The fort consisted of roughly constructed buildings inside a palisade, sitting on the south shore of the Columbia River where it met the Pacific.

The surrounding country was heavily forested and often rainy.

The local Indigenous nations — the Chinook, the Clatsop, and their neighbors — had well-established trading relationships with the fort almost from the beginning.

These were not naive or vulnerable communities: they were sophisticated trading partners who knew how to assess what the fur company men wanted and how to negotiate the terms of exchange.

The arrival of the overland party gave Fort Astoria its full complement of personnel, though “full complement” is a relative term given how many had been lost, disabled, or separated during the journey.