Journey through Fort Harrod - Part 2

Fort Harrod is a town within walls!  Inside we find communal hominy blocks in a hollow sycamore stump where corn is pounded by pulling down on a two-handed pestle attached to a bent sapling.  When the sapling recoils, it lifts the pestle up.

The Blacksmith repairs tools and makes tools with an anvil he brought from back East.  He makes the fort's first plow.  He works by a charcoal fire using bellows.

Life within the fort is active.  Women are scraping animal skins to make clothing.  Other women are making lye soap or washing clothes near the spring. 

Outside the walls on the stream is the tub mill which grinds the fort's flour.  Water hits the rotor (a circle of wooden blades at the base).  The rotor turns the vertical shaft attached to millstones in the housing.  Grain is poured into the hopper around the housing and the flour falls into a bin beneath.

A corral pens the horses on the east side of the fort.  Cows and pigs are left to forage in the grass.  Horses are used for transportation and plowing and are left unshod.  During attacks, the horses are brought inside the fort and a 10 stockade gates are bolted with huge logs to close off the corral. Horses are very valuable!

Another job of the horses are to pull "lizards" of corn husked in the field.  The lizards are open triangular shaped boxes, that sit on a Y shaped elm branch, pulled by a horse.  "Huskers" are favorites of the Shawnee to attack, so they are always armed.

Next time...finishing our tour of Fort Harrod
__________________
Today in Pioneer History:  On October 19, 1791,, British General Lord Cornwallis surrenders 8,000 British soldiers and seamen to a larger Franco-American force at Yorktown, effectively bringing an end to the American Revolution.