#porcineproblems
That the U.S. nearly went to war with Great Britain over a pig seems, at first glance, like nothing more than a quirky history fact. As you peel back the layers, though, the San Juan Island Pig War story — told in The Pig War: Standoff at Griffin Bay by Mike Vuori — reveals much about 19th Century international relations. And like any worth tale involving pig slaughter, battleships, and strongly-worded letters, this story ends with a timeless moral lesson.
Nothing about 19th Century U.S. culture said, “We excel at sharing;” the Manifest Destiny doctrine imbued Anglo-Americans with a sense of entitlement to land so absolutely that they deemed facts like “someone already lives here” irrelevant. So, why were U.S. officials willing to accept 12 years of diplomatic indecision on the ownership of San Juan Island? The answer lies in the historical context: In the early-to-mid 19th Century, the U.S. and the British Empire stood at such an impasse on who should own the land between the Columbia River and the 49th parallel (now the Canada/U.S. border) west of the Rocky Mountains that they agreed to share the land. At issue was the trade route afforded by the deep, wide Columbia River. This “Oregon Territory” remained jointly occupied until 1846, when the land south of the 49th parallel officially became U.S. territory (with some contingencies).
Oregon Country’s disputed territory. (Photo: Wikipedia Commons)
The Columbia River and its tributaries. (Photo: Wikipedia Commons)
Vancouver Island, though it dipped south of the line, became British territory, but what the Oregon Treaty’s writers thought to be one maritime passage was actually two — and in the middle stood the San Juan Islands archipelago. The little islands may not have been that significant to either party, but trade routes certainly were. So, each respective country postured according to the treaty doctrine of “effective occupation” — either holding settlements or commercial interests in an area meant presumptive ownership. In context, a stalemate on a set of small islands represents a continuation of existing (and improving, for the U.S.) circumstances rather than an anomaly.
The tenuous arrangement both caused the scuffle over the pig and offers insight into why it escalated. The British imposed their presence on the island in the form of sheep, led by Charles Griffin of the Hudson’s Bay Company, who established the Bell Vue Sheep Farm on the south end of the island. Settlers from the U.S. came to the island to settle or squat, depending on who you asked. So, when the American settler Lyman Cutler shot Griffin’s pig for trespassing onto his property, Griffin believed him to be quite out of order as a squatter on Griffin’s “most valuable sheep run” (52). Tensions were already high around land ownership on the island, as evidenced by both Griffin and Culter’s belief that the land they lived on belonged to their own respective countries. As military reinforcements arrived, each country reinforced this attitude. “This being United States territory, no laws other than those of the United States… shall be recognized or allowed on this island,” read a proclamation made at Army Captain George Pickett’s orders (73). Meanwhile, Governor James Douglas of Victoria and British Columbia maintained that the island fell under British jurisdiction (90). Just as Griffin had inflated the value of his pig when Cutler offered to repay him, San Juan island assumed inflated importance in the minds of those involved in the dispute.
However tense the posturing became — as the standoff escalated with ever more battleships, guns, and men arriving at the island — each country’s far-off governments urged calm in the face of broader diplomatic and military concerns. Those forces would guide the conflict toward a peaceful outcome. Each military’s commanders were instructed to maintain peace if possible; not to take the first shot. As telegraphs took weeks or months to reach their destination, the messages came slowly. But President James Buchanan took a keen interest in maintaining peace on the island. “…The Royal Navy could still blow anything the Americans had out of the water in any ocean” (175). However, the U.S. could not simply back away at this point. In early November 1859, the two nations reached an agreement to reduce their forces on the island to 100 men each until a formal settlement could be reached. No one anticipated that the joint military occupation would last 12 years (224) — and so, the arrangement was left fairly ambiguous. When General Pickett returned to the island in 1860, he found an American camp that “floated on a sea of bad whisky, prostitution, and lawlessness” (217). As the nations squabbled over arbitration, however, each camp developed into a semblance of a real village, with the British even building a formal garden.
American Camp (Photo: Chris Light, Wikipedia Commons)
British Camp (Photo: Chris Light, Wikipedia Commons)
On October 21, 1872, the standoff-turned-awkward-roommate-situation ended rather anti-climatically with the ruling of a German arbiter. The island — along with the rest of the archipelago, would be awarded to the United States (with some conditions).
The military commanders who were posturing for war went home stung or disappointed without a sense of victory. However, the San Juan Island National Historical Park celebrates the incident as a model for how cool-headed diplomacy can help avert war. After all, the Pig War’s only casualty was, well, a pig.
