PLAN OF OLD FORT SNELLING
Occupying the same position under the south wall, and facing the barracks, were two other buildings, similar in appearance. In one of these the officers' quarters were located. It was divided into twelve sets, each consisting of two rooms, the front one sixteen by fourteen feet, and the back one, eight by fifteen and a half feet. In the basement were located kitchens for each set. The other building contained the offices of the commanding officer, the paymaster, the quartermaster, and the commissary. Here was a room used by the post school, and another filled with harness. An ordnance sergeant and five laundresses found quarters in the same structure.
The quarters of the commanding officer with the flag staff directly in front, faced the parade ground and the Old Round Tower. There were four rooms on the main floor and in the basement were kitchens and pantries. Other buildings were also included within the fort. The storehouse of the commissary department was located near the southern blockhouse; and on either side of the gate were two buildings, shunned by all—the guardhouse and the hospital.
Such was the plan of the fort, convenient in arrangement and beautiful in appearance; but the report of an official inspection in 1827 complained that “the main points of defence against an enemy appear to have been in some respects sacrificed in the effort to secure the comfort and convenience of the troops in peace. These are important considerations; but at an exposed frontier post the primary object must be security against the attack of an enemy. Health and comfort come next. The buildings are too large, too numerous, and extending over a space entirely too great; enclosing a uselessly large parade, five times greater than is at all desirable in that climate.”[202]
A traveller who at a later day was entertained within the fort wrote of it facetiously in these words: “The idea is further suggested, that the strong stone wall was rather erected to keep the garrison in, than the enemy out. Though adapted for mounting cannon if needful, the walls were unprovided with those weapons; and the only piece of ordnance that I detected out of the magazine, was an old churn thrust gallantly through one of the embrasures. We were however far from complaining of the extra expense and taste which the worthy officer whose name it bears had expended on the erection of Fort Snelling, as it is in every way an addition to the sublime landscape in which it is situated.”[203]
But an examination of the contents of the magazine would have revealed weapons more formidable than churns. Among the equipment reported in 1834 one reads of two iron twelve-pounder cannon of the garrison type; three six-pounder iron cannon of the field type; and two five and eight-tenths inch iron howitzers. There was also equipment for these pieces of artillery—carriages, sponges and rammers, lead aprons, dark lanterns, gunners' belts, gunners' haversacks, and tarpaulins. There were stored ready for service, 440 balls for the twelve-pounders, 1255 balls for the six-pounders, 546 pounds of mixed loose grapeshot, and many other sizes of strapped and canister shot. For the use of the infantry there were 7749 musket flints, 1825 pounds of musket powder, 1513 pounds of rifle powder, 31,390 cartridges, and 2047 blank cartridges.[204]
Other structures closely connected with the work of the fort were located outside the wall. The buildings of the Indian agency were situated a quarter of a mile west, on the prairie.[205] These consisted of a council house, the agent's house, and an armorer's shop. The original council house was built by the troops in 1823, but Agent Taliaferro claimed that most of the inside work was done at his own expense. The building was of logs and stone, eighty-two feet long, eighteen feet wide, and presenting in the front a piazza of seventy feet. Within, there were six rooms, lined with pine planking and separated from each other by panel doors.[206]
At one o'clock on the morning of August 14, 1830, the sentinels at the fort discovered that the council house was on fire. But the flames had gained so much headway that it was impossible to save any of the contents. The interpreter and his family who lived in this building barely escaped with their lives. In reporting the loss to the superintendent, Major Taliaferro wrote that “the general impression here is that fire was put to the house by Some drunken Indians & circumstances are strong in justifying such a conclusion.”[207] This surmise was right, for on April 7, 1831, the Indians delivered at the fort one of their number who they claimed was guilty of the act.[208]
That steps were taken to build a new council house is evident from the record in Taliaferro's diary under date of March 8, 1831, that four men had been hired “at $12 per Month to cut & carry timber out of the pine Swamp for the Agency Council House.”[209] But in 1839 Taliaferro recommended that the agency be moved to a point seven miles up the river; and in 1841 there was a movement on foot to buy Baker's stone trading house for the same purpose.[210]
Near the location of the old council house were two other buildings. One of these was the agent's house. This was made entirely of stone, and was one and a half stories high. It contained four rooms and a passage on the lower floor and two rooms above.[211] Hastily built by troops at an early day, its comforts were few. “Since the Rainy Season Set in”, complained the agent in 1834, “both the hired Men and Myself have not had a Spot in our houses that Could be called dry, Not even our beds”.[212] An armorer's shop, where blacksmith work was done for the Indians, was made of logs and measured sixteen by eighteen feet. Nearer the fort was the home of Franklin Steele, the sutler of the post.[213]