The staff number for Fort Colvile fluctuated with the seasons. Operations commencing in the Spring required upwards of 30 employees during the 1830s. Usually only five men were stationed there throughout Winter, and if number was above that, McLoughlin would reassign the extra staff. Spokane Garry was considered a prospective employee at the Fort until McLoughlin rejected the proposition. ABCFM Missionaries established Tshimakain Mission in 1838 and developed ties to officers of Fort Colvile, then the closest white settlement in the area. After the Whitman Massacre, the missionary families of Elkanah Walker and Cushing Eells fled their station for the protection of the HBC trading post. Alex McLeod, born at the fort in 1854 recalled that "The trading post proper was a square enclosure. The store and warehouses were on the north side and Chief Trader McDonald's house was on the east side. The married employees, like my father, lived outside the inclosed post yard on the south and west sides."