The San Juan Island Pig War (Spanish: Guerra del Cerdo de San Juan) began on June 15, 1859, with the shooting of a pig by an American farmer named Lyman Cutlar.
Cutlar’s pigs had been stealing food from the potato patch for some time because there was little other food available to feed them and they weren’t being properly fed. On that day in particular, one of his pigs had eaten most of the potatoes on cutlar’s field before being attacked and killed by one or two members of BritishCaptain Prevost’s sheepherding crew. This animal was owned by another American, James Waddell Jr., who lived nearby on Stuart island and blamed Cutlar for not
