Everyone had a job to do around the fort. It wasn’t a hobby or a pastime it was a responsibility and it started early. Young people were taught a necessary skill, actually many of them, and became very proficient with them. As roles were defined at that time, girls learned the domestic skills necessary to run a home and family, and boys hunted and fished and developed their own particular set of skills. Things may be different in these modern times but back then that was how it was.

Girls, or young women like these, performed a very necessary function even at a young age as you can see by the wonderful loaves of bread and other baked goods they created on their own with little adult supervision. Their accomplishments with what seem to us very limited tools are amazing and no wonder they were very proud of their abilities, as well they should be. Girls who bake, another example of life in the 1800’s.