How a Shot Pig Nearly Sparked War: The Bizarre San Juan Boundary Crisis

On June 15th, 1859, a farmer named Lyman Cutlar shot a pig. That single shot nearly launched a third war between the United States and Great Britain. It’s the kind of almost-unbelievable escalation we saw in Episode 25 with a stolen bucket in Italy — but this time, the superpowers had rifles, not just lances. The whole mess started because nobody could agree on a map. Seriously. The 1846 treaty that set the border between the U.S. and British North America — what we now call Canada — was… ambiguous. It said the border ran through “the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver's Island.” Okay, great.

Except there are two channels. One puts the San Juan Islands in American territory; the other puts them in British territory. So for a decade, both sides just kind of… ignored it. American settlers moved onto San Juan Island. The British Hudson’s Bay Company set up a sheep ranch. It was a classic "let's just pretend this isn't a problem" situation. Everyone was living together, mostly fine, until Lyman Cutlar’s pig problem. Cutlar was an American farmer. The pig belonged to the British-run Hudson’s Bay Company. And this pig had a habit of getting into Cutlar’s potato patch. On June 15th, after it happened one too many times, Cutlar had enough.

He shot the pig. Now, here's where it gets completely ridiculous. Cutlar went to the British manager of the ranch, a guy named Charles Griffin, and offered to pay for the pig. He offered ten dollars. Griffin demanded one hundred dollars. Why? He claimed it was a prize-winning boar. Cutlar said, “Your pig was eating my potatoes.” Griffin’s response was basically, “But your potatoes were eating my pig.” It’s a perfect, almost beautiful, piece of human stubbornness. Cutlar refused to pay the hundred bucks, and the British authorities threatened to arrest him. This is where a local dispute should have ended.

But the American settlers on the island got spooked. They called for U.S. military protection. And Washington… sent it. They sent Captain George Pickett — yes, that George Pickett, of Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg fame — with sixty-six soldiers. When the British saw American troops landing, what did they do? They sent warships. Three of them. Carrying over two thousand men and a whole lot of cannons. Suddenly, you have sixty-six American soldiers staring down the barrels of the Royal Navy. The British commander was ordered to land his troops and wipe out Pickett’s men. And his response… saved everyone.

He refused. He said it was “foolish to involve two great nations in a war over a squabble about a pig.” Thank god for one sane admiral. Instead of a battle, what followed was a thirteen-year military standoff. Both the U.S. and Britain agreed to a joint military occupation of the island. Each side could have no more than one hundred men. They basically built camps next to each other and… waited. And what do soldiers do when they’re bored? They fraternize. They visited each other's camps, celebrated holidays together, held sporting competitions. They called each other "cousins." The British soldiers apparently developed a real taste for American Thanksgiving.

For thirteen years, the only shots fired were at sporting events. The whole thing was finally settled not by war, but by an arbitrator. Who’d they pick? Someone neutral. Someone with no stake in North American border disputes. They chose Kaiser Wilhelm the First… of Germany. In 1872, he looked at the maps, read the treaty, and ruled in favor of the Americans. The San Juan Islands were officially U.S. territory. The British peacefully withdrew, the Americans took full control, and the war that never was… just ended. It’s so easy to see how this could have gone differently. One nervous soldier, one overzealous officer, one politician looking to make a name for himself.

But instead, it’s a story about restraint. It’s a story where the cost of a pig was weighed against the cost of a war, and for once, everyone decided the pig wasn't worth it. The only casualty of the entire Pig War… was the pig.