April 9, 2014 • 31 mins
In 1859, the United States and Great Britain nearly went to war over an issue that seems more likely to spark a feud between Hatfields and McCoys: An American settler shot a Canadian pig that was rooting around his garden. Read the show notes here.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy Willson' and so you it's funny to be
I wrote this little outline with an introduction that begins.
(00:21):
And you grew up in the Pacific Northwest, or maybe
in Vancouver or especially in the islands between them. You
may have already heard about the story we're going to
talk about today, which is the Pig War. If you
have tuned in thinking this is about the Bay of
Pigs invasion, I'm sorry, We're talking about something else. Um. However,
you you did grow up in that area and it
(00:43):
was a new story to you. Yeah. I mean I
didn't do all of my growing up there. 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. And
right in that area, right like Tacoma and polap which
is right outside Seattle, so I should have heard of it,
(01:07):
but I never had. Well, I may have been too
young when I left. I missed that chunk. Well. This
was recommended as a subject by 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 hat Fields and McCoy's, which is that an
(01:27):
American settler shot a Canadian pig that was rooting around
in his garden. Doesn't that sound silly? Yes? And I
can also see how that would escalate and a hat
Field in McCoy Yes. So that is what we're going
to talk about the day. Of course, people have been
living on what is now known as San Juan Island
(01:50):
between the mainland of Washington and the island of Vancouver
for thousands of years before European explorers started pushing into
the Scific 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 Eli Archipelago da San juan Uh.
(02:16):
Its location and 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
(02:37):
then called 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. It
was basically if some person or country eventually had the
most guys in there. It reminds me of like a
(02:58):
board gate, where like I, I have thirty miniatures in here,
so it's mine now. Um. 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. Is
(03:20):
probably an indication that it was pretty evenly divided for
a while. 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
over trapping, and this made it less attractive to England,
(03:41):
and England was less motivated to maintain its boundaries, whereas
the US was still quite eager for the land. So
in eighteen forty six, the U. S 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 looks straight on a map, you're actually trying to
(04:03):
walk down it. It is not remotely straight because it
was delineated by people on the ground with with kind
of primitive instruments, um by the long stretch of border
that is north of what's now North Dakota, Montana and
Washington and south of Alberta, Saskatchewan in Manitoba. And it
seems pretty self explanatory until you get to the western
(04:25):
end of the border. The treaty went on to say
it quote shall be continued westward along the forty nine
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 Schuca
Straits to the Pacific Ocean. The problem was that this
(04:46):
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 where the
San Juan Islands, which became disputed territory, with both the
United States and Canada basically saying that is mine. The
(05:07):
largest island, the one known as San Juan Island, was
the one that was the most demand. The US 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 a
sheep farm on the southern shore that September, which quickly
(05:30):
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 we're 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 count as humans.
(05:51):
Now maybe they did not, there's no equivalency. So the
land on San Juan Island was very rich and productive
of 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
and people would look for something else to do, like
(06:12):
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
in point, in eighteen fifty four, a U. S customs
(06:35):
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 poffee over
the channel in the middle of the night and confiscated
thirty five Griffin sheep, claiming that they were going to
(06:57):
be sold to pay back taxes. HUD's Bay Company later
demanded fifteen thousand dollars in damages. This also led Vancouver's
Governor James Douglas to right to Isaac L. Stevens, who
was his counterpartner Washington, to complain about it. The name
Isaac L. Stevens may ring a bell if you remember
(07:17):
our Chief Seattle episode. He plays a role in that also,
And this whole thing was raising enough eyebrows and Washington
d c that Secretary of State William L. Macy also
wrote to Governor Stevens basically saying, hey, please play nice guys. Uh.
He also asked for the British government to do the
same with Governor Douglas, and they did. Sadly, this did
(07:39):
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 thanks got simultaneously escalated and a little silly American
Lyman Cutler was part of the American influx of settlers
onto San Juan Island He was a failed gold prospector
(08:02):
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 a
hundred and sixty acres under the Donation Land Claim Act
of eighteen fifty so. Like the Homestead Act later did
(08:24):
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
grabs under this act, and number two the Land Claim
Act expired in eighteen fifty five before Cutler even got there.
(08:47):
And then number three uh 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.
One of these invading animals was a bore belonging to
Charles Griffin of Bellevue Sheep Farm fame. Cutler claimed that
(09:11):
he woke up one morning to the sound of laughter
outside of his window. This was on June 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 have been
newsworthy if Cutler had not been American, and if the
pig had not effectively been the property of the Hudson's
(09:33):
Bay Company, which was a treating 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 from three
men about how much the pig was worth, and then
use that information to figure out how much money to
repay Griffin for it. Griffin, on the other hand, demanded
(09:57):
a hundred dollars, saying that the pig was a prized breeder,
and Cutler said, quote, better chance for lightning to strike
you than for you to get a hundred dollars for
that hog, And then he stormed away in a huff. Yeah,
when things escalate and become insulting, gonna be so much
more escalation. Griffin took this matter to his bosses at
(10:20):
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 to have Cutler arrested, but if they did, UH,
it never came to fruition because he refused to go
with the people who came to arrest it. The records
are a little unclear on that. Some sources say one thing,
(10:41):
and some sources it may have been attempted, maybe it
never actually happened. So Fat July, Brigadier General William S.
Harney toward the area and he noticed the American flag
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
(11:03):
they were both to attacks by Native Americans UH and
to mistreatment by the British, and they cited the pig
incident in this process. Harney was staunchly anti British. UH.
He had 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 martial four times, and even though he had just
(11:26):
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 some force. He characterized the Hudson's Bay Company's
behavior as quote oppressive interference, and without consulting his command
(11:46):
or the War Department, he sent in Company d ninth
U S Infantry under Captain George E. Pickett. The sixties
six men arrived on the U. S S Massachusetts, and
they camped right by the Hudson's Bay cump and He's
Wharf and the sheep farm, which you know, doesn't seem
like they're provoking things at all. Harning did eventually tell
(12:07):
the War Department what he was doing, but he didn't
send this letter until the July until July nine, and
it didn't actually get there until September. So for a
long time he was just doing what he wanted, with
no one being posturing and taunting people. Although Pickett's orders
were to protect against Native Americans and the British, he
posted a notice uh claiming that the camp was American
(12:31):
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 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
(12:54):
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,
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
(13:16):
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
sounding dispatches asking for more reinforcements uh and he appointed
his own Justice of the Peace, Hardy kept funneling more
troops into the area. Pickett was eventually reinforced by a
(13:38):
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 Baynes, who was commanding
the British forces in the East Pacific. Bain's, on the
other hand, was aboard the eighty four gun HMS Ganges,
which he refused to leave for negotiations. Believe being this
(14:00):
entire thing to be ridiculous and beneath the involvement of
quote two great nations, Casey realized it was going to
be pretty fruitless to go up against that kind of firepower,
so he and 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 uh,
(14:23):
the American forces on San Juan Island had swelled to
about four hundred and fifty men, who had armed themselves
with fourteen field cannons and an additional eight thirty two
pound guns collected from the U S S Massachusetts. The U.
S troops reinforced their fortifications while the British Navy carried
out drills along the coast with about two thousand fighting
(14:44):
men ready for action. And at this point it was
basically an arms race over a dead pig. And from
my own perspective, if you knew how tiny this piece
of land was, that 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
they were they would just fire their cannons at the
(15:05):
bluffs or at like big rocks that were on the land,
which was vastly entertaining to some of the people who
uh were were around. It turned 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,
(15:29):
word finally reached Washington, d c. Which was then approximately
a six week trip away, about what was going on.
It was not through this letter sent to the War
Department there. It was when President James Buchanan read about
it in the newspaper on September three. Both the US
government and the British officials who were in Washington, d C.
(15:49):
Were astonished that an international incident was brewing between Vancouver
and Washington over a pig. Yeah, yeah, I can only
have And 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
(16:10):
during the eighties and a lot of like the nuclear
war fear, or are is somebody going to push the
red button? Yeah? The constant Cold war discussion. Yeah, And
and for a long 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 Brittain over a pig, I kind of go, oh,
(16:33):
maybe that was not so completely far fetched that somebody
might just accidentally one day be like, you know what
I'm gonna do, I'm gonna push the button. Unfortunately, all
of our civilization is still filled with humans who are fallible,
and we'll have lapses in judgment. And fortunately we now
(16:55):
have video conferencing, which would have resolved a lot of
the problems talking about in this episode, UH President Buchanan,
who had helped negotiate 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
(17:16):
in border dispute, 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 hotheadedness. 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
(17:37):
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 now that he had someone actually interested in negotiating
to talk to you. During that time that he was
set up, Scott ordered all but one company of U.
(17:57):
S soldiers off the island and convince it's Governor Douglas
to withdraw the British ships as well, leaving just one
at anchor in Griffin Bay. All of these removals were
to stay in place until 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
(18:18):
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 of everyone, which was like
the wisest course of action. Before we get into how
this all resolved, let's take another moment talk about the
(18:39):
words my responsive. That sounds great, so good communication, as
we know, extremely important to basically all of life's endeavors,
including work. Yeah, I'm sure we have on that moment
where like one person neglects to include something in an
email or forgets to read something in an email and
a huge, crazy mess developed and it could have all
(19:00):
been avoided with good communication, or when there's some kind
of weird information bottleneck and just nobody has what they need. So,
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(19:24):
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(19:47):
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our our Our most recent experience for this was one
(20:09):
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the end of the Pig War, So the United States
and written finally negotiated a joint military occupation of the island,
(20:55):
and that stayed in place for twelve years. Essentially, a
few months after Scott's departure, Britain and the United States
each sent about a hundred troops to establish a presence
on opposite ends of the 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
(21:16):
the exact number of French fries or has equals taping
a line down the center of the bedroom. This is
your side, 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 pay and the
(21:38):
camp was really falling into disrepair. When Virginia seceded 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, and the
(21:59):
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 arbitration 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 withdrew from the
(22:22):
island on November twenty five, eighteen seventy two, and the
last of the U. S 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 non violent resolution. I have
read several pieces that discussed this whole event as like
(22:45):
a great example of how two nations can resolve something peacefully, which, okay,
that part happened, but they should never have been game
to that point. I mean, it seems from the outside, Yeah,
it definitely. There was definitely a lot of people, especially
(23:11):
you know, especially one particular person that Harney was um.
And I don't know why I had such trouble with
his name. I kept, uh, we've we've got all this out,
I think, but I managed to type his name three
different ways in my notes for some reason. Um. But yeah,
he just kept wanting to take matters into his own
(23:33):
hands and operate without going through the chain of command
and basically be kind of a jerk 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 point slash support his ego. Yeah, when
I was wrapping up the research on this podcast, I
(23:53):
kind of did a second review to try to make
sure that I had not just gotten the American up
point of views, because a lot of like a lot
of the major actors and this this story, as we
have told it, are the American people. So I went
in and looked up some Canadian sources to just make
sure because most of the most of my original results
(24:14):
happened to have been from American sources, and that 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 by the Americans. It's only fair.
I'm sure that. Uh. When General Scott went out, there
(24:34):
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 of go clean up a mess. Yeah,
I'm gonna have to travel for six weeks to go
clean up the stupid mess. I would be quite put out.
I would too, uh, but not being put out. Do
(24:55):
you have to listener mail for us? I do? This
one is from we would get this back in February
where we're recording it almost a month later. Doesn't happen?
It does happen. This is from Grace who writes to
us about our Rosa Parks episodes, and Grace says I
wanted to quickly address a question that was raised in
the listener male portion of the first Rosa Parks episode, namely,
(25:17):
how did there come to be a Chinese American family
in the middle of Mississippi. So basically we read a
listener male that was about another court case UM that
had to do with integration and who was able to
attend what school? And it was about the daughter of
a Chinese American family. I think it was a daughter
who had not been allowed to attend the quote white school, um,
(25:40):
and the court upheld that verdict. So the letter goes on.
While I would never claim to be an expert on
Mississippi history, being a Mississippian and a history buff can
open you up to certain interesting and often depressing tidbits
about my fascinating state. There has been a small population
of Chinese Americans in the Mississippi Delta since reconstruction, and
(26:00):
the delta that you see is the northwest portion of
the state, which was once the floodplain of the river
and is now thanks to Levis where the majority of
Mississippi's cotton has grown. When making this transition from floodplain
read swamp to fertile farmland, many Chinese laborers who had
come through Mississippi laying railroad decided to stay to help
(26:20):
drain the swamps. Though they were immediately classified as quote
non white by the white Mississippians, the Chinese immigrants occupied
a sort of middle ground between whites and African Americans,
not precisely lesser, but distinctly other. They carved out a
firm niche for themselves as grocery store owners throughout the Delta.
After the swamps were drained, they served a mainly black
(26:42):
clients hell, but they were generally well respected as honestly
as honest businessmen by the white business owners of the area.
Of course, the white communities also entirely excluded the Chinese
Americans from their social structure Separate schools if possible, separate
classrooms if not. But violence against Chinese Americans was much
less frequent than against African Americans. I can't imagine the
(27:04):
Delta offered the Chinese immigrants of life they had dreamed
of when they left China, but their community did prove
to be a strong and economically successful one until the seventies.
In fact, the Delta has the largest community of Asian
Americans anywhere in the South. So there you go if
you're at all interested in little known ethnic minorities in Mississippi, parentheses,
the Vietnamese and Yugoslavs along the coast, the Choctaws, the
(27:26):
Jewish population, and parentheses. I'm attaching a trailer for a
documentary one of my friends was making called sub City,
which I will watch. Yes, that's really really good. That's
one of the reasons I had flagged it was later
and then she thanks us for the podcast and says,
thanks for the good work, Thank you so much, Grace.
Uh number one, that is fascinating history. Yeah, it's really Uh,
(27:51):
you know, there are often those times when two cultures
kind of happened together and people go, wait, what like
when there's you know, sort of a Vietnamese connection to
France and back and forth, and that always confuses people,
which I would love to talk about on a future podcast.
But that of course clarifies why that and it also
it also kind of brings up a lot of times
people assume, uh that a particular places history was pretty
(28:17):
homogeneous in terms of living there, Like there's this sort
of idea sometimes that people have that Europe was mostly
Caucasian people and maybe mostly it might be correct, but
there was definitely a lot of racial and ethnic diversity
happening in Europe way way back into the past um
because the people were trading and people were traveling, and
(28:40):
so you know, if if you look at there's a
great a great tumbler that is the people of color
and medieval art history love it. I love it constantly
showing pictures of Europe in the Middle Ages, paintings and
other artwork from that time period. That that really shows
(29:02):
how much of a spectrum there was of diversity happening,
was not just exclusively one particular race or one particular color. Um.
So I think this story kind of highlights that. Like
a lot of people probably imagine Mississippi as a place
that for many years of American history had mostly white people,
African Americans and Native Americans, but it was actually a
(29:24):
lot uh broader than that in terms of who was
living there. So thank you Grace for writing. If you
would like to write to us, you can. We're at
History Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on Facebook
at Facebook dot com, slash miss in History on Twitter
at miss in History are Tumbler, which is where we
keep up with the medieval people of Feller. Tumbler is
(29:44):
that mission history dot tumbler dot com, and we're also
on Pinterest at interest dot com. Slash missed in History
are pretty new, still growing. Website is also the thing
you can come see, and that is that missed in
history dot com. If you would like to learn more
about something we talked about today, you can come to
(30:05):
our website and put in the name Picket and you
will find the article how the Battle of Gettysburg works,
which is where Pickett, who was a captain at this
point in the the Pig War, later made a much
much more memorable name for himself uh in the Battle
of Gettysburg. You can do all that and a whole
lot more at how stuff works dot com for more
(30:31):
on this and thousands of other topics because it how
stuff works dot com. Audible dot com is the leading
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sign up today.
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy Willson' and so you it's funny to be
I wrote this little outline with an introduction that begins.
(00:21):
And you grew up in the Pacific Northwest, or maybe
in Vancouver or especially in the islands between them. You
may have already heard about the story we're going to
talk about today, which is the Pig War. If you
have tuned in thinking this is about the Bay of
Pigs invasion, I'm sorry, We're talking about something else. Um. However,
you you did grow up in that area and it
(00:43):
was a new story to you. Yeah. I mean I
didn't do all of my growing up there. 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. And
right in that area, right like Tacoma and polap which
is right outside Seattle, so I should have heard of it,
(01:07):
but I never had. Well, I may have been too
young when I left. I missed that chunk. Well. This
was recommended as a subject by 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 hat Fields and McCoy's, which is that an
(01:27):
American settler shot a Canadian pig that was rooting around
in his garden. Doesn't that sound silly? Yes? And I
can also see how that would escalate and a hat
Field in McCoy Yes. So that is what we're going
to talk about the day. Of course, people have been
living on what is now known as San Juan Island
(01:50):
between the mainland of Washington and the island of Vancouver
for thousands of years before European explorers started pushing into
the Scific 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 Eli Archipelago da San juan Uh.
(02:16):
Its location and 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
(02:37):
then called 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. It
was basically if some person or country eventually had the
most guys in there. It reminds me of like a
(02:58):
board gate, where like I, I have thirty miniatures in here,
so it's mine now. Um. 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. Is
(03:20):
probably an indication that it was pretty evenly divided for
a while. 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
over trapping, and this made it less attractive to England,
(03:41):
and England was less motivated to maintain its boundaries, whereas
the US was still quite eager for the land. So
in eighteen forty six, the U. S 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 looks straight on a map, you're actually trying to
(04:03):
walk down it. It is not remotely straight because it
was delineated by people on the ground with with kind
of primitive instruments, um by the long stretch of border
that is north of what's now North Dakota, Montana and
Washington and south of Alberta, Saskatchewan in Manitoba. And it
seems pretty self explanatory until you get to the western
(04:25):
end of the border. The treaty went on to say
it quote shall be continued westward along the forty nine
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 Schuca
Straits to the Pacific Ocean. The problem was that this
(04:46):
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 where the
San Juan Islands, which became disputed territory, with both the
United States and Canada basically saying that is mine. The
(05:07):
largest island, the one known as San Juan Island, was
the one that was the most demand. The US 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 a
sheep farm on the southern shore that September, which quickly
(05:30):
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 we're 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 count as humans.
(05:51):
Now maybe they did not, there's no equivalency. So the
land on San Juan Island was very rich and productive
of 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
and people would look for something else to do, like
(06:12):
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
in point, in eighteen fifty four, a U. S customs
(06:35):
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 poffee over
the channel in the middle of the night and confiscated
thirty five Griffin sheep, claiming that they were going to
(06:57):
be sold to pay back taxes. HUD's Bay Company later
demanded fifteen thousand dollars in damages. This also led Vancouver's
Governor James Douglas to right to Isaac L. Stevens, who
was his counterpartner Washington, to complain about it. The name
Isaac L. Stevens may ring a bell if you remember
(07:17):
our Chief Seattle episode. He plays a role in that also,
And this whole thing was raising enough eyebrows and Washington
d c that Secretary of State William L. Macy also
wrote to Governor Stevens basically saying, hey, please play nice guys. Uh.
He also asked for the British government to do the
same with Governor Douglas, and they did. Sadly, this did
(07:39):
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 thanks got simultaneously escalated and a little silly American
Lyman Cutler was part of the American influx of settlers
onto San Juan Island He was a failed gold prospector
(08:02):
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 a
hundred and sixty acres under the Donation Land Claim Act
of eighteen fifty so. Like the Homestead Act later did
(08:24):
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
grabs under this act, and number two the Land Claim
Act expired in eighteen fifty five before Cutler even got there.
(08:47):
And then number three uh 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.
One of these invading animals was a bore belonging to
Charles Griffin of Bellevue Sheep Farm fame. Cutler claimed that
(09:11):
he woke up one morning to the sound of laughter
outside of his window. This was on June 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 have been
newsworthy if Cutler had not been American, and if the
pig had not effectively been the property of the Hudson's
(09:33):
Bay Company, which was a treating 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 from three
men about how much the pig was worth, and then
use that information to figure out how much money to
repay Griffin for it. Griffin, on the other hand, demanded
(09:57):
a hundred dollars, saying that the pig was a prized breeder,
and Cutler said, quote, better chance for lightning to strike
you than for you to get a hundred dollars for
that hog, And then he stormed away in a huff. Yeah,
when things escalate and become insulting, gonna be so much
more escalation. Griffin took this matter to his bosses at
(10:20):
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 to have Cutler arrested, but if they did, UH,
it never came to fruition because he refused to go
with the people who came to arrest it. The records
are a little unclear on that. Some sources say one thing,
(10:41):
and some sources it may have been attempted, maybe it
never actually happened. So Fat July, Brigadier General William S.
Harney toward the area and he noticed the American flag
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
(11:03):
they were both to attacks by Native Americans UH and
to mistreatment by the British, and they cited the pig
incident in this process. Harney was staunchly anti British. UH.
He had 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 martial four times, and even though he had just
(11:26):
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 some force. He characterized the Hudson's Bay Company's
behavior as quote oppressive interference, and without consulting his command
(11:46):
or the War Department, he sent in Company d ninth
U S Infantry under Captain George E. Pickett. The sixties
six men arrived on the U. S S Massachusetts, and
they camped right by the Hudson's Bay cump and He's
Wharf and the sheep farm, which you know, doesn't seem
like they're provoking things at all. Harning did eventually tell
(12:07):
the War Department what he was doing, but he didn't
send this letter until the July until July nine, and
it didn't actually get there until September. So for a
long time he was just doing what he wanted, with
no one being posturing and taunting people. Although Pickett's orders
were to protect against Native Americans and the British, he
posted a notice uh claiming that the camp was American
(12:31):
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 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
(12:54):
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,
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
(13:16):
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
sounding dispatches asking for more reinforcements uh and he appointed
his own Justice of the Peace, Hardy kept funneling more
troops into the area. Pickett was eventually reinforced by a
(13:38):
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 Baynes, who was commanding
the British forces in the East Pacific. Bain's, on the
other hand, was aboard the eighty four gun HMS Ganges,
which he refused to leave for negotiations. Believe being this
(14:00):
entire thing to be ridiculous and beneath the involvement of
quote two great nations, Casey realized it was going to
be pretty fruitless to go up against that kind of firepower,
so he and 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 uh,
(14:23):
the American forces on San Juan Island had swelled to
about four hundred and fifty men, who had armed themselves
with fourteen field cannons and an additional eight thirty two
pound guns collected from the U S S Massachusetts. The U.
S troops reinforced their fortifications while the British Navy carried
out drills along the coast with about two thousand fighting
(14:44):
men ready for action. And at this point it was
basically an arms race over a dead pig. And from
my own perspective, if you knew how tiny this piece
of land was, that 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
they were they would just fire their cannons at the
(15:05):
bluffs or at like big rocks that were on the land,
which was vastly entertaining to some of the people who
uh were were around. It turned 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,
(15:29):
word finally reached Washington, d c. Which was then approximately
a six week trip away, about what was going on.
It was not through this letter sent to the War
Department there. It was when President James Buchanan read about
it in the newspaper on September three. Both the US
government and the British officials who were in Washington, d C.
(15:49):
Were astonished that an international incident was brewing between Vancouver
and Washington over a pig. Yeah, yeah, I can only
have And 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
(16:10):
during the eighties and a lot of like the nuclear
war fear, or are is somebody going to push the
red button? Yeah? The constant Cold war discussion. Yeah, And
and for a long 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 Brittain over a pig, I kind of go, oh,
(16:33):
maybe that was not so completely far fetched that somebody
might just accidentally one day be like, you know what
I'm gonna do, I'm gonna push the button. Unfortunately, all
of our civilization is still filled with humans who are fallible,
and we'll have lapses in judgment. And fortunately we now
(16:55):
have video conferencing, which would have resolved a lot of
the problems talking about in this episode, UH President Buchanan,
who had helped negotiate 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
(17:16):
in border dispute, 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 hotheadedness. 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
(17:37):
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 now that he had someone actually interested in negotiating
to talk to you. During that time that he was
set up, Scott ordered all but one company of U.
(17:57):
S soldiers off the island and convince it's Governor Douglas
to withdraw the British ships as well, leaving just one
at anchor in Griffin Bay. All of these removals were
to stay in place until 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
(18:18):
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 of everyone, which was like
the wisest course of action. Before we get into how
this all resolved, let's take another moment talk about the
(18:39):
words my responsive. That sounds great, so good communication, as
we know, extremely important to basically all of life's endeavors,
including work. Yeah, I'm sure we have on that moment
where like one person neglects to include something in an
email or forgets to read something in an email and
a huge, crazy mess developed and it could have all
(19:00):
been avoided with good communication, or when there's some kind
of weird information bottleneck and just nobody has what they need. So,
because it's so important stay on top of communicating, you
need to be able to stay connected and meet with
co workers and clients wherever they are. And that's why
millions of small business professionals rely on Go to Meeting
by Citrics. It is an awesome solution for meeting and
(19:24):
collaborating online. With Go to Meeting, you can share the
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to stay on the same page. There's also built in
HD video conferencing, and you just need a webcam to
see each other face to face. You can present, demonstrate,
and simply just get together from anywhere with any Mac, PC,
(19:47):
tablet or smartphone. We have used this before to connect
all our various people from very far away. Yeah, and
the mobile connectivity makes it super handy because people can
be out, they can be on vacation but still check
in if they have to, and they don't need to
lug their laptop with them if they don't want to
our our Our most recent experience for this was one
(20:09):
time with a meeting that had wound up speaking of
communication not on either of our calendars. H and I
had to be at home at that time. I should
not be in the office, and we were. We were
all It was just as easy as anything else to
to just have us from all our various locations in
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(20:31):
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Visit go to meeting dot Com click we try it
free button and use the promo code stuff. That's go
to meeting dot Com promo code stuff. Okay, back to
the end of the Pig War, So the United States
and written finally negotiated a joint military occupation of the island,
(20:55):
and that stayed in place for twelve years. Essentially, a
few months after Scott's departure, Britain and the United States
each sent about a hundred troops to establish a presence
on opposite ends of the 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
(21:16):
the exact number of French fries or has equals taping
a line down the center of the bedroom. This is
your side, 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 pay and the
(21:38):
camp was really falling into disrepair. When Virginia seceded 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, and the
(21:59):
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 arbitration 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 withdrew from the
(22:22):
island on November twenty five, eighteen seventy two, and the
last of the U. S 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 non violent resolution. I have
read several pieces that discussed this whole event as like
(22:45):
a great example of how two nations can resolve something peacefully, which, okay,
that part happened, but they should never have been game
to that point. I mean, it seems from the outside, Yeah,
it definitely. There was definitely a lot of people, especially
(23:11):
you know, especially one particular person that Harney was um.
And I don't know why I had such trouble with
his name. I kept, uh, we've we've got all this out,
I think, but I managed to type his name three
different ways in my notes for some reason. Um. But yeah,
he just kept wanting to take matters into his own
(23:33):
hands and operate without going through the chain of command
and basically be kind of a jerk 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 point slash support his ego. Yeah, when
I was wrapping up the research on this podcast, I
(23:53):
kind of did a second review to try to make
sure that I had not just gotten the American up
point of views, because a lot of like a lot
of the major actors and this this story, as we
have told it, are the American people. So I went
in and looked up some Canadian sources to just make
sure because most of the most of my original results
(24:14):
happened to have been from American sources, and that 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 by the Americans. It's only fair.
I'm sure that. Uh. When General Scott went out, there
(24:34):
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 of go clean up a mess. Yeah,
I'm gonna have to travel for six weeks to go
clean up the stupid mess. I would be quite put out.
I would too, uh, but not being put out. Do
(24:55):
you have to listener mail for us? I do? This
one is from we would get this back in February
where we're recording it almost a month later. Doesn't happen?
It does happen. This is from Grace who writes to
us about our Rosa Parks episodes, and Grace says I
wanted to quickly address a question that was raised in
the listener male portion of the first Rosa Parks episode, namely,
(25:17):
how did there come to be a Chinese American family
in the middle of Mississippi. So basically we read a
listener male that was about another court case UM that
had to do with integration and who was able to
attend what school? And it was about the daughter of
a Chinese American family. I think it was a daughter
who had not been allowed to attend the quote white school, um,
(25:40):
and the court upheld that verdict. So the letter goes on.
While I would never claim to be an expert on
Mississippi history, being a Mississippian and a history buff can
open you up to certain interesting and often depressing tidbits
about my fascinating state. There has been a small population
of Chinese Americans in the Mississippi Delta since reconstruction, and
(26:00):
the delta that you see is the northwest portion of
the state, which was once the floodplain of the river
and is now thanks to Levis where the majority of
Mississippi's cotton has grown. When making this transition from floodplain
read swamp to fertile farmland, many Chinese laborers who had
come through Mississippi laying railroad decided to stay to help
(26:20):
drain the swamps. Though they were immediately classified as quote
non white by the white Mississippians, the Chinese immigrants occupied
a sort of middle ground between whites and African Americans,
not precisely lesser, but distinctly other. They carved out a
firm niche for themselves as grocery store owners throughout the Delta.
After the swamps were drained, they served a mainly black
(26:42):
clients hell, but they were generally well respected as honestly
as honest businessmen by the white business owners of the area.
Of course, the white communities also entirely excluded the Chinese
Americans from their social structure Separate schools if possible, separate
classrooms if not. But violence against Chinese Americans was much
less frequent than against African Americans. I can't imagine the
(27:04):
Delta offered the Chinese immigrants of life they had dreamed
of when they left China, but their community did prove
to be a strong and economically successful one until the seventies.
In fact, the Delta has the largest community of Asian
Americans anywhere in the South. So there you go if
you're at all interested in little known ethnic minorities in Mississippi, parentheses,
the Vietnamese and Yugoslavs along the coast, the Choctaws, the
(27:26):
Jewish population, and parentheses. I'm attaching a trailer for a
documentary one of my friends was making called sub City,
which I will watch. Yes, that's really really good. That's
one of the reasons I had flagged it was later
and then she thanks us for the podcast and says,
thanks for the good work, Thank you so much, Grace.
Uh number one, that is fascinating history. Yeah, it's really Uh,
(27:51):
you know, there are often those times when two cultures
kind of happened together and people go, wait, what like
when there's you know, sort of a Vietnamese connection to
France and back and forth, and that always confuses people,
which I would love to talk about on a future podcast.
But that of course clarifies why that and it also
it also kind of brings up a lot of times
people assume, uh that a particular places history was pretty
(28:17):
homogeneous in terms of living there, Like there's this sort
of idea sometimes that people have that Europe was mostly
Caucasian people and maybe mostly it might be correct, but
there was definitely a lot of racial and ethnic diversity
happening in Europe way way back into the past um
because the people were trading and people were traveling, and
(28:40):
so you know, if if you look at there's a
great a great tumbler that is the people of color
and medieval art history love it. I love it constantly
showing pictures of Europe in the Middle Ages, paintings and
other artwork from that time period. That that really shows
(29:02):
how much of a spectrum there was of diversity happening,
was not just exclusively one particular race or one particular color. Um.
So I think this story kind of highlights that. Like
a lot of people probably imagine Mississippi as a place
that for many years of American history had mostly white people,
African Americans and Native Americans, but it was actually a
(29:24):
lot uh broader than that in terms of who was
living there. So thank you Grace for writing. If you
would like to write to us, you can. We're at
History Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on Facebook
at Facebook dot com, slash miss in History on Twitter
at miss in History are Tumbler, which is where we
keep up with the medieval people of Feller. Tumbler is
(29:44):
that mission history dot tumbler dot com, and we're also
on Pinterest at interest dot com. Slash missed in History
are pretty new, still growing. Website is also the thing
you can come see, and that is that missed in
history dot com. If you would like to learn more
about something we talked about today, you can come to
(30:05):
our website and put in the name Picket and you
will find the article how the Battle of Gettysburg works,
which is where Pickett, who was a captain at this
point in the the Pig War, later made a much
much more memorable name for himself uh in the Battle
of Gettysburg. You can do all that and a whole
lot more at how stuff works dot com for more
(30:31):
on this and thousands of other topics because it how
stuff works dot com. Audible dot com is the leading
provider of downloadable digital audio books and spoken word entertainment.
Audible has more than one thousand titles to choose from
(30:53):
to be download into your iPod or MP three player.
Go to audible podcast dot com slash history to get
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!