0:02 [SPEAKER_00]: When things go as well as they did during the pig war, it can be easy to forget just how wrong they could have gone. 0:10 [SPEAKER_00]: I asked former chief of interpretation and historian for the San Juan Island National Historic Park, Mike Voorhee, how the pig war might have ended otherwise. 0:22 [SPEAKER_01]: any kind of an incident, any kind of a hot-headed incident, an American soldier shooting a British naval officer or one of the real Marines that was on the ship, but Cylice Casey was the American commander on site. 0:39 [SPEAKER_01]: And my feeling is that the combination of Casey and Apple Baines and officers like Captain Jeffrey Fitzwarren B would not have allowed that to take place. 0:54 [SPEAKER_01]: They seem to have a pretty good handle on how things should work. 1:01 [SPEAKER_00]: But those people were not always the one in charge, and any time you might have this pent-over tension with the stakes this high, it can feel easier than the moment to just fight and get it over with. 1:14 [SPEAKER_01]: Later, after the joint occupation was established, the British did not want George 1:29 [SPEAKER_01]: and Douglass specifically asked General Scott to replace pick up with another officer. 1:37 [SPEAKER_00]: So Scott did exactly that. 1:40 [SPEAKER_00]: He chose a more level headed, more competent officer in Captain Lewis case hunt. 1:46 [SPEAKER_01]: But Hunt was a bit of an idiot, and he was very stuck on himself, and he liked to write lots of letters, and he hated General Hearny. 1:58 [SPEAKER_01]: He wasn't the only company great officer to hate William S. Hearny. 2:02 [SPEAKER_01]: but he was the only one that was dumb enough to write about Pernie in the newspapers in one particular article referred to him as a silly stupid old goose. 2:16 [SPEAKER_00]: This gave Pernie just the excuse he needed to shake things up again and inch his country back in the direction of war. 2:24 [SPEAKER_00]: He sent pick it and his 2:28 [SPEAKER_01]: which was countered to General Scott's ruling. 2:31 [SPEAKER_01]: And not only that, Hardy says, I don't recognize General Scott's solution here with Governor Douglas. 2:40 [SPEAKER_01]: There's a arrangement. 2:41 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't agree. 2:42 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't recognize it. 2:44 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm now the commanding officer here. 2:46 [SPEAKER_01]: And all of the sudden, everybody's sent a tizzy again. 2:50 [SPEAKER_01]: Only the Admiral Bades says, no, we are not going to rise to this occasion. 2:57 [SPEAKER_01]: We are not going to do that. 3:00 [SPEAKER_01]: We're going to fall fast. 3:01 [SPEAKER_01]: This cannot be the decision of the United States government. 3:06 [SPEAKER_01]: And sure enough, when the United States government found out about this, 3:12 [SPEAKER_01]: found out what party had done. 3:14 [SPEAKER_01]: He was fired. 3:15 [SPEAKER_01]: They got rid of them. 3:16 [SPEAKER_01]: But in the profaled wisdom of the United States military, instead of sending him home, they gave him the command of the Department of the West, which was headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. 3:31 [SPEAKER_01]: So he had been getting a far more important job on the evil civil war than the one on 3:40 [SPEAKER_01]: So that was an instance where it could have flaired up again, and it did not because of the moral integrity, someone like R. R. R. R. R. R. Lambert Baines, and he was recognized by his government. 3:55 [SPEAKER_01]: He was given a knife that by Queen Victoria. 3:59 [SPEAKER_00]: One of the biggest surprises for me in this story was the involvement of Captain George Pickett, just three years before his famous charge at Gettysburg. 4:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Tensions between northern and southern states were already high in 1859, and talk of the session was in the air. 4:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Some northern officers, including General George McLean, believed that Harnie and Pickett were deliberately trying to provoke a war on San Juan Island. 4:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Both men were from the south. 4:28 [SPEAKER_00]: They were sympathetic with a southern cause, and repeatedly, notes the crisis toward violent escalation. 4:35 [SPEAKER_00]: If the North and South had a common enemy, and Great Britain, they might be more inclined to overlook their own differences. 4:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Or better yet, the government in Washington might become so preoccupied with this other war that the South could slip out the back door, so to speak, and secede. 4:54 [SPEAKER_00]: There's no way to know the truth of these stories. 4:57 [SPEAKER_00]: but they add an interesting wrinkle to the San Juan story. 5:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, in the 150 years since the standoff at Griffin Bay, Great Britain has become America's greatest ally. 5:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Mike shared another story toward the end of our conversation that I thought was a telling antidote as to just how far the two countries have come. 5:18 [SPEAKER_01]: The Americans rushed up there with their great big garrison flag to run up the British flag pole. 5:23 [SPEAKER_01]: But when they got there, they discovered the flag pole had been chopped down. 5:27 [SPEAKER_01]: The British did replace the flag pole, but they didn't replace it until 1998 when the National Park was created in 1966. 5:35 [SPEAKER_01]: The National Park Service erected an 80-foot flag pole on which to fly the British garrison flag. 5:43 [SPEAKER_01]: But it was eroded at the base and had to be cut down in 1997. 5:49 [SPEAKER_01]: The park applied. 5:50 [SPEAKER_01]: I was here then. 5:51 [SPEAKER_01]: We applied to the National Park Service to replace the poll. 5:56 [SPEAKER_01]: They didn't issue us the money. 5:58 [SPEAKER_01]: I was friends with the British Council general in Seattle. 6:02 [SPEAKER_01]: Michael Upton. 6:04 [SPEAKER_01]: we had met before I took this job here and I called him up and I said, hey, we don't have any money to replace that poll and he says, don't we count on that? 6:13 [SPEAKER_01]: And he found a way to have the British government send us 7,000 pounds, 12,000 dollars for a new poll. 6:22 [SPEAKER_01]: 90 beautiful 80-foot poll, fiberglass poll, the perks service had to match the money to install it. 6:30 [SPEAKER_01]: And we had a big celebration in 1998. 6:33 [SPEAKER_01]: Huge celebration. 6:35 [SPEAKER_01]: That's all the British wanted for it. 6:37 [SPEAKER_01]: And so they replaced the poll. 6:40 [SPEAKER_01]: So we have this great relationship with Great Britain. 6:43 [SPEAKER_01]: But not only that, the boundary between Canada and the United States is the longest, unfortified border in the world. 6:54 [SPEAKER_01]: It's the longest on fortified border in the history of the world, which is a fitting legacy to the peace that was assured here on San Juan Island in 1859 and finally in 1872. 7:09 [SPEAKER_00]: The park itself, where Mike once worked, and Cyrus once worked, and Cyrus currently is, was one of our more memorable stops on our trip out west. 7:20 [SPEAKER_00]: It's one of the most unusual parks I've ever been in, due to the fact that it's divided into halves. 7:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Each half is an opposite corner of the island. 7:29 [SPEAKER_00]: I ask Cyrus to describe the general layout. 7:32 [SPEAKER_02]: We are part and two units on opposite sides of the island. 7:37 [SPEAKER_02]: So we preserve two very different landscapes occupied by two very different empires. 7:42 [SPEAKER_02]: The landscape of English camp where the English rail marines were from 1860 until 1872 is wooded, it's sheltered, it's much colder and rainier. 7:55 [SPEAKER_02]: Then the area here at American camp where I'm based most of the time American camp by contrast is drier we actually have four times fewer rainy days then English camp has we are directly in the Olympic and casket rain shadows, but we're extremely windy because we are directly exposed. 8:15 [SPEAKER_02]: to the hero's strange. 8:17 [SPEAKER_02]: So it's a narrow area of land with two bodies of water on both ends. 8:23 [SPEAKER_02]: And for American campus, especially it's very dramatic landscape because the actual historic area where the environment was located is part of an open prairie where you've got visibility down to the sea and where you're highly explosive the wind and elements. 8:42 [SPEAKER_02]: And the historic structures are a small part of the unit. 8:48 [SPEAKER_02]: Much of the area is the surrounding landscape, which thanks to the 50. 8:54 [SPEAKER_02]: How many years have been around? 8:56 [SPEAKER_02]: We've been around for the six years, 56 and a half years. 9:00 [SPEAKER_02]: In the 56 and a half years that we've been a national park, it has been significantly re-vegetated and it's beginning to take on the appearance of wilder land than what it was when it was an agricultural landscape and a military landscape. 9:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Before San Juan, I've never seen two locations so close, with such radically different weather. 9:24 [SPEAKER_00]: These camps are just 15 miles apart, on the same small island, and the meteorological differences between them are almost night and day. 9:33 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and that comes from which mountains what is next to English camp is directly across from Victoria. 9:40 [SPEAKER_02]: You're about 12 and a half miles from Vancouver Island's biggest city. 9:45 [SPEAKER_02]: And on the other side is Bellingham, whereas here at American camp, you have the Olympic green shadow. 9:51 [SPEAKER_02]: It's Gwim in the Cascades green shadow on the other side. 9:55 [SPEAKER_02]: So double green shadow situation. 9:58 [SPEAKER_00]: More than just a biography and the weather separates the two forts. 10:02 [SPEAKER_00]: They're radically different and they're layouts in general feel. 10:06 [SPEAKER_00]: The American is very exposed and rugged and utilitarian. 10:11 [SPEAKER_00]: The British feels more like a tiny summer camp. 10:15 [SPEAKER_00]: There are gardens, flowers, and tree groves. 10:18 [SPEAKER_00]: It's very tidy and quaint. 10:20 [SPEAKER_00]: It feels very English, in that sense. 10:23 [SPEAKER_00]: I ask Cyrus to say more about what the forts would have been like in the 1860s compared with today. 10:31 [SPEAKER_02]: So American camp, and English camp had far more buildings, right? 10:37 [SPEAKER_02]: There were barracks at both of them. 10:38 [SPEAKER_02]: There we only have three buildings at American camp. 10:42 [SPEAKER_02]: There were more than a dozen at English camp. 10:45 [SPEAKER_02]: We had, I think, four or five buildings. 10:47 [SPEAKER_02]: There were many more. 10:48 [SPEAKER_02]: English camp was actually, like, more than two of us works. 10:52 [SPEAKER_02]: In a force, they had a billion, they had a bowling area, they had very fancy officers, quarters, they ate extremely lavishly, they had a keyed of library American camp, it was more sparse. 11:07 [SPEAKER_02]: But we were still able to get funding to install a telegraph line between both areas and have a telegraphed reader's office. 11:15 [SPEAKER_02]: We had a school for soldiers, children, and for the children of the American settlers. 11:21 [SPEAKER_02]: And the actual fortification, the readout was an earthen work, earth work, sort of structures. 11:27 [SPEAKER_02]: So it isn't obvious even today that you're on, 11:31 [SPEAKER_02]: a very well engineered military structure. 11:34 [SPEAKER_02]: And part of the interior has been lost. 11:36 [SPEAKER_02]: So that's one of the reasons the interior collapsed years ago. 11:40 [SPEAKER_02]: So don't have the area of it available. 11:43 [SPEAKER_02]: It's the historic 11:45 [SPEAKER_02]: The historic landscape has greatly changed, right? 11:48 [SPEAKER_02]: Once the military military's left, the a lot of the structures were pulled off at local farmers to use his homes. 11:58 [SPEAKER_02]: And so we lost a lot of the historical structures for that reason. 12:01 [SPEAKER_02]: In fact, the structures in American camp were all located carefully. 12:06 [SPEAKER_02]: I historians who figured out what buildings in town were actually American camp structures and then we brought them back. 12:13 [SPEAKER_02]: Is there a lot of British people who come visit the park? 12:17 [SPEAKER_02]: A fair number. 12:18 [SPEAKER_02]: More when the ferry is running over to Canada. 12:21 [SPEAKER_02]: Right now, the ferry to Canada is not running. 12:24 [SPEAKER_02]: So we don't get as many than that we've had. 12:27 [SPEAKER_02]: We always have a few people interested in military history or who see it as an opportunity. 12:33 [SPEAKER_02]: More Canadians, obviously given our proximity. 12:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Another interesting aside, the author of the unofficial official manual, for every corporate meeting from the last 100 years, was U.S. Army Officer stationed here on San Juan. 12:49 [SPEAKER_00]: His name was Henry Martin Robert, and I'm referring, of course, to Robert's rules of order. 12:57 [SPEAKER_02]: So we're noting our domain fortification here at American camp, the re-doubt was built by Lieutenant Henry Martin Roberts, who would later go onto Robert's rules of order. 13:07 [SPEAKER_02]: He was later deployed to New Bedford, Massachusetts, some of another national park, New Bedford Whaling National, St. Michael Park, which I actually backed. 13:15 [SPEAKER_02]: And while he was there in 1862, he was the chair of a religious meeting of Baptists and apparently whenever they were discussing not so out of hand that the meeting descended in chaos and Robert would home upset this religious meeting had turned into a practice and he decided he wanted to create a system for running meetings in order to guarantee that kind of 13:41 [SPEAKER_00]: From the moment we arrived there, I was wondering where the name Friday Harbor came from. 13:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Cyrus explained its origin. 13:49 [SPEAKER_02]: Peter Friday, who were Polima, as he was known in Hawaiian, was one of the shepherds that the Hudson's Bay Company landed here. 13:59 [SPEAKER_02]: And he landed here, I guess, in 1853, he worked for the Hudson's Bay Company. 14:06 [SPEAKER_02]: And what is now the town of Friday Harbor was where he homesteaded and where his sheepful was located. 14:14 [SPEAKER_02]: So Friday, like Paul Lima, means Friday in Hawaii. 14:19 [SPEAKER_02]: And his name was a person like a dating. 14:22 [SPEAKER_02]: He would see many cultures have this for your name is the day reward. 14:27 [SPEAKER_02]: And the story goes that a group of Americans showed up in Friday Harbor and asked him, what's the name of this place? 14:35 [SPEAKER_02]: And he thought they were saying, what's your name? 14:38 [SPEAKER_02]: So he said Friday, the English translation of his name. 14:41 [SPEAKER_02]: And so they named Friday Harbor. 14:44 [SPEAKER_02]: And it eventually became Friday Harbor. 14:47 [SPEAKER_00]: One question I had from the moment I knew the origin of the name pick war. 14:51 [SPEAKER_00]: And this may be a question you have too. 14:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Is what do they do with the body of the pig? 14:57 [SPEAKER_01]: That's a question that's asked by every visitor. 15:00 [SPEAKER_01]: Usually it's in the form of who ate the pig. 15:05 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, and I'll say, oh, I'm very clever, Sarah. 15:09 [SPEAKER_01]: I've never heard that one before who knows. 15:12 [SPEAKER_01]: And now I don't know. 15:13 [SPEAKER_01]: We have no idea what happened to the pig. 15:15 [SPEAKER_01]: Nobody wrote about it. 15:17 [SPEAKER_01]: As I said before, other than thinking it was a silly ridiculous 15:26 [SPEAKER_01]: the real issue here, and you must not forget this. 15:31 [SPEAKER_01]: The pig is fun. 15:32 [SPEAKER_01]: It seems ridiculous. 15:34 [SPEAKER_01]: It's silly. 15:35 [SPEAKER_01]: We all like to talk about it. 15:37 [SPEAKER_01]: But the issue was the boundary between the United States and Great Britain. 15:45 [SPEAKER_01]: That was the issue and the possession of the archipelago. 15:49 [SPEAKER_01]: Now the archipelago, you talking about. 15:52 [SPEAKER_01]: Sam one island is 55 square miles. 15:55 [SPEAKER_01]: It's 16.5 miles long and 7.5 miles wide and it's widest point. 16:01 [SPEAKER_01]: Now the British Empire could very well do without the Sam one islands. 16:07 [SPEAKER_01]: but it was a point of honor. 16:08 [SPEAKER_01]: It was a point of honor between the United States and Great Britain. 16:13 [SPEAKER_01]: It was diplomatic maneuvering. 16:16 [SPEAKER_01]: We think the boundaries should be scared. 16:17 [SPEAKER_01]: No, the boundaries there. 16:19 [SPEAKER_01]: We see this played out. 16:21 [SPEAKER_01]: It played out in Europe a hundred times. 16:23 [SPEAKER_01]: It's playing out in Europe right now. 16:25 [SPEAKER_01]: It violently. 16:27 [SPEAKER_01]: boundaries are a major bonnet contention throughout world history between nations. 16:37 [SPEAKER_01]: And this was no less a boundary issue. 16:39 [SPEAKER_01]: It was one that the British wanted the Americans to resolve. 16:44 [SPEAKER_01]: They wanted it resolved fairly. 16:45 [SPEAKER_01]: And they were willing to park their Royal Navy here in this region 16:58 [SPEAKER_01]: that was resolved in an honorable and gentlemanly way. 17:03 [SPEAKER_01]: So that's something that people should never lose sight of. 17:06 [SPEAKER_01]: That's what this issue is about. 17:09 [SPEAKER_01]: The fact that the military conflict was almost ignited by the pig, 17:16 [SPEAKER_00]: It seems like one of the takeaways from this story is that sometimes the only way to get a war right is by not actually fighting it. 17:24 [SPEAKER_00]: I love this idea that our commemoration of the pig war is a kind of monument to peacekeeping, British officers especially show remarkable restraint in preventing bloodshed. 17:36 [SPEAKER_01]: They were Americans, too, like George Pickett, for example. 17:41 [SPEAKER_01]: He comes into this, really ignorant of what Treaty of Oregon was all about, and also the permutations of the Sammon Islands. 17:53 [SPEAKER_01]: we tend to run over details and it was no less than then it is now. 18:01 [SPEAKER_01]: Now we always go for the sound bite or and most people like their news packaged and they like people to give it to on and they operate on preconceived notions. 18:17 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, of what an issue is all about somebody tells them, oh, it's just a myth and they'll accept that without doing any of their own research. 18:27 [SPEAKER_01]: or reading or listening beyond or watching beyond one certain take. 18:33 [SPEAKER_01]: We see an happening today all the time, it was no less than you were influenced by whatever newspaper you read. 18:40 [SPEAKER_01]: You were influenced by the political standing of that newspaper and you formed your opinions accordingly. 18:49 [SPEAKER_01]: Or you formed them not because you read something, you formed them because somebody told you something. 18:56 [SPEAKER_01]: So George Pickett obviously had never read and depth about what the Treaty of Oregon saw all about that the islands were held in dispute, that the boundary really hadn't been determined yet. 19:09 [SPEAKER_01]: So if the islands didn't belong to anybody, 19:13 [SPEAKER_01]: and he comes charging in and post this proclamation and it was only after he was educated with his feet in the fire. 19:23 [SPEAKER_01]: He found out from Winfield Scott who braised hardy and pick it up in his cabinet for Vancouver and picking it gone down there for Kurt Marshall duty. 19:34 [SPEAKER_01]: He called these guys into his cabin and chewed them out for what he 19:43 [SPEAKER_01]: and explained to them the facts of life about what the Treaty of Oregon was all about. 19:49 [SPEAKER_01]: And that their behavior had nearly precipitated a conflict between two world powers. 19:56 [SPEAKER_01]: In other words, you idiots. 19:59 [SPEAKER_01]: So when Pickett came back to San Juan, 20:07 [SPEAKER_01]: Pickett was a different man. 20:08 [SPEAKER_01]: He had learned what the dispute was all about. 20:12 [SPEAKER_01]: He had obviously researched the details. 20:16 [SPEAKER_01]: And when he arrived on the island, he made a point of communicating with his opposite here, Captain George Basil Jett of the Royal Marines. 20:26 [SPEAKER_01]: and was an example of circumstance and moderation, and a guy that was willing to do whatever it took to maintain peaceful relations with the British and work together to maintain peace relations on the island. 20:46 [SPEAKER_01]: So that one of the big lessons here, I think is to work out the details for yourself, 20:57 [SPEAKER_01]: before you form an opinion that might be toxic to your fellows. 21:03 [SPEAKER_00]: A great lesson that we all could brush up on. 21:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Listen, communicate, change with necessary, and of course, defer to diplomacy, rather than rushing into war. 21:15 [SPEAKER_00]: There's a reason you've likely never heard of the pig war. 21:19 [SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't really a war. 21:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Wars make headlines. 21:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Peace is boring, way less sexy than hero-making, life-taking conflict. 21:30 [SPEAKER_00]: So many people say they love peace, but all they talk about and read about is war. 21:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Mike took the opposite approach and promote this non-war as a model for non-violent diplomacy, though he knows it lacks the same star power as a bloody battle. 21:50 [SPEAKER_00]: And an example that the world needs now, as much as ever. 21:55 [SPEAKER_01]: I give you an example, right after I published my book, Turner Pictures contacted me and they were interested in the story, but eventually they made the decision not to do a film about it. 22:08 [SPEAKER_01]: You remember, Turner Pictures had done the Gettysburg film and what have you? 22:12 [SPEAKER_01]: This wasn't sexy enough for the people in that company at the time because there was no war. 22:19 [SPEAKER_01]: It's called the Pig War, the title is The Seasius. 22:24 [SPEAKER_01]: That's one of the things I always talk about with people. 22:26 [SPEAKER_01]: They always talk about the war and it wasn't a war. 22:28 [SPEAKER_01]: The war is when people get killed, wholesale when you've got surgeons working on people that have lost their arms and legs or you're putting people in the ground in several pieces. 22:41 [SPEAKER_01]: That's war. 22:42 [SPEAKER_01]: That's a war. 22:43 [SPEAKER_01]: There was no war here. 22:45 [SPEAKER_01]: It was worked out. 22:47 [SPEAKER_01]: The joint occupation, I always delineate there was a confrontation, a crisis where you have contention and it's almost to the brink, but then it doesn't happen. 22:58 [SPEAKER_01]: It's resolved. 23:00 [SPEAKER_01]: The pig war crisis, the way I have to delineate it for people, the blame it down is the pig war crisis. 23:08 [SPEAKER_01]: And then the peaceful joint 23:12 [SPEAKER_01]: So no more diplomatic solution, not sexy, but pretty fun, if you read my book, you'll say that an awful lot went on during the joint occupation. 23:27 [SPEAKER_00]: I love the book, and I think you will too. 23:30 [SPEAKER_00]: You can buy it on Amazon, like I did, or your nurse bookstore. 23:35 [SPEAKER_01]: The pig were standoff Griffin Bay has a new publisher, the salt books, which is an imprint of Washington State University. 23:43 [SPEAKER_01]: The book has been in print for 23 years. 23:47 [SPEAKER_01]: I like to think it's the definitive account of the crisis. 23:52 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's also highly entertaining, I hope. 23:56 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that if you'd like to learn more about this topic, that's where you ought to go. 24:01 [SPEAKER_01]: But the pig 24:05 [SPEAKER_00]: I'd like to thank Mike and Cyrus for joining me, over the last two episodes, and for sharing their expertise. 24:12 [SPEAKER_00]: These are literally the best two people in the world I could have spoken with on this forgotten history, and I've been thrilled to have them both with us. 24:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Cyrus works today in a similar position to the one Mike once filled, stationed at the San Juan Island National Historic Park as you already know, he's a great storyteller and his own right. 24:35 [SPEAKER_00]: If you ever get the chance, go and visit him at the brand new visitor center. 24:40 [SPEAKER_02]: for opening our new visitor center in July and me, it's gonna go way in depth into a lot of the untold stories that we dealt with here. 24:48 [SPEAKER_02]: And it's very exciting because we have been a national park for over 60 years, but we have never had a proper visitor center. 24:55 [SPEAKER_02]: Everything in the past is at Falk, and we finally have gotten a visitor center. 25:00 [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm gonna be doing a big media push on the visitor center, certainly. 25:05 [SPEAKER_02]: I just just put out, I just drafted my cons, plan yesterday. 25:08 [SPEAKER_02]: and we're going to be targeting as many people as possible because we're getting proud of our work. 25:14 [SPEAKER_00]: As they should be, and as a point of clarification, that visitor center will be located on the southern tip of the island at American camp.
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