SYMHC Classics: Pig War

This 2014 episode covers the story of how in 1859, the United States and Great Britain nearly went to war over an American settler shooting a Canadian pig that was rooting around his garden. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday. In our episode on Henry Martin Robert, we
talked about his building a redoubt that's a sort of
temporary usually fortification for the US Army during the Pig War.
So today's classic is our episode on the Pig War,
which came out all the way back almost ten years
ago on April ninth, twenty fourteen. We have a couple

(00:23):
of corrections for this one. San Juan Island is not
the largest island in the San Juan Islands, it is
the second largest. Also, nobody went through the Panama Canal
in this episode, since that was not Billy yet they
crossed Panama over land. Those are the only mistakes I
remember from ten years ago. One can hope there were
not others. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class,

(00:50):
a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye, and so
you it's funny to be. I wrote this little outline
with an introduction that begins. If you grew up in
the Pacific Northwest, or maybe in Vancouver, or especially in

(01:13):
the islands between them, you may have already heard about
the story we're going to talk about today, which is
the pig warm If you have tuned in thinking this
is about the Bay of Pigs invasion, I'm sorry, We're
talking about something else. However, you did grow up in
that area and it was a new story to you. Yeah,
I mean I didn't do all of my growing up there.

(01:34):
I moved from there when I was a little over nine,
but I still have siblings there and have gone back
there several times. And I had never heard of it. Yeah,
and right in that area like Tacoma and pwoll Up,
which is right outside Seattle, so I should have heard
of it, but I never had. Well, I may have

(01:55):
been too young when I left. I missed that chunk. Well.
This was recommended as a subject listener, Katie, and it
is basically a story of how in eighteen fifty nine
the United States and Britain very nearly went to war
over an issue that seems more likely to start a
feud between Hatfield's and McCoy's, which is that an American
settler shot a Canadian pig that was rooting around in

(02:18):
his garden. Doesn't that sound silly? Yes? And I can
also see how that would escalate in a hatfield in McCoy. Yeah. Yes,
so that is what we are going to talk about today.
Of course, people had been living on what is now
known as San Juan Island between the mainland of Washington

(02:40):
and the island of Vancouver for thousands of years before
European explorers started pushing into the Pacific Northwest. So during
this sort of European exploration phase, Spain was the first
country to claim and rename this island, when Francisco Eliza
dubbed it Ela the Archipelago de San Juan. Its location

(03:04):
in fertile soil made it a really attractive spot for
the Spanish as well as the British and the Americans,
although Spain eventually withdrew from the area. In eighteen eighteen,
the United States and Britain signed the Anglo American Convention,
which reinforced England's control over the eastern half of Canada
while allowing both nations to operate what was then called

(03:25):
Oregon Country jointly. Citizens of both nations would be allowed
to live in this area, and the agreement would be
renewed every decade unless one nation or the other could
conclude that it had settled the region. Yeah, so it
was basically if some person or country eventually had the
most guys in there. It reminds me of like a

(03:45):
board gate where I I have thirty miniatures in here,
so it's mine now. So for the first several decades,
both sides were kind of thinking that it was unlikely
that this thing was going to be renewed. American settlers
and prospectors thought they clearly had the advantage, and at
the same time, so did English merchants and trappers. Just

(04:07):
probably an indication that it was pretty evenly divided for
a while, yes, But eventually the tide did start to
shift and the American population in Oregon Country skyrocketed between
eighteen forty and eighteen forty five. And around this same time,
fur trading started to dwindle as the region suffered from overtrapping,
and this made it less attractive to England, and England

(04:28):
was less motivated to maintain its boundaries, whereas the US
was still quite eager for the land. So in eighteen
forty six, the US and Great Britain signed the Treaty
of Oregon. This is the treaty that set the border
between the United States and Canada at the forty ninth parallel,
So that really long straight portion it looked straight on
a map, you're actually trying to walk down it. It

(04:50):
is not remotely straight because it was delineated by people
on the ground with kind of primitive instruments. But this
long stretch of border that is north of what's now
North Dakota, Montana and Washington, and south of Alberta, Saskatchewan
and Manitoba, and it seems pretty self explanatory until you

(05:11):
get to the western end of the border. The treaty
went on to say, it quote shall be continued westward
along the forty ninth parallel of north Latitude to the
middle of the Channel, which separates the continent from Vancouver's Island,
and then southerly through the middle of the said channel
and of Fucus Straits to the Pacific Ocean. The problem

(05:32):
was that this channel was really two large straits and
a lot of other smaller waterways. The Harrow Strait lay
next to Vancouver Island and the Rosario Strait lay next
to the mainland in what is now Washington, and in
between were the San Juan Islands, which became disputed territory
with both the United States and Canada. Basically saying that

(05:52):
is mine. The largest island, the one known as San
Juan Island, was the one that was in most demand.
Made an official claim to the islands in eighteen fifty
three by including it with the creation of Washington Territory.
The Hudson's Bay Company, which had been operating on the
island since at least eighteen forty five, responded by building

(06:13):
a sheep farm on the southern shore that September, which
quickly started to flourish. A man named Charles Griffin was
sent to run it, and he named it Bellevue. For
a while, it was just Griffin and his staff and
their sheep that were all living on this fifty five
square mile island. This doesn't sound like a huge population,
but it was a pretty large sheep farm. There were
like almost five thousand sheep. But the sheep did not

(06:37):
count as humans. Now they did not, there's no equivalency.
So the land on San Juan Island was very rich
and productive, and it became a prime location for American settlers,
especially after gold rushes in the area kind of drew
people out there, and then you know, they would fail

(06:57):
and people would live for something else to do, like
starting a farm. So soon Americans coming into the region
were staking claims in what had been the Hudson's Bay
Company's grazing land. So the British government viewed all these
American incomers as squatters, and tensions between the British and
the Americans actually living there ran pretty high, so case

(07:19):
in point, in eighteen fifty four, a US customs collector
showed up on the island and tried to collect duties
from Griffin's farm manager, and the farm manager swore out
a warrant for the custom collector's arrest for trespassing on
British soil. Then, in March of eighteen fifty five, a
sheriff from the Washington Mainland brought his posse over the
channel in the middle of the night and confiscated thirty

(07:41):
five of Griffin's sheep, claiming that they were going to
be sold to pay back taxes. Hudson's Bay Company later
demanded fifteen thousand dollars in damages. This also led Vancouver's governor,
James Douglas to write to Isaac L. Stevens, who was
his counterpartner of Washington, to complain about it. The name

(08:02):
Isaac L. Stevens may ring a bell. If you remember
our Chief Seattle episode, he plays a role in that also.
And this whole thing was raising enough eyebrows in Washington,
d C. That Secretary of State William L. Macy also
wrote to Governor Stevens basically saying, hey, please play nice, guys.
He also asked for the British government to do the
same with Governor Douglas, and they did. Sadly, this did

(08:26):
not really help diffuse anything. And before we go into
detail on why, let's take a moment and talk about
a word from our sponsor. So let's get back to
where things got simultaneously escalated and a little silly American

(08:49):
Lyman Cutler was part of the American influx of settlers
onto San Juan Island. He was a failed gold prospector
who built a little cabin and planted a potato patch
right by the Hudson's Bay Company's sheep run. He later
claimed that Governor Stevens himself had told him that the
land belonged to America, and so Cutler was claiming one

(09:12):
hundred and sixty acres under the Donation Land Claim Act
of eighteen fifty. So like the Homestead Act later did
in the Midwest. The Donation Land Claim Act allowed citizens
over the age of twenty one to claim a bunch
of land for free if they met certain residency and
improvement conditions. Number one, disputed land was not up for

(09:35):
grabs under this act, and number two the Land Claim
Act expired in eighteen fifty five before Cutler even got there.
And then number three possibly a lesser but definitely a
critical point. His improvements were really not so great. His
potato patch was only fenced on three sides, and that
allowed animals to trot right in and plunder his crop.

(09:59):
One of these invading animals was a bore belonging to
Charles Griffin of Bellevue Sheep Farm fame. Cutler claimed that
he woke up one morning to the sound of laughter
outside of his window. This was on June fifteenth, eighteen
fifty nine. He looked outside to see one of Griffin's
men laughing at a pig rooting through his potato patch,
so Cutler went outside and shot it. This would not

(10:22):
have been newsworthy if Cutler had not been American, and
if the pig had not effectively been the property of
the Hudson's Bay Company. Which was a trading company that
ran much of the show in Canada. At first, the
two men did try to work it out between themselves.
Cutler offered to replace the pig, or to get estimates

(10:42):
from three men about how much the pig was worth,
and then used that information to figure out how much
money to repay Griffin for it. Griffin, on the other hand,
demanded one hundred dollars, saying that the pig was a
prized breeder, and Cutler said, quote, better chance for lightning
to strike you then for you to get one hundred
dollars for that hog, And then he stormed away in

(11:04):
a huff. Yeah, all was fun. When things escalate, oh
and become insulting, it's gonna be so much more escalation.
Griffin took this matter to his bosses at the Hudson's
Bay Company, who went to Cutler's cabin to try to
get restitution, and of course Cutler refused to pay. It
is possible that the Hudson's Bay Company men also tried

(11:26):
to have Cutler arrested, but if they did, it never
came to fruition because he refused to go with the
people who came to arrest it. Yeah, the records are
a little unclear on that. Some sources say one thing,
and some sources it may have been attempted, maybe said
it never actually happened. So that July, Brigadier General William S.
Harney toured the area and he noticed an American flag

(11:49):
that Cutler and his friends had started flying for the
Fourth of July holiday. He asked them about it, and
they launched into this list of complaints about how vulnerable
they were both to attack by Native Americans and to
mistreatment by the British, and they cited the pig incident
in this process. Harney was staunchly anti British. He had

(12:11):
a little bit of a temper, He was very quick
to anger, and he had a very foul mouth. By
the end of his military career, he had been court
martialed four times. And even though he had just been
to Vancouver to thank Governor Douglas for what a good
job he'd been doing protecting the Americans from Native American attacks,
he decided now would be a good time to show

(12:32):
some force. He characterized the Hudson's Bay Company's behavior as
quote oppressive interference, and without consulting his command or the
War Department, he sent in Company d ninth US Infantry
under Captain George E. Pickett. The sixty six men arrived
on the USS Massachusetts and they camped right by the

(12:54):
Hudson's Bay Company's wharf and the sheep farm, which you know,
doesn't seem like they're provoking things at all. Harning did
eventually tell the War Department what he was doing, but
he didn't send this letter until the July until July
the nineteenth, and it didn't actually get there until September.
So for a long time he was just doing what
he wanted, with no en being posturing, yeah taunting people.

(13:18):
Although Pickett's orders were to protect against Native Americans and
the British, he posted a notice claiming that the camp
was American property and subject only to US laws and courts,
and that he, in fact was in command of it.
Governor Douglas, having none of that and believing that Britain
had lost Oregon by just being too welcoming, responded by

(13:39):
sending in the twenty one gun HMS Satellite, which was
joined by the thirty one gun Frigate HMS Tribune under
the command of Captain Jeffrey Phipps Hornby of the Royal Navy,
and another warship also came to anchor, so there were
three warships now off the coast of this island. He
also appointed a Justice of the Peace to enforce British law,

(14:01):
which he claimed was the only law and effect on
the island. So, in spite of now facing down three warships,
one of which carried forty six Royal Marines, Pickett refused
to withdraw or stand down. He was publicly boastful, allegedly
saying things like he would make a bunker hill of
it if pressed. Although at the time he sent worried

(14:22):
sounding dispatches asking for more reinforcements and he appointed his
own Justice of the Peace, Harney kept funneling more troops
into the area. Pickett was eventually reinforced by one hundred
and seventy one men under Lieutenant Colonel Silas Casey, and
together they all went to Victoria to try to negotiate
with Rear Admiral R. Lambert Baines, who was commanding the

(14:45):
British forces in the East Pacific. Baines, on the other hand,
was aboard the eighty four gun HMS Ganges, which he
refused to leave for negotiations. Believing this entire thing to
be ridiculous and beneath the involvement of quote two great names,
Casey realized it was going to be pretty fruitless to
go up against that kind of firepower, so he and

(15:06):
everyone else went back to San Juan Island to ask
for more reinforcements. By the end of August, so keep
in mind, there's a letter out there somewhere floating around
that hasn't reached the appropriate people yet. Yep, the American
forces on San Juan Island had swelled to about four
hundred and fifty men who had armed themselves with fourteen

(15:26):
field cannons in an additional eight thirty two pound guns
collected from the USS Massachusetts. The US troops reinforced their
fortifications while the British Navy carried out drills along the
coast with about two thousand fighting men ready for action.
And at this point it was basically an arms race
over a dead pig. And from my own perspective, if

(15:48):
you knew how tiny this piece of land was, it
makes it extra hilarious and slash. Where did they put
all those boats? Well, and some of the boats they
would go out on maneuvers and were they would just
fire their cans at the bluffs or at like big
rocks that were on the land, which was vastly entertaining
to some of the people who were around. It turned

(16:09):
into this source of excitement of Okay, now, now we're
gonna do drills by firing our cannons at the at
the bluffs here. Yeah. So in September, almost three months
after Cutler shot, the pig word finally reached Washington, d C.
Which was then approximately a six week trip away, about

(16:30):
what was going on. It was not through this letter
sent to the War Department, though, it was when President
James Buchanan read about it in the newspaper on September third.
Both the US government and the British officials who were
in Washington, d C. Were astonished that an international incident
was brewing between Vancouver and Washington over a pig. Yeah. Yeah,

(16:54):
I can only imagine how startling that must be to
be like, oh, did you know, by the way, there's
about to be a war? Wait, what we're involved in? What? Yeah?
So you and I both did a lot of growing
up during the eighties, and a lot of like the
nuclear war fear is somebody going to push the red button. Yeah,
the constant Cold War discussion. Yeah. And for a long

(17:15):
time I felt like a lot of this was just
ridiculous paranoia and made up things. And then when I
get to this part about how really there was almost
a shooting war between the United States and Britain over
a pig, I kind of go, oh, maybe that was
not so completely far fetched, right, that somebody might just
accidentally one day be like, you know what I'm gonna do,

(17:35):
I'm gonna push the button. Yeah. Unfortunately, all of our
civilization is still filled with humans who are fallible and
will have lapses in judgments. And fortunately we now have
video conferencing, which would have resolved a lot of the
problems we're talking about in this episode. President Buchanan, who

(17:59):
had helped me to go the Treaty of Oregon in
the first place when he was Secretary of State, sent
General Winfield Scott to try to restore calm. And General
Scott was a battlefield general and a diplomat who had
experience in border disputes, so he was really the perfect
man for the job. But on top of this experience,
General Scott also had firsthand knowledge of Harney's hot headedness.

(18:21):
He had been involved in half of Harney's courts martial,
so Scott's trip out to this part of the world,
which was a sea voyage through the Panama Canal, took
another six additional weeks, but once he got there in October,
he immediately set to work and stayed for about a month.
Governor Douglas of Vancouver finally became an active participant in negotiations,

(18:43):
now that he had someone actually interested in negotiating to
talk to. During that time that he was set up,
Scott ordered all but one company of US soldiers off
the island and convinced Governor Douglas to withdraw the British
ships as well, leaving just one another anchor in Griffin Bay.
All of these removals were to stay in place until

(19:04):
a complete survey of the island was complete. He also
recommended that Harney be relieved of his command. Harney at
this point was just being willfully insubordinate and had even
tried to dismiss the troops that Scott had ordered to
be left behind with troops of his own, and ultimately
he was indeed relieved of that command to the betterment

(19:26):
of everyone, which was like the wisest course of action.
Before we get into how this all resolved, let's take
another moment. So, the United States and Britain finally negotiated
a joint military occupation of the island, and that stayed

(19:49):
in place for twelve years. Essentially a few months after
Scott's departure, Britain and the United States each sent about
one hundred troops to establish a presence on opposite ends
of the Eye Island. So it was like, you can
have the same amount of guys there. It's like when
parents of multiple children are trying to divide the exact

(20:10):
right number of French fries, or like tay Betty has
equals taping a line down the center of the bedroom.
This is your side, this is your brother's side. Yeah.
The American effort was soon derailed by the impending Civil War,
though the soldiers were at that point all going without

(20:31):
pay and the camp was really falling into disrepair. When
Virginia succeeded on April seventeenth of eighteen sixty one, Pickett
gave up his command and he went home to join
the Confederacy. He would later make a much bigger name
for himself at the Battle of Gettysburg. In eighteen seventy one,
Britain and the United States signed the Treaty of Washington,

(20:52):
and the question of who San Juan Island belonged to
was turned over to Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany and he
sent it on to a three man arb tration panel.
This arbitration commission went on in Geneva for almost a
year before finally ruling that the island belonged to the
United States, and this officially put the boundary between the
United States and Canada through the Harrow Strait. British troops

(21:15):
withdrew from the island on November twenty fifth of eighteen
seventy two, and the last of the US troops had
also left by July of eighteen seventy four. In nineteen
sixty six, the US government created San Juan Island National
Historical Park to commemorate the event and its nonviolent resolution.
I have read several pieces that discussed this whole event

(21:38):
as like a great example of how two nations can
resolve something peacefully, which, okay, that part happened, yes, but
they should never have had the end to that point.
I mean, it seems from the outside, yeah, it it definitely.

(22:00):
There was definitely a lot of people, especially you know,
especially one particular person that harn problem. And I don't
know why I had such trouble with his name. I
kept We've got all this out, I think, but I
managed to type his name three different ways in my

(22:20):
notes for some reason. But yeah, he just kept wanting
to take matters into his own hands and operate without
going through the chain of command and basically be kind
of a jerk. Yeah, and put more and more guys
on this tiny island full of cheap and put more
and more people at risk to kind of prove his

(22:41):
points slash support his ego. Yeah. Yeah. When I was
wrapping up the research on this podcast, I kind of
did a second review to try to make sure that
I had not just gotten the American point of view,
because a lot of like a lot of the major
actors and this story, as we have told it, are
the American people, right. So I went in and looked

(23:01):
up some Canadian sources to just make sure because most
of the most of my original results happened to have
been from American sources and they were basically the same.
Because it's a lot of the instigation really was coming
from the American side, which totally makes sense that then
a lot of the resolution also needed to be started

(23:21):
by the American side. It was only fair. I'm sure
that when General Scott went out there was probably a
certain degree of embarrassment about the whole thing having gotten
to this point in the first place. Yeah, he was
not really happy about having to go all the way
out there. He was not in great health. Then it
was all kind to go clean up a mess. Yeah,
I'm gonna have to travel for six weeks to go

(23:42):
clean up the stupid mess. I would be quite put out.
I would too. Thanks so much for joining us on
this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive,
if you heard an email address or a Facebook RL
or something similar over the court the show that could
be obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast

(24:06):
at iHeartRadio dot com. You can find us all over
social media at missed Inhistory, and you can subscribe to
our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the iHeartRadio app,
and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed
in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more

(24:26):
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.