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The Pig War

Lyman Cutlar had A problem with a neighbor's pig rooting in his vegetable garden. Cutlar complained to the neighbor, but one morning, the pig was there again. Cutlar grabbed his shotgun, killed the pig — and nearly started a war between the United States and Britain.

The year was 1859, and Cutlar, a US citizen, was on San Juan Island, one of a group of islands sitting between what is now the mainland US and Canada's Vancouver Island. The pig — actually a "Berkshire boar" — was the property of the Hudson's Bay Company, whose agent on the island, Charles Griffin, had established Belle Vue Farm there in 1853. Unfortunately for Cutlar, his act would ignite tempers in an already long-simmering conflict between the US and the British. It would also lead to what would eventually be called the "Pig War".

In the early 1800s, the Pacific coast of North America was in dispute, with both the British and the US among those claiming the "Oregon Country". This vast, resource- rich area included all of present-day Washington, Oregon and Idaho and parts of Montana and Wyoming, as well as much of the current Canadian province of British Columbia. Despite the presence of indigenous Native Americans, the US and the British claimed the region based upon their "discovery" of it.

Fur trading was a major commercial venture in the area and, in 1812, the Hudson's Bay Company had established a foothold by taking over a significant fur trading post in what is now Northwest Oregon. Two years later, in the Treaty of Ghent, some boundaries were set between the two countries, but the "Oregon Country" was not addressed.

Negotiations continued, with no result. The British did not want to lose the lucrative fur trade route of the Columbia River, in the southern part of what is now Washington State. The US, however, wanted to secure the important port of Seattle, well north of the Columbia, because the ports of what later became California were not yet in American hands.

With matters at a standstill, both sides agreed to jointly occupy the region for 10 years. This time passed and joint occupation continued. In the meantime, by the 1840s, American settlers were steadily pouring into the area along the Oregon Trail. Some in the US became interested in active confrontation, including President James K. Polk, who declared in his inaugural address on 4 March 1845, that the US claim to "the country of the Oregon" was "clear and unquestionable".

Soon the belief in a "manifest destiny" to the entire continent had begun to grip the minds of many in the US and some began to call for war on the border issue. In 1846, the US Congress passed resolutions urging peaceful resolution, and negotiations were hastily begun. By June of that year, the "Treaty of Oregon" was ratified.

In the treaty, the British living near the Columbia River were given navigation rights, and the border was set in North America west of the Rockies, in general, at the 49th parallel. There was one major problem, however. The treaty set the boundary in the Pacific Northwest region "along the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude to the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver's Island, and thence southerly through the middle of the said channel, and of Juan de Fuca's Straights, to the Pacific Ocean."

But there was not one such channel — there were several. One of them (now known as Rosario Strait) divides the mainland of what is now Washington State from nearly all the islands in the chain. Another channel runs to the east of San Juan Island, dividing the islands roughly down the middle. The largest channel, Haro Strait, runs between San Juan Island and Vancouver Island.

Whether through lack of knowledge of the region's geography or out of a desire to settle more pressing disputes, the drafters of the Treaty of Oregon left open a very large question. The British chose to interpret the "channel" dividing the two countries as the one now known as Rosario Strait, thus giving them virtually all the islands in the chain. The Americans, not surprisingly, chose Haro Strait, which gave the US the bulk of the islands, including San Juan.

With the specter of continued US settlement, the Governor of the Crown Colony of British Columbia and the Company's chief factor at Fort Victoria, James Douglas, decided to take action. He had the Company set up a salmon curing station on San Juan Island in 1851 and, in 1853, ordered Griffin to establish Belle Vue Farm.

Soon after, an American customs collector started coming to the farm to demand that the Company pay customs duties on the livestock there. The collector, Isaac Ebey, declared the animals illegally "smuggled" into American territory. Ebey also appointed an inspector to remain on the island, and tensions increased when the inspector was nearly arrested by the British for the crime of calling himself a customhouse officer on British soil.

Others then got into the act, including a sheriff of the newly established Whatcom County, which included San Juan Island at the time. When his efforts to collect "county" taxes were rebuffed, the sheriff paddled over to the island with a group of bidders. He rounded up a bunch of the Company's livestock, sold them in auction on the beach after midnight, and managed to herd about half of them into tiny boats while brandishing guns at the frustrated Griffin, who had arrived too late. The US Secretary of State, alarmed at the hi-jinks, warned the territorial governor in the area that such confrontations with the British were to be halted immediately, pending resolution of the boundary dispute. A boundary commission was unable, however, to come to any conclusion. In the meantime, settlers, seen as squatters by Griffin and Douglas, were continuing to land on the island. One of them was Cutlar.

After shooting the pig, Cutlar went to Griffin and offered to replace it. Things deteriorated quickly, however, when Griffin started demanding the then-huge sum of $100. According to Cutlar, Griffin also threatened to arrest him and take him to Victoria for trial if he refused to pay.

Cutlar and the other American settlers then threw a defiant Fourth of July party on the island, running a US flag up a pole. It was still flying a few days later, when it was seen by US General William S. Harney while visiting outposts in the territory aboard the USS Massachusetts. Curious, Harney landed and quickly became enraged at the stories the settlers told.

Harney, well-known for his anti-British sentiments, had the settlers write up a list of their complaints. He then ordered Captain George Pickett and his 9th infantry to the island, in order to protect American citizens on what he deemed was US soil. A letter Harney wrote at the time reported the claim that Douglas' son-in-law had arrived at the island in a sloopof-war and threatened to take Cutlar forcibly to Victoria to stand trial.

On 30 July 1859, four days after Pickett landed and about 45 days after the pig was shot, Griffin sent a demand. He told Pickett the land the Americans were on "is the property and in the occupation of the Hudson's Bay Company". Pickett responded that he did not "acknowledge the right of the Hudson's Bay Company to dictate my course of action" on what he deemed American soil.

By then, Douglas had ordered a 30-gun British frigate to the island, under the command of Captain Geoffrey Hornby. Fearing imminent attack, Pickett begged Colonel Silas Casey at Fort Bellingham to send help. In the meantime, Hornby had also called for help, as it had become clear he would need more than one ship to carry out his orders of preventing Pickett from building fortifications or landing more US troops.

By August 3, two more armed British ships had arrived. At meetings with the British, Pickett refused to leave, threatening to fight any British troops that landed. Douglas had already ordered Hornby to make the occupation "at least... a joint one." For some reason, Hornby kept his troops offshore. There they stayed while both the Massachusetts and Casey arrived. By about August 12, Casey estimated, the British forces had increased to 1,940 men, 167 guns and five warships.

On August 13, Douglas wrote Harney, declaring the continued American presence on the island a "marked discourtesy to a friendly government", "calculated to provoke a collision between the military forces of two friendly nations". But Harney would not back down. Instead, the US forces began to build a fortification, called a "redoubt", and gathered supplies, including guns, preparing for the worst.

In the beginning of September, Washington DC finally became aware of what was going on. An alarmed President James Buchanan hastily dispatched Lieutenant General Winfield Scott to sort things out. Scott proposed joint occupation while the boundary dispute was resolved. The British eventually agreed. By November, the dispute was mostly over. Within a few months, the British and Americans would set up separate camps on opposite sides of the island.

It would be 12 years before the boundary dispute would be resolved. After an agreed arbitration in front of a commission appointed by Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany, the US interpretation of the treaty won. The "Pig War" had ended with only one casualty — the pig.

Kathryn Russell Selk. The Boar War: Much Ado About a Pig. . February/March 2008.

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