Download The Events of 1871 and the Resolution of the San

History of British Columbia: Part 6
Bob Reid
The Events of 1871 and the
Resolution of the San Juan
Boundary Dispute
See these archives at www.notaries.bc.ca/scrivener.
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T
he year 1871 was historic
for the Colony of British
Columbia.
On July 20, it became the sixth
province of the Dominion of Canada.
Canada became a Pacific nation—A
Mari usque ad Mare” (from the Bible,
“He shall have dominion from sea to
sea”).
The entry of British Columbia into
Confederation and the construction of a
transcontinental railway was the dream
of John A. Macdonald, the leader of
the Conservative Party and the Prime
Minister of Canada. He saw the railway
creating an Imperial link between Great
Britain and the Eastern parts of the
British Empire.
It would also forestall the
expansionist policies of the United
States, which was anxious to link its
newly acquired territory in Alaska
with its territories in Oregon and
Washington.
But Macdonald did not participate
in the negotiations with the delegates
from the Colony of British Columbia
in June and July of 1870; he was ill.
Not as a consequence of his fondness
for whisky, even though he had gotten
quite drunk to celebrate the entry of
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Manitoba into Confederation earlier that
year, but because of the passage of a
gallstone.
He could not even be moved from
his office on Parliament Hill. Therefore,
it was George-Etienne Cartier, the
acting Prime Minister, who agreed to
the immediate construction of a railway
to the Pacific.
During the 1870 negotiations,
Macdonald lingered at death’s door
and, when he recovered sufficiently, he
travelled by steamer to Charlottetown
to recuperate. His convalescence
on Prince Edward Island allowed
Macdonald to converse with local
politicians about what it would
take to ensure the PEI’s entry into
Confederation. After all, British
Columbia had been promised a railway.
In British Columbia there was
jubilation. Most Colonists could not
believe Ottawa had guaranteed to
build a railway, especially to complete
it within a 10-year period. The British
Colonist expressed the general feeling
of the non-Aboriginal populace when
it wrote its New Year salutations that,
“Clad in bridal attire, she is about to
unite her destinies with a country that
is prepared to do much for her.”
The Scrivener
But back in Ottawa, storm clouds
were gathering. The immense cost of
building a railway from Montreal to the
Pacific in 10 years, across 3000 miles
of unsurveyed territory, through the
muskeg and swamps of the Canadian
Shield, across the desert wasteland of
the Prairies, and through the uncharted
rugged mountains of British Columbia,
almost scuttled the agreement. To
many, it seemed an act of madness.
Here was Canada, a country not
yet 4 years old, with a population of
less than 4 million people, promising to
build a railway across a vast wilderness
to connect with a population of about
28,000 non-First Nations.
It would be almost 1000 miles
longer than the railway built in the
United States, which had a population
of almost 40 million people.
Alexander Mackenzie, the leader
of the Liberal Party, commented it was
“one of the most foolish things that
could be imagined.”
And it is difficult to disagree with
him. The Liberal Party members in
the House of Commons opposed it
vehemently and even Conservative
members from Upper Canada (Ontario)
were questioning why Canadian
taxpayers should be laden with the
financial burden of building the railway.
The difficulty for Macdonald was that
the newly elected members of the
Legislative Council in British Columbia
had unanimously approved the
amended terms of union.
Volume 16 Number 2 Summer 2007
The interests of British Columbia
were also on the agenda and not simply
because some agitators in the United
States were demanding that Great
Britain cede British Columbia to it in
compensation for the damages caused
by Confederate raiders built in British
ports during the Civil War. Great Britain
and the United States hoped to resolve
the longlasting dispute concerning the
boundary between British Columbia
and the United States: Did in run west
or east of the islands in the San Juan
archipelago?
In 1859, this dispute almost
resulted in war between Great Britain
and the United States. It came to be
known as the “Pig War”—a bloodless
war in which the only casualty was a
pig.
Back in Ottawa, Cartier was
drawing on all his political wiles to save
the agreement with British Columbia.
If it failed, so would the Conservative
government.
Joseph Trutch, one of the colonial
delegates, who had travelled back to
Ottawa to see its passage in the House
of Commons, was summoned by
Cartier to attend a rebellious meeting
of the Conservative caucus at which
Trutch promised that British Columbia
would not demand a literal fulfilment
of having the railway built within the
10-year time limit if it were proven to
be beyond the financial capability of
Canada.
Cartier then rallied his supporters
from Lower Canada (Quebec) in the
House of Commons. After the Bill
passed in the House of Commons,
Cartier next obtained Senate approval
by assuring its members that the
railway would be built by private
enterprise, with the government
contributing land and a money subsidy.
Volume 16 Number 2 Summer 2007
His Herculean efforts, plus Trutch’s
reassurance to the Ontario members
of the Conservative caucus, saw the
passage of the Address to the Queen to
allow British Columbia to enter Canada
and passage of the agreement to build
the railway, thereby ensuring British
Columbia’s entry into Confederation.
tactics of the Americans, but also
against the appeasement policy of the
British whose attentions were focused
on the European stage where the new
German Empire had defeated France.
The balance of power in Europe
had shifted considerably; this added
impetus for Britain to resolve her
differences with the United States,
who had retained a large army after
its victory in 1865 over the Southern
States in its Civil War. For this reason,
and also because of the expense,
Britain decided that her troops
stationed in North America served little
purpose as a deterrent against invasion
by the United States. So, in 1871
the British Redcoats marched out of
Canada for home.
On May 16, the Imperial
Parliament in London issued the orderin-council to admit British Columbia as
a province of Canada and set July 20,
1871, as the date for its entry.
©iStockphoto.com/Simone van den Berg
Once again, Prime Minister
Macdonald was absent from the
debate, which was shaping up to be
the hardest fight since Confederation.
This time he was in Washington, DC,
as a member of the British delegation
that was negotiating a number of
outstanding disputes between Great
Britain and the United States. Canadian
interests concerned fisheries in the
Maritimes and trade.
Thus, the person most responsible
for B.C.’s entry into the Dominion is Sir
George-Etienne Cartier. The assurance
by Joseph Trutch that BC would not
insist on the building of the railway if it
would result in financial ruination was
also a decisive factor, but one that was
soon forgotten by the new province
when construction was not completed
within the 10-year period guaranteed in
the original agreement.
Tragically, during the time of
these negotiations, Cartier, a father
of Confederation and one of the great
statesmen of Canada, was suffering
from poor health. He died in 1873,
only 58 years old.
Meanwhile in Washington,
the Prime Minister, although a
representative on the British delegation,
found himself in the unenviable
position of having to witness Canada’s
interests being sacrificed on the altar of
British-American relations.
Macdonald not only had to defend
Canada’s interests against the bullying
The two exceptions were at the
naval establishments at Halifax and
Esquimalt where British troops stayed
until 1906. Although some Americans
relished the prospect of a war with
Great Britain as anti-British feeling ran
high, most policymakers in the United
States believed that British North
America would ultimately come “within
the magic circle of American union.” It
was only a question of waiting for the
inevitable to occur.
In the Pacific Northwest, the
United States and Great Britain had
been rivals since Lewis and Clark spent
the cold, wet winter of 1805 – 1806
at their crudely built Fort Clatsop at
the mouth of the Columbia River, the
site of present day Astoria. Then in
1811, John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Fur
Trade Company established Fort Astoria
at the mouth of the Columbia River,
4 months before the arrival of David
Thompson of the North West Company.
By 1818 the two countries adopted
a policy of “live and let live” as they
agreed on joint occupation of what
became known as the Oregon Territory.
By 1844 the influx of American
settlers to the region resulted in the
bellicose political slogan of “54 40 or
fight” by Presidential-hopeful Polk. But
as neither country wanted a war, the
diplomatic settlement saw the Oregon
Treaty of June 15, 1846, extend
westward to the Pacific to the 49th
parallel of latitude that was the existing
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boundary east of the Rockies with a
southward jog, allowing Vancouver
Island to remain British.
The boundary between the United
States and Britain for this “jog” was
designated in the Treaty as “the middle
of the channel which separates the
continent from Vancouver Island and
thence southerly through the middle of
said channel, and of [Juan de] Fuca’s
Straits, to the Pacific Ocean.”
Was the “middle…channel” the
Haro Strait, along the west side of
the San Juan Islands—or the Rosario
Strait, along the east side? For in
between the two straits lay San
Juan, Orcas, Lopez, and a number of
smaller islands, an area of about 170
square miles.
The Treaty of 1846 also
guaranteed the presence and property
rights of the Hudson’s Bay Company
in what was now United States’
territory. The HBC was allowed to
retain possession of its trading posts,
including the farms at Nisqually
and Cowlitz, the Puget’s Sound
Agricultural Company.
The newly arrived Americans
resented the presence of the HBC;
memories of the American Revolution
and the War of 1812 fuelled their antiBritish sentiment. Settlers trespassed
on HBC’s lands and seized possession
of the company’s property. The HBC
quickly discovered that justice for it
in the Oregon Territory was not to be
found in the territorial courts.
Forgotten was the fact that the
HBC initially had assisted the first
settlers to the region. The State
Legislature of Oregon recognized this
when it honoured Dr. John McLoughlin,
who had been the HBC’s Chief Factor
at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia
River, as the “Father of Oregon” in
1957, on the centenary of his death.
Moreover, during the bitter Puget
Sound Indian war, Governor James
Douglas had sent weapons and
ammunition, and also sent supplies on
credit to the American settlers in the
region. In return, the United States
government dragged its feet in the
repayment of the debt and rejected a
claim for damages to HBC property.
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The Governor of Washington
Territory, Isaac Stevens, even claimed
the HBC had taken an active part in
the war on the side of the Indians.
This outraged Douglas but American
opinion remained unaltered by the
truth. By 1857 relations were worsened
when territorial officials threatened
war because a British Columbia Indian
killed a prominent American settler.
Even though the Oregon Treaty had
guaranteed the right of free navigation
for HBC vessels on the Columbia River,
US custom officials made a mockery of
this right by charging exorbitant import
fees, then impounding the HBC ships
for nonpayment.
When the HBC resolved this
problem by diplomatic means, the
territorial officials then required HBC
vessels to obtain permits to enter
American waters. They even insisted
that HBC ships sailing between Victoria
and Fort Nisqually (at the southern tip
of Puget Sound) go through customs
at Fort Astoria on the Columbia—many
miles away.
When United States authorities
seized the HBC steamer Beaver, the
HBC caved in finally to the constant
harassment and closed its base at
Fort Nisqually—much to the delight of
Washington officials.
By 1849 the HBC realized it
could not retain its lands and holdings
south of the 49th parallel in the Oregon
Territories and offered to sell its
interests to the American government.
Talks dragged on for years. Why should
Americans pay for what they already
possessed?
It was not until 1863 that
Great Britain and the United States
established a joint commission to
dispose of Hudson’s Bay Company
properties and claims south of the 49th
parallel. And in 1869, a total payment
of $650,000 was awarded to the
Company.
The HBC did, however, want to
retain its extensive agricultural and
fishing rights in the Puget Sound
area. In 1850 it had a salmoncuring station on the largest island,
San Juan Island. And in 1853,
it expanded its operations and
The Scrivener
established a sheep farm on the
island, named Belle Vue Farm.
To the HBC, the islands were
British territory, whereas the Americans
held the position that the islands were
within the territorial limits of the United
States.
And when Washington Territory was
carved out of the Oregon Territory in
1853, San Juan Island was attached
to Whatcom County, its northernmost
county. The HBC no sooner landed its
sheep than American officials from
Whatcom County claimed that duty
was owed because the sheep had been
imported into the US. And in default
of payment by the HBC, the officials
seized and sold some of the sheep to
pay the duty.
Relations deteriorated as the
colonists on Vancouver Island resented
these actions as a continuation of the
bullyboy tactics of the Americans that
had resulted in the loss of lands and
trading opportunities. To prevent further
troubles, a truce was agreed until the
Anglo-American boundary commission
could resolve the dispute.
The Anglo-American boundary
commission, however, failed in its
attempt to resolve it. The British
claimed the boundary was Rosario
Strait and the Americans claimed it was
Haro Strait. The British Commissioner
offered the Douglas Channel as a
compromise and, although this would
have given the Americans the major
portion of the islands in the San Juan
archipelago, it was refused, because
San Juan would have remained British.
So by 1857, the matter was left up
to the governments of Great Britain and
the United States to resolve. This did
little to lessen the tension in the region.
By 1859 there were about 18
Americans on San Juan Island. They
based their claims on redemption rights
that they expected the US Government
to recognize as valid, but that the
British considered illegal. Neither side
recognized the authority of the other.
Tempers were short and it took little to
ignite a crisis.
The HBC had expanded its
agricultural operation by adding further
livestock, including 40 pigs, that were
Volume 16 Number 2 Summer 2007
allowed to roam freely about the island.
One of these pigs belonging to an
employee of the HBC, Charles Griffin,
an Irishman hired to run the HBC farm,
supposedly trespassed on land claimed
by an American, Lyman A. Cutler, a
disgruntled miner who, after failing
to discover gold in British Columbia,
set up his farm in the middle of the
HBC’s farm. On June 15, 1859, Cutler
discovered the pig rooting in his garden
so he shot it.
What ensued was a ridiculous farce
but one that could have had serious
global consequences.
Cutler offered Griffin $10 for
compensation for the pig. Griffin
demanded a $100. Then Cutler said
he would pay nothing because the pig
was trespassing on his farm. Matters
worsened when the HBC threatened to
arrest Cutler and take him to Victoria
for trial. The Americans on the island
sent a petition for military protection.
On July 27, the military
commander of the Oregon Department,
W. S. Harney, an Anglophobic American
Brigadier-General, sent a company
of 60 soldiers to occupy the island,
claiming it was American territory and
that the troops were to protect the
Americans from Indians. The troops
were under the command of Captain
George E. Pickett, who a few years later
as a Confederate general, led the illfated charge at Gettysburg.
The British forces were dominant and
Douglas was eager to avenge all the
imagined injustices suffered at the
hands of the Americans. He ordered
Captain Geoffrey Hornby to land his
forces and take the island by force.
But the Captain refused until Admiral
Robert L. Baynes, the commander
of British naval forces in the Pacific,
arrived.
When the Admiral arrived, he told
Douglas that under no circumstances
would he start a war over a pig.
What ensued was a
ridiculous farce but one
that could have had serious
global consequences.
The same reaction occurred in
Washington, DC. when federal officials
received General Harney’s report of
his actions and his request for naval
support. President Buchanan was
alarmed that a squabble over a pig
could cause an international incident.
The President did not want a
war with Great Britain; he had his
hands full with problems over slavery
and threats of secession by southern
states. He ordered General Harney to
do nothing and to await the arrival of
the Commander-in-Chief of the United
States Army, General Winfield Scott.
In response, the staunchly antiAmerican Governor Douglas ordered
British warships to the island, claiming
it was British territory.
On his arrival, General Scott
corresponded with Governor Douglas
and gained his trust to lessen the risk
of confrontation.
Matters escalated as more
American troops arrived and more
warships were sent. The traditional
animosities between the two sides
flared. General Harney was praised
by his side for “foiling a diabolical
scheme” by the HBC to establish
a British colony on American soil,
whereas in Victoria, the British Colonist
wrote that the American soldiers had
come “like thieves in the night to bully
us out of our just rights.”
General Harney was officially
rebuked and reassigned. The American
force on the island was reduced to the
number of the original detachment that
had landed and those original troops
were replaced with an equal number
under a different officer. Douglas in his
turn agreed to the anchorage of a single
British warship.
In the end, 461 American troops
were landed on the island, which was
surrounded by 5 British men-of-war
with 167 guns and 1965 men aboard.
Volume 16 Number 2 Summer 2007
As tempers cooled, sounder minds
in London and in Washington agreed
for token forces to jointly occupy the
island until the boundary dispute could
be peaceably resolved.
On March 21, 1860, a detachment
of Royal Marines, under the command
of Captain Bazalgette, landed on the
northwest coast and established at
Garrison Bay, the “English Camp.”
For the next 12 years, two military
camps of about 100 troops each
existed on the island. The dispute
was soon overtaken by events in the
United States when the first shot
was fired in 1861 at Fort Sumter in
South Carolina, marking the start of its
bloody Civil War.
Great Britain could have easily
taken control of the island. One writer
states, “Great Britain magnanimously
left the question in abeyance.”
Governor Douglas urged London to
send a force to occupy the territory
north of the Columbia River and
thereby recover control of the territory
that he believed rightfully belonged to
Britain.
But it is more likely that London
realized the serious consequences
of taking any action while the United
States was involved elsewhere. And,
after all, the dispute involved only some
islands that were of little interest to
British interests.
After the resolution of the
American Civil War in 1865, the United
States entered into new negotiations
to resolve the dispute. An agreement
was made in 1868 and amended in
1869, to refer the boundary dispute to
the President of the Swiss Republic. If
he could not determine which was the
channel to which the Oregon Treaty
of 1846 referred, he could find an
equitable solution that would amount to
the nearest approximation of the words
in the Treaty.
The United States Senate refused
to ratify this agreement because it was
determined to limit the question to a
choice between the Rosario and Haro
Straits.
In 1871 the dispute remained
unresolved; the negotiators at
Washington, DC, however, agreed to
refer the San Juan boundary dispute
to arbitration and the German Kaiser
Wilhelm I agreed to accept the position
of arbitrator. The Kaiser appointed a
three-man arbitration commission that
met for nearly a year in Geneva before
coming to a 2-to-1 decision.
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On October 21, 1872, the Kaiser
sided with the majority in favour of the
United States, thereby establishing the
boundary line through Haro Strait. The
San Juan Islands were confirmed to be
American possessions and the southern
boundary on the Pacific between
Canada and the United States was set.
On November 25, 1872, the
Royal Marines lowered the Union Jack
and left quietly while the Americans
raised their flag over the entire island.
British settlers who remained became
American citizens to keep their land
claims. Thus, the Pig War ended with
a whimper.
One consequence of the Pig War
was a determination of the British
Colonists to defend themselves. In
1859 the only British troops available
in the Colonies were the Royal
Engineers; they were stationed at New
Westminster on the Mainland Colony,
whereas Vancouver Island had only
periodic visits of warships of the Royal
Navy until 1862, when Esquimalt
became the British Navy’s Pacific base.
In 1860, however, Victoria’s black
community of several hundred men
and women who had come north from
California obtained permission to
establish the Victorian Pioneer Rifle
Corps, known as the African Rifles.
It comprised about 50 men. Other
communities followed. One of these
is the oldest militia regiment still in
service in British Columbia—the Royal
Westminster Regiment traces its origins
to the New Westminster Volunteer Rifle
Corps, formed in 1863.
To many, the Pig War’s resolution
started a gradual improvement in
relations with the United States. An
American writer wrote, “the Pig War
and its amicable resolution proved to
the world that two nations could solve
even the most difficult issues through
diplomacy and ushered in a new era of
peaceful Anglo-American relations.”
But the resolution of the “Pig War”
did not result in an improvement in
the relations between British Columbia
and Washington Territory. In 1884 an
American mob of about 100 so-called
vigilantes crossed the border into
British Columbia to capture Louie Sam,
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a 14-year old member of the Sto:lo
nation and hanged him on the pretext
that he murdered a shopkeeper in
Whatcom County.
side with the words “Brethren Dwelling
together in Unity.” Within the portal of
the Arch on the east side are the words
“May These Gates Never Be Closed.”
The ringleaders of the mob were
suspected of being the real murderers
but requests by the British Columbia
government to the Washington
Territorial government to turn over
the two men fell on deaf ears. It was
not until 2006 that Washington State
legislators approved a resolution
offering sympathy to Louie Sam’s
descendants and acknowledged that he
had been wrongly accused.
And the Union Jack continues to
fly above what was the “British Camp”
on San Juan Island. It is raised and
lowered daily by American park rangers,
making it one of the very few places
without diplomatic status where US
government employees regularly hoist
the flag of another country. s
To many, the Pig War’s
resolution started a gradual
improvement in relations
with the United States.
And the improvement in the
relations between Great Britain and
the United States often came at
the expense of Canada and British
Columbia , as was proven in the
Alaskan Boundary arbitration of 1903,
which settled the northern boundary
on the Pacific between the United
States and Canada. Once again, it
is alleged that Great Britain ensured
the maintenance of peaceful and
harmonious Anglo-American relations
at Canada’s expense by caving into the
pugnacious “big stick” diplomacy of
President Teddy Roosevelt.
The passage of time has swallowed
the bitter disputes and differences,
however, and today Canada and the
United States have forged a friendship
based on common interests and
principles of freedom and human
dignity.
At the international boundary
between Blaine, Washington, and
Douglas, British Columbia, stands
the Peace Arch, constructed to
commemorate the centennial—1814
to 1914—of the signing of the Treaty
of Ghent on December 24, 1814, that
ended the War of 1812 between the
United States and Great Britain.
The American side of the Arch
is inscribed with the words “Children
of a Common Mother, “the Canadian
The Scrivener
To be continued . . .
Robert S. Reid is an Associate Professor
Emeritus of Law. He retired from the
Faculty of Law at UBC on June 2003.
Bob remains a member of the Notary
Board of Examiners and is a member
of the Board of Directors of the Land
Title and Survey Authority. His interests
now are mainly the history of BC and
Canadian military history.
SOURCE REFERENCES
Jean Barman, The West Beyond the
West: A History of British Columbia,
University of Toronto Press, 1991.
Margaret A. Ormsby, British Columbia:
a History, The Macmillan Company of
Canada, 1958.
P. B. Waite, MACDONALD, His Life and
World, McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd.,
1975.
F. W. Howay, British Columbia. The
Making of a Province, The Ryerson
Press, Toronto, 1928.
Robert E. Ficken, Unsettled
Boundaries, Fraser Gold and the BritishAmerican Northwest, Washington State
University Press, 2003.
British Columbia: a Centennial
Anthology, Editor-in-Chief R. E.
Watters, McClelland and Stewart Ltd.,
1958.
Pierre Berton, The National Dream. The
Great Railway, 1871–1881, McClelland
and Stewart Ltd., 1970.
HistoryLink.org, The OnLine
Encyclopedia of Washington State
History, San Juan Island Pig War:
Annotated Bibliography by Washington
State History Day Winner Rebecca
Smith.
Volume 16 Number 2 Summer 2007