Young re-enactors at Fort Vancouver Brigade Encampment learn as they teach

o What: Brigade Encampment at Fort Vancouver, and grand opening of the Historic Village, two furnished replica houses.

o When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. June 19-20. (The fur brigade starts at 9 a.m. June 19 on the Columbia River and crosses over the Land Bridge into the village).

o Where: In and surrounding the stockade at Fort Vancouver, 1001 E. Fifth St., Vancouver.

o Cost: Free outside the stockade; entrance is $5 for a family, $3 per person inside the stockade. Younger than 15 free.

o Information: 360-816-6230 or http://www.nps.gov/fova/index.htm.

Neither Joanna LaFayette nor her sister, Lizzy, have an eye on wedding rings or marriage vows. The Vancouver girls, ages 13 and 15, have things to do, after all, like pursue an education and volunteer as period actors at Fort Vancouver National Historic Site.

But the pair, enrolled in Dame School through the park, a sort of hands-on history course that teaches period skills as well as history and interpretation of that history, had a startling revelation during their 12-week course.

“The thing that surprised me was the amount of women that died (during childbirth) and the girls who had to marry a much older man as a means of livelihood,” Lizzy LaFayette said.

Joanna LaFayette tried to imagine herself, at 13, married off to a man in his 30s or 40s.

“It’s a freaky feeling,” Joanna LaFayette said.

“They never really had a childhood,” Lizzy LaFayette added.

Nonetheless, that’s the world that the girls, along with about 100 other history re-enactors, will portray at the Brigade Encampment this weekend. The event is in conjunction with the grand opening of the Historic Village, two furnished houses that mimic the ones Hudson’s Bay Company workers lived in.

The fur brigade was a time when trappers would have schlepped their winter-caught pelts to the fort — after snow-covered passes had cleared.

“It was quite a joyous time of revelry when the people returned,” said Greg Shine, chief ranger and historian for the park.

Of the 100 actors, Shine expects about 40 youngsters from the park’s youth programs (Dame School for the girls and Young Engagé School for boys), to explain history and demonstrate things like carpentry, cooking, knitting and more.

During a recent class, girls from the Dame School were busy whipping up lunch for themselves and their classmates, who were learning embroidery and knitting.

A fresh-faced teen, decked out in period attire, kneaded bread dough atop a wooden table coated with flour. Three girls lugged buckets of water into the kitchen, while another washed dishes. A woman poked at the wood fire, adjusted a cast iron kettle over it and plucked sprigs of rosemary and thyme from overhead rafters.

“You realize the huge amount of work the women did,” Lizzy LaFayette said.

Not just women.

Mike Twist and Roman Len, both park guides, teach boys in the Young Engagé program. Hudson Bay clerks, usually hired at about 12 or 14, would have copied important records in triplicate — by hand — even using ink that they made, Len said.

And then there were the trappers, who slogged through snow, ice and near-freezing waters to capture creatures when their pelts would have been at their wintertime thickest. Then they lugged bales of fur, which weighed about 90 pounds each, to the fort. The record was a trapper carrying five such bales about one mile, Shine said.

The trappers and workers, many from divergent backgrounds, also learned Chinook Wawa, a sort of pidgin language, which helped them communicate. Many of the re-enactors — including some of the children — will be speaking Chinook Wawa this weekend, Shine said.

While activities officially get under way at 10 a.m., Shine said visitors are welcome to come at 9 a.m. June 19, when the fur brigade starts on the shore of the Columbia River, crosses the Land Bridge and moves into the village.