The Pig That Almost Started a War
Before Seattle became a metropolis, Puget Sound was a wild frontier of rugged homesteaders, vigilante justice, and international border disputes sparked by a single, ill-fated swine.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
In 1859, while both the British and Americans were claiming title to San Juan island, Henry Cutler, an American settler, was frequently annoyed by a pig belonging to employees of the Hudson Bay Company. Finally, to protect his crops, he shot the animal. He offered to pay double its value, but the money was refused. The next day, the British ship-of-war Satellite appeared, and Mr. Dallas, a chief factor of the company, went ashore to take Cutler by force to Victoria for trial. Cutler, with true Yankee grit, picked up his gun and defied them, saying they would have to kill him first. This minor dispute escalated until General W. S. Harney sent Captain George Pickett and a force of soldiers to occupy the island. The threat of bombardment was real, and the incident almost precipitated a war between the two nations before it was settled by joint occupancy and eventually international arbitration.
“Who knows how nearly that perverse pig came to being enrolled along with Boston’s Revolutionary tea as a part of the world’s historic exhibit of war-breeding relics?”
This 1892 reminiscence recalls a time when Seattle and the surrounding San Juan Islands were barely settled outposts. It reminds us that our modern border, real estate, and infrastructure debates are only the latest chapter in a long history of settling this rugged landscape.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.