As you approach the Old Fort William Historical Park, you see a re-creation of the first type of house Lakeheaders lived in about which we have any historical knowledge. It is constructed from local materials taken straight from the living natural world- a conical frame of tree poles covered with birch bark slabs. (The display at the entrance to the Thunder Bay Historical Museum tells us that this type of house was held together with other local materials from living nature- animal sinew and tree fibre.) The apex of the frame has an open area to let out smoke. A blanket acts as a door. The inside has no compartments. Its occupants of centuries ago lived in very close proximity to one another. It is, of course, a wigwam.

Two paintings portray this original Lakeheaders’ residence - Lieutenant Robert Irvine’s “Woman at Fort William,” and William Armstrong’s, “Indian Chief, Wigwam, Fort William. Kohl, a German ethnographer who studied the nearby Ojibwa in nearby Wisconsin in the 19th century, commented on the Ojibwa wigwam: “The apatwas had arrived and my house skeleton was about to be clothed. This is the name given to the rolls of birch bark which are generally kept in readiness to cover the wigwam or repair the roofs. These consist of a number of large quadrangular pieces of birch bark sewn together. Each piece is about a yard square, six or seven such pieces are sewn together.”

As you move from the native residence, you encounter a re-creation of the buildings where the elite of the Lakehead’s first Europeans lived. (The non-elite lived outside in tents.) They ate in the Great Hall. The “gentlemen” (i.e. managers) slept here as well- in their private bedrooms, in marked contrast to the communal sleeping quarters of the Ojibwa residence. Franchere, a visitor to the Fort, tells us about some other places where the Fort’s occupants slept: “On either side are two others equally long, but not so high. They are divided lengthwise by a corridor and each contains 12 attractive bedrooms. One is destined for the Wintering Partners; the other for clerks.” Other buildings where the occupants slept were the Tradesmen’s square, the Guide’s House, the Counting House (for the clerks), Dr. McLouglin’s, and cottages for the farm workers.

These buildings are made from the same local wood as the Ojibwa dwellings were- spruce and pine- but in a very different form, more altered from its original natural state- logs, usually squared, and in the case of the Great Hall, clapboard. On the roofs are hand-split shingles, usually squared. Pegs- “tree nails”- hold the wood together. The horizontal logs had tongues which fitted into the grooves in vertical posts. All these wood forms were made possible by a technology unknown to the Ojibwa, tools made from an imported metal, very much processed from its original state. The Fort’s journal refers in 1824 to this metal’s use in another form: “The two Iroquois collecting old Nails out of the Planks & ca in the Boat Yard.” The metal, of course, is iron.

Some of the residences are covered with an imported material- paint in the case of the Great Hall, whitewash at Dr. McLouglin’s, the clerk’s, and the partner’s place.

Their residence was more cut off from Nature outside. A door rather than a blanket covers the entrance. A chimney takes smoke to the roof instead of an open hole. The walls were chinked with mud, clay, straw, small stones, horsehair, and dung. It draws in light from the sun, unlike the Ojibwa dwelling, through a window but it is still separated by glass and shutters or curtains for privacy, as illustrated in Selkirk’s sketch of William McGillivray’s room. In contrast to the curved lines of the Ojibwas’ residence, theirs was dominated by the straight line, the rectangle, as was the palisade surrounding the Fort.

The Ojibwa kept their traditional form of residence a lot longer than some other aspects of their culture such as cooking pots and clothing. A turn-of-the-century photo in the Thunder Bay Historical Museum Society’s collection shows this traditional residence form still being used. The Austin survey shows a wigwam belonging to Marianne Chabot on present-day Water Street. Hamilton, a visitor in 1876, comments: “At the east end is a little river. Close to the creek is the bark conical wigwam of an Indian.”