FRIDAY HARBOR, WASH. — The history books don't say whether the dead pig had a name. There's also no mention of whether the slaughtered swine ended up as ham on someone's dinner table. But one thing is clear: The porker's plight nearly led to human bloodshed.
From his home on San Juan Island -- about 30 miles off the Washington mainland -- Lyman Cutler spotted the pig rooting through his potato patch, grabbed his musket and fired the fatal round.
After the killing, on June 15, 1859, Cutler told neighbors he'd had enough, that this wasn't the first time he'd caught the beast munching on his spuds. In those days, the U.S. and Britain both claimed the island, which made for an uneasy truce among residents. And Cutler, an American, had shot an Englishman's pig.
The squabbling over boundaries had been going on for years. In one earlier incident, after some Brits refused to pay taxes imposed by the Yanks, an enraged sheriff sailed to the island and, as payment, seized 39 English sheep during a nighttime raid. Lyman Cutler's shooting of the pig proved the last straw.
It was war.
Royal Marines sailed to the island and built a camp. So too did hundreds of U.S. Army soldiers. Both sides were waiting for someone to fire the first shot, but it never came. Over a period of 13 years, through negotiation, the conflict was resolved peacefully. Now, 150 years later, English Camp and American Camp have been restored as key parts of the San Juan Island National Historical Park, where celebrations this summer will mark the sesquicentennial of a most unusual war.
"Both nations were on the brink, militarily," says Mike Vouri, a National Park Service historian who has written extensively about what's called the Pig War. "The crisis mushroomed much larger than anything that had gone before."
By 1859, Vouri says, the two countries -- which had fought each other during the American Revolution and the War of 1812 -- had become trading partners. Having repealed laws against purchasing U.S. crops, England was buying American produce. In turn, the U.S. had lowered the tariffs on British manufactured goods.
"The economic engine between the two nations was very hot," Vouri says. "It was totally contrary to the interests of both nations to go to war over an island that was 54 square miles. . . . And so the two nations, viewing this pragmatically, decided they would talk this out."
