 men and
officers.
increase in numbers severely
This strained the space available in the
barracks, as well as the few medical
facilities the fort enjoyed. While new

structures were added and the fort as
a whole was enlarged during the next
two years, for a time the men in the
barracks were allotted only 200 cubic
feet per person -considerably below
the minimum of 600 cubic feet being
recommended in contemporary British
medical journals. Nor were the new
buildings, some 13 in all, any better
built than the existing ones had been.
Both their design and their methods
of construction were the same.
The permanent hospital at Fort
Walsh would not be built until 1881,
a full six years after the founding of
the fort and only two years before its
abandonment by the Mounted Police.
In the intervening years, the medical
staff would have to struggle as best it
could with the unsanitary living conditions. "Bad air" was considered to
be a major culprit, so the men would
be moved into tents in the spring at
the first onset of good weather so
that barracks floors could be raised,
the ground beneath them allowed to
dry, and the floors replaced with new
boards.
The rooms were also fumigated with
burning sulfur and the walls whitewashed with a new coating of white
clay. Usually, the roofs were also repaired or completely rebuilt. Windows
were installed in the back walls of
each barracks and the palisade surrounding the fort was moved a considerable distance from the buildings
to allow for adequate ventilation.
But in fact the living quarters were
only a fraction of the problem. The

January/February1988

Archaeology Magazine - January/February 1988

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