174 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bdll. 176 



and that the stockade and interior buildings had been damaged by 

 fire. This fire had preserved clear evidence, in burned lumps of chink- 

 ing, of the use of adobe mud. Similar evidence is doubtless preserved 

 at the sites of other early fur posts in this region, and at least one 

 post, Fort Benton (1847 fi'.), originally of timber, was rebuilt at some 

 period in the 1850's with adobe-brick masonry. 



All of the earlier trading posts of the upper Missouri were built, 

 as was Fort John (which became Fort Laramie), by the American 

 Fur Company or one of its various branches or offshoots, or by the 

 numerous opposition companies, and a fur-trade expression, "dobies," 

 preserves a memory of the use of adobe in one form or another in 

 trading-post buildings. The artist, Rudolph Friederich Kurz, re- 

 corded in 1851 that Fort William (perhaps identical with the post 

 known as Fort Mortimer), the opposition post near Fort Union at 

 the mouth of the Yellowstone, was built of sun-dried clay, referring 

 to chinking or plastering of the timbers, or to the use of actual adobe 

 brick in masonry. Hence, he says, the men from this post were called 

 "dobies," the word derived from adobe, itself a Spanish-American 

 word (Kurz, 1937, p. 138 n. and pi. 6, top ; Mathews, 1951, vol. 1, p. 9) . 

 The word was also frequently applied to the brick themselves (Hafen 

 and Young, 1938, p. 101, quoting an emigrant description of Fort 

 Laramie, 1843 : "dobies (unburnt bricks)"). Further evidence of the 

 use of local adobe clays in the construction of various trading posts, 

 for chinking and plastering, and occasionally for adobe-brick manu- 

 facture and use, is doubtless available. 



In connection with the matter of the use of adobe bricks of local 

 manufacture in the construction of Fort Stevenson in 1867, the plan 

 of the whole post is also of special interest. At most western posts of 

 the 19th century, the arrangement of units of the whole, the buildings, 

 and other structures, was rectangular or lozenge shaped, enclosing an 

 area frequently used for drill purposes and known as the parade 

 ground. It is hardly surprising that such a central plaza, or place d' 

 armes, should have characterized military installations of the Ameri- 

 can West, inasmuch as the tradition is a part of modern military plan- 

 ning itself, irrespective of tlie nationality of the planners. At Fort 

 Stevenson, however, in addition to the "hollow square" of most forts, 

 there is one element which is distinctly Southwestern, like the adobe 

 brick, and is reminiscent of the patio. The courtyard, enclosed by the 

 wings of the individual buildhigs, is a close parallel to the patio of 

 the casa in the Southwest. It would be interesting to know the deriva- 

 tion of this plan, utilized at Fort Stevenson and other posts, and, in- 

 deed, often followed today. The initiative in planning frontier posts 

 was apparently left to field engineers by the War Department, and de 

 Trobriand stated that on arrival of the garrison at the site, "a complete 

 plan" was made of the buildings to be erected, their location, and their 



