Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Pig War

Episode Date: November 6, 2020

Over the course of history, humans have fought over land, honor, wealth, and religion. But perhaps the oddest, and dumbest war which almost ever broke out between two major world powers….was over a pig. A single pig. Learn more about the British-American conflict known as the Pig War, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the course of history, humans have fought wars over land, honor, wealth, and religion. But perhaps the oddest and dumbest war, which almost ever broke out between two major world powers, was over a pig. A single pig. Learn more about the British-American conflict known as the Pig War on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Fear is the virus is trending on TikTok. Vaccines are poison. Then your yoga teacher says that sex-transferred. Traffic children are being sacrificed by satanic liberals, but it's all okay.

The Great Awakening is coming. What is happening? Every week on Conspirality Podcast, we explore the fever dreams that suck friends, family, and wellness gurus down the right-wing cult spiral in a search for salvation. This episode is sponsored by G Adventures. These are very troubled times. Even though things are starting to get better and more countries are opening up, People are still hesitant to travel, and that is totally understandable.

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health and safety guidelines. The Travel with Confidence tours are available for booking today and will be departing from October 2, 2020 to the end of 2021. For more information and to book your tour, click on the link in the show notes. If you remember back to my episode about the U.S. Canadian border, the British and Americans originally set the boundary in the West on the 49th parallel.

That was how they divided up the Oregon Territory. with the exception that the British got full control of Vancouver Island. The area between Vancouver Island and the mainland wasn't resolved in the treaty, however. The treaty said that the border would go down the middle of the Strait of Wandafuka, which is what separates Washington State and Vancouver Island British Columbia. The problem was there was more than one way to define the middle of the channel. Within the Strait of Wandafuka are the San Juan Islands. The middle of the channel could be defined as going through the center of the islands.

Or it could be defined as going around the islands in the deepest part of the channel. It wasn't really clear which side of the border the islands lied on. The U.S. and Britain agreed to hold the islands in dispute and just sort of left it at that. However, the dispute became the basis of what became known as the Pig War. In the Strait are several islands, the most important of which is San Juan Island. San Juan Island controls the mouth of the strait, so both the Americans and the British wanted to control that island. To that end, both the Americans and the British, aka Canadians, had settlers on the island. The British Hudson Bay Company had set up a sheep ranch on the island, and about 25 American settlers had also set up camp.

The incident which started everything occurred on June 15, 1859, 13 years to the day after the signing of the Oregon Treaty, which explicitly left the sovereignty of the islands unresolved. An American by the name of Lyman Cutler found a pig rooting around his garden eating his potatoes. This wasn't the first time this had happened. He was so angered at the pig that he picked up his gun and shot it. The pig belonged to an Irishman named Charles Griffin, who worked for the Hudson Bay Company and was a neighbor to Cutler. He had several pigs that he let wander around freely. Cutler offered Griffin $10 in compensation for the loss of the pig.

Griffin refused the offer and insisted on $100. Cutler then said he didn't have to pay anything because the pig had been trespassing in his garden and eating his crops. According to one account of the story, which may or may not be true, Color told Griffin, your pig was eating my potatoes, to which Griffin replied, It is up to you to keep your potatoes out of my pig. From here to paraphrase Ron Burgundy, things escalated quickly. Griffin contacted the British authorities and asked that Cutler be arrested for shooting his pig

and that the rest of the Americans be evicted. The American settlers, not liking the idea of the British being able to arrest Americans, on what they believe to be their soil, or the idea of being forcibly removed, as Brigadier General William S. Harney, the staunchly anti-British military head of the Oregon Territory, descend in troops. On July 15th, he sent Captain George Pickett, who later became a Confederate general famous for Pickett's charge at the Battle of Gittysburg, and 63 other men to the island. They set up camp near the Hudson Bay Sheep Company station.

The British governor of Vancouver Island, James Douglas, was angered at the intrusion by the Americans, so he contacted Captain Jeffrey Phipps Hornsby of the Royal Navy, who was sent to San Juan Island with the 31-gun steam frigate HMS Tribune. This was soon followed by the HMS satellite and the HMS plumber, which had 31 and 21 guns, respectively. Throughout July, the British kept bringing in Marines for a possible amphibious landing. Hornby refused to take any action, and instead waited for Rear Admiral Lambert Baines, who was the head of the entire Eastern Pacific Fleet of the Royal Navy.

Although while this was happening, more Americans kept streaming onto the island. By August 10th, not even two months after the pig was shot, there were 461 Americans with 14 cannons and five British warships, mounting 70 guns with 2,140 Marines and sailors staring down at each other. Governor Douglas was adamant that Admiral Baines land on the island. He refused to do so, saying that, quote, two great nations in a war over a squabble about a pig was ridiculous. The American commanders were basically given the same order,

not to shoot first and only defend yourself if necessary. By the time word of this incident got back to both Washington and London, both governments ordered everyone to stand down, as this would perhaps be the dumbest reason ever to start a war. In negotiations, both countries agreed that the island would be jointly occupied by both militaries, with forces of 100 men each. Soon after this was resolved, the U.S. Civil War started and a final resolution to the conflict was put on hold. During the Civil War, British authorities on Vancouver Island urged the British government to take back most of the Puget Sound region as the Americans were occupied with the Civil War, but nothing was ever done.

In 1871, 12 years after the initial military occupation of the island, both sides agreed to international arbitration by Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, who awarded the islands to the United States. On November 25, 1872, the British withdrew from the island and the Americans rushed in to hoist a giant American flag on the flagpole at the British camp, only to find that the pole had been chopped down. The British government eventually replaced a flagpole in 1998, and today it is the only place where a foreign flag flies on land owned by the U.S. federal government, in recognition of the peaceful relations between the two countries for the last 200 years. There's one interesting footnote that might put the pig war into perspective. After the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812 between the Americans of the British, historians found notes from British ministers after the war, which said if there was to be any future war with the United States, they would abandon all of their possessions in North America,

including all of what is today Canada, rather than try to fight another war. The cost of keeping it, especially in the face of a rapidly growing United States, was too great, and it would take resources away from what they considered their real prize, India. So, if things had turned out just a little bit differently, the nation of Canada might not exist today, all because a pig got into someone's garden. Executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is James Mackala. Please remember to support the show over at patreon.com, where you can get exclusive merchandise, and to leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

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