Ideas - The Story Behind the 1859 Pig War that Claimed One Casualty: A Pig

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

In 1859, an American shot a pig that belonged to the Hudson’s Bay Company. Suddenly the U.S. and British Empire were on the brink of war once again. Over the years, tales about the conflict have been embellished and conspiracy theories were invented. But behind the folklore is a story of peace, diplomacy, and how we make meaning out of history.

Hey there, I'm David Common. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA and things that drive you absolutely crazy. Every day on This Is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most about life in the GTA, the news you gotta know, and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighbourhood, or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401, check out This Is Toronto, wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayed.

Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyad. In 1859, on a lush and green island between British Columbia and Washington State, an American shot a pig. A British pig. And then, of course, he felt kind of bad, right? He thought about it. Oh, my God, I'm going to be in trouble. I killed an animal that belonged to somebody else on the frontier. The incident on San Juan Island was a tiny part of a much bigger conflict, one that ended up drawing a border between Canada and the United States.

At the time, the newspapers called it all sorts of things. At the time, the newspapers called it all sorts of things. The newspapers were calling it the boundary difficulty, affairs at San Juan, the boundary question, the San Juan difficulty, and I also really liked imbroglio. But to anyone who's taken a field trip or vacation to San Juan Island, the incident has one name and one name only. The pig war. And the shock and excitement caused when one of their pigs all but brought war to their door made a deep impression on their minds. Remnants of the conflict still exist on the island. And the story's been told and retold from children's books to TV cartoons. You'll be glad to hear how I signed you all up to represent the American team

when we reenact the pig war next Saturday. Wow! Really? You mean it? If you look at the actual documentation from the past, it's a mess and it's overwhelming. And so you need someone to go in and you need someone to weave that story together in a way that not only makes sense cognitively, but also has a sense of stakes. And those stakes over the last 165 years? What the story means and to whom? How you interpret the story might change depending on where,

when, and who you are. We need to tell the truth, and so we're not going to say there was no pig war. There was a pig war, but these pigs getting in somebody else's garden, it really happened, I guess. But you know, in the middle of all that too too, our history is here, too. In this episode, producer Matthew Lazenrider revisits the site of the conflict for a story about a pig and how we make meaning out of history. Matthew Lazenrider joins me from Vancouver. Hi, Matthew. Hello, Nala. When did you first learn about the Pig War?

I was on vacation. I was about 21, and some friends and I were going camping. It was a beautiful, sunny weekend. We all crammed in my aging brown minivan that I was driving at the time. And from Vancouver, you drive south, you cross the border into Washington State, and you drive to a place called Anacortes to get to the ferry that takes you to the island. This trip really sticks in my mind because this kind of group of college friends I was with was a bit weird and provocative. And a young woman we were with decided just for giggles to make a sign to hang on our minivan while waiting in the ferry lineup as kind of a joke. And so we're in the lineup for the ferry and she hauls out this big pink sign that says, naked canoe trips. And I'm going to send a picture of the naked canoe trip sign to you now. There it is. Naked canoe trips. They look like a friendly bunch.

That's great. Anyone take you up on it? No, no one came up to us to take us up. But we got lots of smiles and laughs. And it generally went over as a funny joke, as intended. So we go about our goofy camping trip. And on the other side of the ferry, we spend a lot of time exploring the island. And one day we are walking a trail, this nice foresty trail on the northern part of San Juan Island.

And the trail kind of opens up onto this huge clearing and we see this enormous flagpole. And there on this American island is this gigantic Union Jack fluttering in the summer breeze in the middle of what looks like a very old-timey military camp. And that's where I first learned about the Pig War. So you moved on from the naked canoe trips. Yes, it became more of a history trip than a naked canoe trip. And it was such a fun discovery. So the Pig War, in all of the BC history I'd learned in high school, the pig war never came up. And many people may know the story, particularly if you live on some of those islands, but I didn't. And the thing about that flag was this was not too long after 9-11, which,

of course, in the United States caused this huge outburst of patriotism. And as soon as you cross the border into the U.S., there were American flags just everywhere and on the back of every truck and car. And so to come across this big Union Jack hidden at the other end of a forest on an American island with a bunch of young, crazy kids and to learn it was there because of an unfortunate pig-related incident was such a goofy and memorable way to be introduced to this thing. So while I was there, I learned as much about it as I could. And ever since, I've kind of kept it locked away in my mind as both a rollicking bit of history and a really great memory.

It sounds like a great memory. Can you take us to the place where this great memory was made? I mean, situate us. What part of Washington State are you talking about? So there's a body of water between Vancouver Island and the mainland, like both BC and Washington State, and it's made up of several straits and channels, the two biggest being the Strait of Georgia in the north

and the Strait of Georgia in the north and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which kind of bends around the bottom of Vancouver Island out to the Pacific Ocean. And there are a bunch of islands in the middle. So on the north side of the border, they're called the Gulf Islands, where my mom lives. And on the south, they are the San Juan Islands. And it can be a bit confusing because one of the biggest, but not the biggest island in the San Juans is called San Juan Island. And this whole region, Nala, is beautiful. And anyone who's ever been there knows these are islands with thick forests of Douglas fir and western hemlock and Arbutus trees, which are my favorite. They are these kind of twisty guys that grow right on the coast and the bark peels

off and the fresh bark underneath is bright, bright red. And bigger islands like San Juan have wide open grasslands. There are a few coastal dunes. There's beaches, creeks, lagoons. And it's all surrounded by usually this very, very calm, very blue, beautiful water. You've painted a beautiful picture. And it doesn't really sound like a likely setting for a war, let alone a pig war. So what happened, Matthew? likely setting for a war, let alone a pig war. So what happened, Matthew?

Matthew Feeney So the basic version of the pig war, as it's usually told, is at one point, the British Empire and the United States were a hairsbread the way from war over a pig. But there's a little historical context you need to know. So let's set the scene. In the first half of the 19th century, the area now known as the Pacific Northwest is in dispute between the British and the United States. And the region we're talking about was and is also home to many Coast Salish people, in particular the Lummi, the Samish, Clallam, and many others, the British and Americans eventually signed the Oregon Treaty, which sets the border of what is now British Columbia and Washington State. But whoever wrote up that treaty can't have been too familiar with the area,

and there was a big problem with it. Which was? Well, the rest of the American border across the continent is generally along the 49th parallel, right? So in this treaty, they just extend it. They say, okay, we're going to keep drawing the border from the Rockies to the coast of the mainland. And then we need to account for Vancouver Island because Vancouver Island dips below the 49th parallel. So the bureaucrats who wrote this treaty, 4,500 kilometers away in Washington, D.C., mind you, just said, OK, we'll scooch the border down below Vancouver Island and the border will be right in the middle of the channel. But in the middle of the channel are... The islands. Yes. Yes. So the Gulf Islands and the San Juan Islands. And so that created this new problem. The British think the islands are theirs. The Americans think the islands are

theirs. And they both know that eventually another treaty is going to have to be signed. So the U.S. and the British, they have to start maneuvering and plotting ways to secure the islands for themselves. So how do they do that? So Americans, they just start settling there and they kind of set up a tax and customs region. So there's a customs collector and tax collector, and that's how they treat it. And there's lots of squatters, according to the British anyway, who start little farms on various islands. On the British side, the British do what they always do when they wanted to claim something. They stick a Hudson's Bay Company outpost there. So near the southern tip of San Juan Island, on a stretch of open grassland, and it's kind of bordered by woods on one side and the ocean on the other, the Hudson's Bay Company starts up a new farm. Let me guess, a pig farm.

No, a sheep farm. Oh, boy. farm. But a little ways from that farm is the site of the incident that would, according to the story, nearly spark a war for the third time in 80 years between the British and the United States. So Nala, this summer, I went back to San Juan Island and ended up right where that pig would have been shot. And I was there with a man named Mike Vurey. He is a historian, and for years and years before retiring, he was the head of interpretation at San Juan Island National Park. So he was the guy who for years would take you around the park site, and he gives a tour that really amps up the storytelling side of things. He's also written

more scholarly work, in particular, a book called The Pig War, Standoff at Griffin Bay. And he also often performs as an American general in the pig war reenactments that take place on the island each summer. So I got him to walk me through the shooting and then the aftermath. Where was this darn pig shot? Okay, so the pig, we're turning around at the officers' quarters and we're looking out over the Strait of Juan de Fuca and we're looking at the site of Bellevue Sheep Farm.

You can see the flagpole down there. The Hudson's Bay Company folks would have called that the home establishment. That's where the servants were. And Charles Griffin, who was the agent for the Hudson's Bay Company folks would have called that the home establishment. That's where the servants were. And Charles Griffin, who was the agent for the Hudson's Bay Company. In 1859, he had about 4,500 head of sheep on several sheep stations on the island, including this one. He also had a group of farm animals, including a Berkshire boar, a very valuable animal on the frontier at this particular time. The boar wandered up from the sheep farm to the little subsistence farm

that had been established by a failed miner named Lyman Cutler. He had warned Charles Griffin about the pig invading his crop a couple of times. Griffin had put him off. And so one morning, June 15th, 1859, we know that from the Hudson's Bay Company journals, the pig wandered into Cutler's place again. And he said, I caught that pig at his old business. He chased him to the edge of the woods, which would be about like this. We're looking at the north end of American Camp, which is bordered by a woodland. Chased the pig to the edge of the woods and then shot it. And then, of course, he felt kind of bad, right? He thought about it. Oh my God, I'm going to be in trouble. I killed an animal that belonged to somebody else on the frontier. You know, that doesn't wash. I always tell the kids,

whenever I was giving this talk to the kids, I'd always ask them, how do you feel after you lose your temper? And then you calm down. And I'd always expect one would raise the hand and say, well, I feel bad after I lose my temper behind some of the kids the little Bolsheviks they go I feel really good but Cutler felt bad he took took his hat off his head went down to the Hudson's Bay Company says to Griffin I'm sorry I killed your pig but here's what I'm going to do I'll find any three men out there on the prairie I'll have them look at the carcass and I promise to pay you whatever they say that pig is worth. Well, Griffin wasn't having any of that. I mean, first of all,

he was alarmed at the number of Americans that were starting to come onto the island, interfering with his sheep runs and what have you. And he's, you know, he just says, hey, you know, that that's a very valuable boar. It's going to cost you $100. And Cutler says, $100 ain't going to pay you $100 for a pig that ain't worth 10. If I see you on my place, I'll shoot you too. That was it, the start of the pig war. Griffin tells Cutler, you're in trouble. If you don't pay up, the authorities are going to come over from Victoria and they're going to place you under arrest. Word gets to an American general in Washington state named William Harney. Harney finds out about it and he says, those British aren't going to threaten an American citizen on my watch.

Harney sends troops to occupy the island and make a proclamation. Harney sends troops to occupy the island and make a proclamation. This being United States territory, only the laws of the United States of America will apply. But to the crown colony of British Columbia, that's British territory. James Douglas, governor of B.C., sends a warship straight for San Juan and dashes off a letter to London. It would be very easy for me to plunge our two countries into all the agonies of a deadly contest. I will act with all discretion to prevent a collision, but the danger is imminent. Harney sends more soldiers and they dig in for the long haul.

Douglas sends more warships. The HMS Tribune, the Pilates, the Plumper. By late August, it was nearly 500 American soldiers facing off against five British warships, carrying over 2,000 men and wielding 70 guns. And just when it looked like it might become a shooting war, this is the line people usually use when they write the story, cooler heads prevailed. Cooler head number one, the commander of the entire Pacific Coast Fleet of the Royal Navy.

He'd been away in Peru and finally arrives at San Juan Island in September. Admiral R. Lambert Baines, veteran of the War of 1812, veteran of the Battle of New Orleans, where he saw the wreckage that was wrought on the British line by the Americans firing behind the cotton bales. He knows what bloody conflict is all about. Governor Douglas asked Baines to land Marines on the island to confront the Americans, and Baines refused. As long as he was around, the Royal Navy wasn't going to fire the first shot. fused. As long as he was around, the Royal Navy wasn't going to fire the first shot. Coolerhead number two. The U.S. federal government gets weary of Harney's hard-charging ways and sends in an old warhorse of their own.

They decided to send Lieutenant General Winfield Scott, commander of the United States Army. He and Baines had a lot in common. Winfield Scott had been a general in the United States Army since the War of 1812, who was six foot five, 385 pounds, has gout, dropsy, and a broken collarbone. He'd fallen off his horse before he departed. They had to put the poor man in a basket and derrick him from one ship to another and then on to the shore. Now, Scott should be well known to Canadians. Scott had resolved two border crises between the British in Canada and the United States. Winfield Scott makes a deal with the British so that everything can cool down Get rid of the cannons and the warships

The Americans get one camp at one end of the island And the British get a camp at the other He was not one to precipitously start a conflict He was the perfect guy to send the British went along with it And that's the way it stayed for 12 years. Americans at one side, British at the other. Until the British and Americans handed the whole matter over to an impartial third party. The Kaiser, Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany, was selected to be the arbiter.

And both nations submitted arguments and counter-arguments. October 21st, 1872, the ruling comes down. The Americans get the island. And so the judgment was made. It was accepted by the British government. And on November 22nd, 1872, the Royal Marines marched peacefully out of English camp. A zigzag border is drawn separating the Gulf Islands in B.C. from the San Juans in Washington. And the British say, OK, and they go home.

It wasn't worth the trouble to the British government. They held the Americans to the convention because of honor among nations. From unclear wording in a treaty, to a rapid escalation, to a joint occupation, referral to a third party, and a simple handoff, the San Juan Island dispute ended peacefully. The only casualty was the pig. Nala, that's the basic story of the pig war and the way it's come to symbolize something, which is diplomacy and goodwill between nations and peace. Now, Mike Vorey is a historian. He knows that the true history is a lot more complicated than that, and that in a way the story is still changing to this day.

But that's kind of the storybook version of what happened to this poor little pig. But that lesson about peace, is that a natural conclusion, the only way to interpret it? No, it's not. And there are other ways it's been interpreted over the past 165 years. But part of what makes that telling of the story so meaningful to Mike Vuri is his own past. So on our way to the site, we had a chat about his personal history. Well, I'm a native Californian. Joined the Air Force when I was 18 years old, right out of high school, thinking that if I joined the Air Force, I'd be on a great big base during the

Vietnam War and nothing would ever happen to me. But as it turned out, they made me an aircraft mechanic. I was a crew chief of an O-1 bird dog in the Mekong Delta, and I lived with the Army the whole time I was there. We were involved in forward air control, so much for avoiding the bullets. forward air control. So, so much for avoiding the bullets. And Nala, the lesson of the pig war for Mike is that war sounds really exciting at the beginning, particularly for people lucky enough to never know what actual deployment or combat is like. And sometimes it takes people who really understand war to keep people out of it. I never wanted to do anything like that again. I never wanted my son to do something like that.

I was very much involved in Vietnam veterans' rights, and I saw the terrible price of war and the long-term price of war. You know when people are ready to go to war down here I mean you see a lot of pickup trucks with these giant American flags in it and everybody's all grand to get involved in a war. But as has happened down through history, and you can go through it all the way back to ancient Sumer, the price of war is certainly nothing like the excitement that precipitates it. certainly nothing like the excitement that precipitates it. You know, we ought to be thinking really carefully about any kind of adventurism anywhere in the world.

So when I was given the opportunity to work in this park, a park that's theme is the peaceful resolution of conflict. You know, this particular dispute was solved by binding arbitration that both sides agreed to, and Great Britain abided by the terms of the arbitration. There was a peaceful joint occupation throughout. This is a great thing for a veteran to talk about. You know, it was a part theme that I could embrace wholeheartedly. So that's Mike Vourie, long-time and now retired head of interpretation at San Juan National Park. And that's Ideas producer Matthew Lazenrider. You're listening to Ideas on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, on US Public Radio, across North America on Sirius XM,

in Australia on ABC Radio National, on World Radio Paris, and around the world at cbc.ca slash ideas. You can also find ideas on the CBC News app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayyad. My name is Graham Isidore. I have a progressive eye disease called keratoconus. Unmaying I'm losing my vision has been hard, but explaining it to other people has been harder. Lately, I've been trying to talk about it.

ShortSighted is an attempt to explain what vision loss feels like by exploring how it sounds. By sharing my story, we get into all the things you don't see about hidden disabilities. ShortSighted, from get into all the things you don't see about hidden disabilities. Shortsighted from CBC's Personally, available now. The Pig War lasted for an astonishing 12 years plus. The museum sites are still there on San Juan Island, the English camp at one end and the American camp at the other. Alongside the U.S. flag and Union Jack,

another symbol was recently installed at English camp, one that hints at another story entirely. Ideas producer Matthew Lazenrider takes it from here with his documentary, The Pig War. 165 years on, the San Juan conflict is still a beloved bit of local history in the Pacific Northwest. During those 12 years, where two little encampments of soldiers sat on opposite ends of the island, the U.S. would fight and end the U.S. Civil War. The colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia would merge. The Dominion of Canada would be created,

and British Columbia would join Confederation. But it took a lot more time for all those events and escalations and crises to be given some kind of meaning. For the process of history to play out, for all of those floating, swirling events to merge into a narrative. And for the pig to be at the center of it all. Did the pig cause the war? The pig is an example of a logical fallacy called post hoc ergo propter hoc.

And to use a pun that was actually given to me at a history conference, you could say it was post hoc ergo propter hoc, meaning after the pig, therefore because of the pig. That's Gordon Lyle. He's a historian with a PhD from the University of Victoria, which is just across the water from San Juan Island. Well, I grew up in Victoria, close to Arbutus Cove. And from this cove, you could look across and see San Juan Island. And so even back then, I was aware that this island was an American island. I just couldn't quite figure out how and why it appears so close. I felt I could swim to it sometimes when

I was a kid. Lyle currently works as a historian with a legal firm representing indigenous communities on both sides of that border between the islands. His master's thesis was on the historiography of the pig war, how it's been interpreted and given meaning by writers and historians over the years, including the symbolism of that darn pig. So you could say, yeah, the pig got shot and he caused the war. But what that's ignoring is all the other factors and things that happened prior to that, including the fact that there was vague language in the treaty about where this boundary actually lay. It said it went just through a channel. So which channel? Was it Harrow Strait? Was it Rosario Strait?

Did it weave its way through the San Juan Islands? That could arguably be the actual origin of the whole war itself. Or you could say when Governor Douglas in 1852 set up a sheep farm on the island to secure it for the British. That could be the start of the war. Or 1855, when U.S. Customs landed on the island in the middle of the night, stole a whole bunch of those HBC sheep, auctioned them off to themselves so that they could generate revenue for the taxes they believe owed for this farm on what they thought should be an American island.

It's true. Americans stole a bunch of sheep before that pig was shot, annoying Governor Douglas to no end. A party of American citizens lately landed on the island and succeeded in carrying off with impunity 34 valuable rams. This is an exceedingly annoying affair. That could definitely be a cause of this conflict. There was a lot of official correspondence about this sheep stealing incident. This event could have been called the sheep war. But a pig is such a darn good symbol. And the pig is a martyr, right?

The pig was shot. The pig did die. That image holds a lot more power and sway over people than the incarceration of some sheep. There's a historian named E.H. Carr in the 1960s, and when he was writing about causation, he suggested what we really need to do is instead of identifying a cause, we need to take the sum of all the causes, perhaps create an art hierarchy and say which cause takes a little bit more weight than others, but we can never really identify one cause because history is just way too complex for that. I think the pig war is a really great example of E.H. Carr's suggestion to look at the sum of the causes.

There was a lot going on, and I think there would still have been a war even if the pig wasn't shot. When the conflict first erupted, the press wasn't too clear on the exact cause. The pig didn't usually get top billing in the press. on the exact cause. The pig didn't usually get top billing in the press. Most early reports of the seizure of the island in 1859 pegged it simply to that of ill-defined borders, or sometimes it was a dispute over taxes and customs. Harney, the American general, was inconsistent with his reasons for seizing the island. Sometimes it was to protect Americans from British laws. Other times, he claimed the island was necessary to protect the country from attacks by Indigenous people.

Important from the North Pacific, the seizure of San Juan Island by General Harney. That's the way a wire service article, published in papers across the United States, framed the reason for the seizure in September of 1859. By Northern Indians, the papers meant the Haida and Tlingit people of the North Coast. By Northern Indians, the papers meant the Haida and Tlingit people of the North Coast. Years earlier and dating back centuries, there had been attacks and raids by Haida and Tlingit expeditions in the Salish Sea.

But when a paper in Victoria carried that American claim that the U.S. needed that island for protection, several readers in Victoria wrote in to call it nonsense that the Americans were foisting blame on indigenous people so they could seize an island from the British colonist. To the editor, I was not aware that San Juan Island was of such dimensions as to call for a force of several hundred soldiers as a safeguard. No man who has the slightest pretensions to One reader had this tongue-in-cheek suggestion to match force with force. To the editor, it is currently reported that our American neighbors have only landed on San Juan to erect a fort to protect their territories from the inroads of northern Indians. I suggest we send an equal number of our troops and erect a second fort and garrison, and perhaps also send our vessels of war. That should hopefully allay

their fears. And when it was all over in 1872, no one declared pig war over. Papers in the United States called it a victory for American greatness, and the press in London fretted over what it meant for the future of their empire. A small article in the Victoria Daily News on October 28, 1872, wondered what it meant for the property market. wondered what it meant for the property market. The people of the formerly disputed San Juan Island feel terribly sore with the decision to give the United States sovereignty of the island. Property prices in Victoria are going up

due to the reduction of the area of BC real estate. Some things never change. It would take another decade and a half before the dispute was given a deeper meaning. In no history that I have been able to find, and in no popular book of reference that I have seen, after a great deal of searching, is there any account of that? In the year 1859, a pig almost plunged us into a war with Great Britain. There was an American in 1888 named Julian Ralph who wrote about it for a children's book. And he called it a pig that nearly caused the war.

So here we're starting to see where the pig's getting the center stage and it's getting the blame. His story is completely inaccurate. He has the wrong names of the characters. He doesn't really have a strong grasp on the actual historical events. He just kind of knows the general story and he tells it in a way that children can relate to. Although the pig was merely in search of something to eat, as pigs are most of the time, America may well be grateful, for he lost his life for his country. He was also telling it as a way to kind of solve the American psyche at the time because in the middle of the occupation of San Juan Island and immediately after the shooting of the pig was the American Civil War. And this completely consumed Americans for obvious reasons.

It was an incredibly violent and devastating event that shaped the course of history, arguably even to this day. Our country was then on the eve of a war the most awful in all history. And this comparatively slight incident made but little impression upon our people, all wrought up as they were, over the great questions which turned upon the issue of that terrible conflict. Ralph's story was published in St. Nicholas, a magazine for American children. It offered a nostalgic story of British quaintness. While the U.S. could tear itself apart over questions like human slavery,

people in charming old Victoria were perturbed even by the fate of a pig. It was very different with the people of Victoria and the great island of Vancouver. Theirs was then and has since been a peaceful existence, and the shock and excitement caused when one of their pigs all but brought war to their door made a deep impression on their minds. The conflict would take on other meanings after other wars. At the time the pig involved himself in our foreign policy, an atom was thought to be a pretty solid chunk of matter, not as solid as a pig. It hadn't occurred to anybody to try to split one. Lyle points to this

article from 1955 from writer Joseph Kinsey Howard in the Montana Magazine of Western History, where the pig is the force of British imperialism coming up against the American version, of British imperialism coming up against the American version, Manifest Destiny. The pig was British, which made a difference. In no time at all, he'd become an imperial pig. His birth was obscure and in no way remarkable, yet he was inexorably marked by fate, for he and America's Manifest Destiny were born at about the same time. America's Manifest Destiny, however, no longer dictates that we shall fight over a pig. Something that really etched in stone, both literally and figuratively, the message of the Pig War as a story about peace, was the creation of the park on San Juan Island.

In 1965, a senator for Washington state named Lloyd Meads introduced a bill to create the Pig War National Park to highlight the peaceful relationship between Canada and the United States. His bill stated, The Pig War National Historic Park will stand in the westernmost end of the longest unguarded border in the world as a permanent reminder of international restraint and of both countries' national maturity. As Senator Meade's bill worked its way through Congress, the United States was becoming increasingly

involved in the war in Vietnam. Around the same time, the lesson of the Pig War was getting reinterpreted again. In 1968, Keith Murray wrote the first full historical manuscript on the Pig War. Such rational behavior in international affairs was rare, and the incident deserves more attention than it has received by historians. He talks about a clear connection he was making between this story of the Pig War and what was happening in the Vietnam War. And he was the one who really cemented this idea that cool heads prevailed over the hot heads, that through rational discourse and finding common ground, we can avoid violent conflict and we can settle our differences peacefully. He said, when we look across the globe

and we see these devastating conflicts, we need this kind of story. We need to know that peace is possible. Thus, this tiny dot of earth on the beautiful bay will always be a reminder that senseless wars over insignificant causes do not need to happen. Lyle's point isn't that the message of peace of the park, or the pig war story itself, is necessarily wrong, just that we choose to make meaning out of historical events. There's a theorist named Hayden White in the 70s who wrote that you can't write history without narrativizing and you can't narrativize without moralizing. We're trying to tell a story that has some kind of a message. Whether it's implicit or not, we have some kind of messaging behind our writing of history.

And I think nowadays that's become much more accepted, but it was quite a radical idea at the time. This was the 1970s. Because even in the 1960s, social historians who were trying to write histories from the bottom up, histories about regular people, they still would have said, you know, I'm accessing archival documents, I'm telling you the true history, this is what it was really like. And Hayden White and other postmodernists said, there's actually no way to really directly be in contact with history. As soon as we start writing, that process changes

and it becomes a story. If you look at the actual documentation from the past, it's disorganized. It doesn't make sense. It's scraps of paper. It's proceedings of court cases. It's inventories. It's personal correspondence. And it's a mess and it's proceedings of court cases, it's inventories, it's personal correspondence, and it's just, it's a mess and it's overwhelming. And so you need someone to go in and you need

someone to weave that story together in a way that not only makes sense cognitively, but also has a sense of stakes. Scott Mogelson is a professor at the University of Washington in Washington State, not far from San Juan Island. He studies performance history and how things like reenactments and historical sites tell a story about the past. When you want to learn about something in the past, you can't access that past event. You have to go to a narrative about it. And so with that narrative, you are getting a theme. You are getting, you know, the protagonists and antagonists. Who's the good guy? Who's the bad guy? What was the outcome? What's the takeaway?

How can we draw upon this historical event, contribute to our human flourishing in the present? The unique thing about the pig War and the park that remains is so often historical sites have been monuments to the opposite, the necessity of war, the justification of the past, and the fantasies of empire. Another mainstay attraction at sites dotted around the west of Canada and the United States is the fort.

During a lot of the 20th century, these forts were really popular places to project a kind of vision of frontier grit and spirit. These were the pioneers who, through manifest destiny and a sense of self-determination, they picked up stakes and they loaded up the Conestoga wagons. They went out and they settled the West. The forts were there to protect these settlers. They were there to kind of claim territory to protect against the Indians, the indigenous peoples of the frontier. That was kind of the narrative that was popularized by historical movies and comic books.

And so they became these very nostalgic places of, you know, the American ideal. I think that that's changed radically, even in the past 20 years. Now, I think these forts, if they're still around and they still are attracting visitors, they are really trying to tell the stories of marriages between white settlers and indigenous people and raising multiracial families. And how the forts themselves, rather than being palisaded off from the wilderness around them, they were these meeting places, these hubs for commerce, for exchange of culture, contact zones, and the sharing of information, stories, and values. And so it's a very, it's much more touchy-feely and much more nuanced and complicated.

But if we recognize that history and storytelling about the past are subjective enterprises, and we recognize that our own identities and values will shape the telling of these stories, I think we can get closer and closer to a responsible and ethical engagement of the past. And part of that is recognizing that, yeah, it's going to change again. San Juan Island National Park faces a situation that's in some ways the reverse. For a long time, the park told one story, one of peace, of diplomacy over combat. And when I returned to San Juan Island after a couple of decades earlier this summer, man, I was ready to hear that story again.

And I was nostalgic for it. You know, people will remember for their lifetime what it was like going to a historical reenactment or a living history museum as a kid. They can close their eyes and they can go right back to that moment. They can smell the straw, the wood smoke, the coal fire in the blacksmith shop. They can hear the musket fire. They can remember talking to somebody in costume. And they have these deeply, deeply nostalgic and warm memories of these occasions. And when they go back to these places, they want to recapture that feeling. They want to step back into those moments.

They want to smell the same smells. They want to step back into those moments. They want to smell the same smells. They want to order the same apple pie at the concession stand. They want to show their grandchildren what they experienced as kids. We, very naturally as human beings, want to tell a story about the past that gives us meaning, that reaffirms our own values and beliefs and ideas, that makes us feel good about ourselves, and kind of make ourselves the protagonist in that past story. Hi, Nala.

Hi, Matthew. I wanted to bring you back into the conversation here, Nala. Hi, Matthew. way we think about the past and not just our own past, but the way we learn about history, that our own personal experiences kind of inform the way we conceive of what happened. So how does that idea of nostalgia, nostalgia's role in history, how does that play into how you learned about the Pig War? So when we spoke earlier, I told you about my first experience learning about the Pig War, earlier, I told you about my first experience learning about the pig war, that it spoke to me at a certain time and place. It was a time just after 9-11, during this building up of the war in Afghanistan, and then the invasion of Iraq. I was a Canadian in the United States, and then

me and a weird group of playful people stumble across this fun story of a war over a pig. And a lot of the plaques and boards and markers in the park at the time took language and concepts directly from that Vietnam era reading of the conflict. And, you know, not that there isn't a fundamental reality or a history that we can all agree on. But the story that was very appealing in my mind had a lot to do with very subjective things. And even though it's a story that I still enjoy and like holding on to, others might not see it the same way. So then what other stories could be told alongside with that of the pig war? Well, I'll tell you, when I went

back this summer, there was something there that wasn't there 20 years ago that told a different story. And it was at English Camp on the north side of the island. There are a few old white buildings there. There's a blockhouse and a little manicured garden. And this is where the English detachment spent 12 years kind of sitting in the rain. And it's surrounded by forest on one side and then the beach on the other. It's pretty close to sea level there. The new part that wasn't there when I visited 20 years ago, right next to the water, kind of standing right up near the edge, was this large three-part carving. What does it look like? It's kind of wooden poles stretching up.

The one in the middle is the tallest, and it tells some of the history of the Coast Salish people who were there before and after this dispute, particularly the story of something called reef net fishing, this unique fishing technology that Salish people used in those waters for generations and are reviving right now. And beside that carving are these two salmon, they're called storyboards, but they're these big, huge, bold, bright colored salmons. And the whole thing was carved by artists from the Lummi and Wissanich nations. So the Lummi and the Wissanich people are on two different sides of that border that was plopped down at the end of the pig war. The carvings that are there now were raised in 2016 in a spot where

the British, when building their camp, destroyed a lot of history. There was a longhouse there, which was torn down and used for building materials. And just a stone's throw into the bay, there's a tiny little island called Gus Island, which the Lummi see as their origin into the world. And it was a burial place. So there's the storybook ending version of the pig war, right? So Britain, now Canada, and the United States nearly had a war over something as ridiculous as a pig, but they sorted out their differences peacefully and they agreed on a little boundary and then everyone went home happy. The other story is that that zigzag border was plopped down right in the middle of a

waterway and islands used by, traded on, fished in, lived around by Coast Salish people for hundreds and hundreds of years. People had relationships and trade and family all around those islands and the mainland coast of Washington State and the southern coast of Vancouver Island. So in one story, the border is this thing that proves that people can live in peace and harmony with each other. And to another story, that zigzag border is something that divided a people. And those two stories are somewhat incompatible. pig war reenactment on that same site there was something called the trans boundary gathering hosting indigenous and non-indigenous people from around the area jim elliott was there he's a wasanich elder and here were his reflections on the pig war in the sancho language we would call this place Sumaya. And the next bay around the corner, we would call it Pukwele,

which was the main Takwistan, the main site. We never invented the 49th parallel. That's not our invention. That's a European idea. The two brothers, the Americans and the English, simply divided their fishing grounds between them. We need to tell the truth, and so we're not going to say there was no pig war.

There was a pig war. These pigs getting in somebody else's garden, it really happened, I guess. But, you know, in the middle of all that, too, our history is here, too. And I think, you know, that for this country to acknowledge, whether it's Canada or the United States of America, to acknowledge that we have a long, long history in this land.

When I come to a place like this, I like to envision that there was probably marriages here. There was children being born here. You know, there was funerals here. There was great celebrations here. There was children being born here. There was funerals here. There was great celebrations here. There was gatherings. There was real people that lived here. you were listening to ideas and to an episode called the pig war and the meaning of history

and to an episode called The Pig War and the Meaning of History. Special thanks to Shirley Williams at White Swan Environmental and to the U.S. National Park Service. Ideas is a broadcast and a podcast. Check out our vast archive online, where you can find more than 300 of our past episodes. This episode was produced by Matthew Lazen-Ryder. Our technical producer is Danielle Duval. Our web producer, Lisa Ayuso.

Senior producer, Nikola Lukšić. Greg Kelly is the executive producer of Ideas. And I'm Nala Ayed. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.