CUTLER'S GUN AND A PARK IN THE PLANNING

 

L-R: James Crook, Senator Henry M. Jackson,
with Lyman Cutler's gun, 
and Rhoda Anderson, sister to James,
standing next to the historic blockhouse 
at Garrison Bay, San Juan Island, WA.
Jackson was the chairperson of the Senate Interior 
and Insular Affairs Committee.
Click image to enlarge. 
Low-res scan of an original gelatin-silver photograph from the 
archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society© 

News Notes from the Washington State Historical Society
Vol. 5. No. 1, December 1964

"The world is full of battle monuments. It needs a few monuments to battles that never happened.
      Heed, then, the call of Senator Henry Jackson and others for national attention to be focused on a remote corner of Washington State, where an international boundary dispute almost erupted into battle, and finally, after a decade, was settled by a peaceful method ––arbitration.
      That corner is San Juan Island, the largest island in the group known collectively as the San Juans. On it are two historic sites––English Camp and American Camp. These and the area around them should be purchased by the federal government and turned over to the National Park Service who would then establish the San Juan Historical National Park.
      Some say it ought to be "Pig War" National Park. But that doesn't sound nice. Furthermore, it is inaccurate. There was a pig. But there was no war. And that's what needs to be commemorated.
      We spent last Saturday going to and from San Juan Island on a Coast Guard cutter, along with some 60 others assembled by the Washington State Historical Society, meeting with the local people at Friday Harbor and wandering about the site of English Camp, where the English blockhouse built before the Civil War still stands on the edge of a sheltered cove. Some history has to be related to understand the significance of the site: Euro-American settlers moved onto San Juan Island in the 1850s. Some were American homesteaders. Some were Hudson's Bay Co. sheep raisers. A treaty had been signed in 1946 finally settling the dispute of long-standing over the boundary between Oregon and Canada. It wasn't at 54 degrees, 20 minutes of latitude, as many had advocated, but instead was the 49th parallel and was to extend along "the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver Island and thence southerly through the middle of the said channel, and of Fuca's straits to the Pacific Ocean."
      This sounded all right in London and Washington, D.C. but it failed to specify which side of the San Juan Islands was to be considered the channel. Americans said it was on the west side. The British said it was on the other.
      Tax collectors, not surprisingly started the big row that ensued. The Hudson's Bay sheepherders wouldn't pay taxes to American tax collectors. So, 30 British sheep were seized and sold for payment of delinquent taxes. This produced an angry letter of protest from James Douglas, the British governor on Vancouver Island, to Gov. Isaac Stevens of newly organized Washington territory. But nothing was done. Then in 1859 an American settler on the island, Lyman A. Cutler, became enraged when one of the Englishmen's pigs kept invading his potato patch. In an unguarded moment, he gave vent to his rage by shooting the pig.
      He regretted his hasty action immediately and went to the Hudson's Bay agent with an offer to pay for the pig. But the Briton was angry, too, and said he would send to Victoria, for a gunboat to come and get Cutler and take him away to be tried and be punished. Cutler reloaded his gun and was prepared to defend himself, but was persuaded by his neighbors to hide so that he couldn't be found when the English came to arrest him. Then the settlers petitioned for help from the army, and a company of federal troops was dispatched from Fort Bellingham. They had no sooner arrived on San Juan, when three British warships anchored offshore and unsheathed their guns, ready for battle.
      The American commander on the island, Capt. George Pickett, showed more restraint than he displayed in later years at the battle of Gettysburg, and refused to fire the first shot. British Admiral Baynes, overruling the hotheaded Gov. Douglas, ordered the British ships not to fire unless they were fired upon.
      Gen. Winfield Scott was rushed to the scene, and he worked out a compromise agreement that called for joint military occupancy of San Juan until the diplomats resolved the question of who owned it. So for the next 12 years, while the diplomats dillied and dallied, the two nations maintained military camps on the island, a few miles apart.
      They didn't menace each other. They got along fine and visited back and forth. Finally, in 1872, the island boundary dispute was submitted to arbitration. The arbiter was the German emperor, Wilhelm I, grandfather of the Kaiser in WW I. He investigated the matter thoroughly and ruled that the channel actually was west of the islands, as the Americans had contended all along.
      Thereupon, the English broke camp, marched down to the shore, and sailed away never to return. They left several of their numbers, however, victims of drownings and accidents, buried in a little graveyard on a hill.
      Within two years a man named Crook moved onto the English campsite to homestead. His son, James Crook, lives there to this day [1964.] Senator Jackson assured him last week that he could have his wish to spend the rest of his days on the site. A man who has lived in one place for 90 years ought not to be moved.
      The federal government, if Jackson's bill goes through, would have no trouble with title insurance. No one but Crook and the State of Washington has owned the property––not since the day the German emperor resolved a dispute that began with the killing of a pig, and provided one of the few examples the world has ever seen of two nations resorting to international arbitration, rather than force, to settle an argument over territorial rights."
John M. McClelland Jr. Reprinted by permission from the Longview Daily News.

❖ CABIN BOY LANDS AT AMERICAN CAMP, Company D, 9th Infantry. ❖

Author/historian Lucile McDonald interviews William Rosler of Friday Harbor, 1960.

AMERICAN CAMP
San Juan Island, WA.
Officer's quarters; commanding officer's home; 
suspected married soldier's quarters. 
According to author, one building is believed to be 
the camp hospital. A blockhouse overlooked the 
front entrance to the encampment.
Unknown artist.
Sketch archived with BC Archives, Victoria.
Photo print from the archives of the S.P.H.S.©

"Rabbit hunters from the mainland who visit San Juan Island had been making a shambles of the monuments at historic American Camp, relic of the 'Pig War' days of the 1800s when American and British troops jointly occupied the island.
      The three monuments in the park were pock-marked and chipped and the inscription plates had been bruised by bullets.
      San Juan County authorities did not like what had happened to their landmark, but the site was where the 'wild' rabbits congregated in greatest numbers.
      William Rosler of Friday Harbor, son of Christopher Rosler, one of Capt. George Pickett's soldiers who helped build American Camp, remembered when there were no rabbits to shoot on San Juan.

William Rosler, age 81 years.
son of Christopher Rosler,
a soldier at American Camp, 
San Juan Island, WA.
Photo dated 1960.
Original photo from S.P.H.S.© 

      'We used to hunt 'coon when I was a boy,' Rosler said.
      Rosler is the only first-generation descendant of the 'Pig War' soldiers in the islands. His father, who died in 1907, was the last survivor of the original garrison. His mother died two years later.
      Rosler, at 81, has a keen memory.
      'My father was a subject of the Duke of Hesse until he changed his citizenship. See, that's what it says on this paper.'
      Rosler displayed a declaration of intention to become an American citizen, sworn to at Port Townsend in Feb 1861, by his father.
      'Dad came to the US from Germany as cabin boy on a ship when he was 14. He worked for an uncle who was a shoemaker in New York. Dad wanted to go west to the gold fields and the only way he knew to do it without money was to enlist. Instead of stopping in California, the troops were sent to Steilacoom. Dad got shot in the arm during an Indian-war skirmish. He was shipped to Fort Bellingham under Captain Pickett and from there to San Juan.
      'After five years in the service, Dad was discharged from Company D, 9th Infantry, on the island. He took a soldier's homestead close to the camp. The first work he did was to haul wood for the fort. He kept on doing it until the troops left in 1873.
      B.C. Gillette owned the right to the adjoining homestead at American Camp and my father bought his preemption.'
      Rosler has the two patents among his papers, one dated 1873 and the other ten years later.
      The original log house on the homestead burned and was replaced with a frame one.
      Bill's mother was an Indian, born at Fort Simpson, BC, in 1846. Her family moved to Griffin Bay, north of the military post in 1861, and she was married to Rosler a year later, while he still was in the Army.
      Her people had a village––at least 20 families––not far from my father's homestead,' Bill Rosler recalled.
      When I was a kid most of American Camp was standing. I used to play in the old buildings.'

American Camp, San Juan Island, WA.
According to the author, who interviewed oldtimers,
the highest part of this barn served as hospital
 for the US Army encampment.
Date of photo suspected to be before her visit in 1960.
Photographer unknown.
Original photo from the archives of the S.P.H.S.©

Some of the elder Roslers' house furnishings were obtained from the camp when it was discontinued.
      Rosler told how certain geographical points on the island got their names. He said as a child he used to pick up spent bullets on Bald Hill, where soldiers held target practice. 

Spent lead bullets (7/8" long) and one musket ball found
in the sand dunes of American Camp in c. 1968.
They were left behind by the US soldiers target practising,
as mentioned by Mr. Rosler, in this interview by L. McDonald.
Now the land is protected as a National Park.
Thank you T.M.

The soldiers stopped on these expeditions at a little island in Griffin Bay and ate their lunch. Ever after it was called Dinner Island.
      Chicken Rock, near Cattle Point, Rosler recalled, was named because of the wreck of a small boat with a load of chickens.
      'Fish Creek, once was called God's Pocket. It was where smugglers hid. Nobody seems to remember that Pear Point was formerly Barrel Point, because of a barrel found there. North Star Rock, also near Griffin Bay, got its name from a boat carrying cattle that was wrecked on it. The animals drowned and floated ashore. Father said he helped to skin them.'
      As part of his duties, the elder Rosler cared for the horses at American Camp. One time he went out to the pasture, wolves took after him. In the early period of the island settlement, many wolves were seen and hunting had a more serious aspect than in modern times.
      Rosler remembers when in summer months Indians camped on the coves and there was a big 'rancheree' at Kanaka Bay in fishing season and another large camp of British Columbia Indians at Deadman's Bay.
     'They came to dry fish and clams and get ready for winter.' Rosler said. 'They used everything they caught. They had to work for it wasn't like playing at hunting rabbits.'"
The above text from The Seattle Times 20 Nov. 1960.

1887: American Camp Color.

"Some thirty of the garrison at the American Camp on San Juan Island have been on the search for the last four days for a notorious character, who formerly dabbled in quartz in Victoria. If Captain Gray finds the "Doc", a ball and chain will grace his 'comely' person for at least one calendar month. He is charged with killing other people's cattle, and using the proceeds for his own benefit."
Puget Sound Gazette. April 1867
      

FLAG DAY 2014

Flag factory, 1913.
The Byron Collection, Museum of
the City of New York©
Postcard from the archives of the S. P. H. S.

"American Camp 

where troops were stationed on San Juan Is.
during the border dispute with Britain.
This sketch by an unknown artist 

was reproduced from a copy 

in the B. C. Archives, Victoria, B. C." 
Photo with inscription from the 

archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society.