This page is a sandbox page for the elaboration of various themes and histories that are too lengthy to be on regular talk pages, and will be referred here as background information. Most of this is not "original research" but a synthesis of various sources, which are sited in the bibliography and occasionally in references, as I have time to compile them from what sources I have around, or where I know they are even if I can't cite the page ref. This particular subject area covers a lot of ground, and it's an interesting web of detail that most Americans and Canadians are unaware of, never mind anyone else, although some is known halfway by many residents of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest states and knowledge of the shared legacies and the unusual history is there, but not in detail. I know, I know I should write a book, or start a blog; but I like the Wiki system, and I'll come up with a way for people to ask questions or add comments to my texts other than the usual indenting system (something that looks spiffy).
I'm also now planning on adding resource links to various major articles and the Wiki projects and categories involving the region; hopefully I can make a nice intro page here for easy navigation and general Wiki editor resource-usage. Maybe the resources will be on the non-talk page for this sandbox name, just to separate the dialogues/debates from actual resources.....now if only I had eight arms, four computers, an extra brain, someone to do my cooking and cleaning for me....etc
The current items following are entries which I created on Talk:List of United States military history events followed by historical context, plus a few topic-insertions by User:Heqs. (I will try and create a topic-directory structure here so the index works good...). The historical context explains the political dynamics and the military balance during the early 19th Century. 'Nuff said; I posted it here so I this wouldn't take up too much space on Talk:List of United States military history events:
1818 -- Oregon. The USS Ontario dispatched from Washington, landed at the Columbia River and in August took possession of Oregon Territory. Great Britain had conceded sovereignty but Russia and Spain asserted claims to the area.
Conceded sovereignty??? In 1818? Spain had conceded claims in the area to Russia and Britain, then Russia and Spain cut separate deals with the U.S. in order to screw up the concessions they made to the British. The US did not "take possession" of the Oregon Territory; they seized a coastal fort or built one or something to assert US claims over the Columbia District aka Oregon Country, but had no impact on the existing Hudson's Bay Company adminstration of the territory, or on the powers of the reigning chiefs/nations, who were undisturbed largely until the Stephens Treaties and Cayuse and Yakima Wars. The USS Ontario's visit was an intimidation, quickly withdrawn, as I recall, and there was no way one puny ship at Astoria could control the territory all the way to the Rockies; it remained empty of Americans virtually until the dawn of the Oregon Treaty in the 1840s; the Ontario is inconsequential anyway in terms of the long-range history of the region. I'll be back to rewrite this....Skookum106:28, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This majority of the list is from the US military. It is pro-US, choosing words which justify US empire abroad. I just merged this article from four different articles about 5 hours ago. I fear a POV war brewing, but expected it to start from the right, not the left. See the original military article I got the majority of this from. Repetitive bullshit. Four people worked on the article over four decades, the last person was a really, really, really poor writer, updating the list from 1999 to present. I majorily rewrote the original. It still has an empire justifying stink to it, but I am willing to keep that stench to avoid a protracted revert war. I suggest adding a link to the episode in 1818. Slightly modify the list and actively avoid POV terms. Just to make sure we are on the same page, the one condition I do have, which I won't budge on, is don't start deleting entries, rewriting entries for clairity in my mind, is much different than deleting entries. User:Travb
"take possession" is neutral--maybe to neutral for your taste, but much better than "indimidation". Please change it, but be actively aware of the competing ideas here.
"take possession" is COMPLETELY UNFACTUAL. Read your history. Competing ideas? Look, TravB, I appreciate your efforts to keep things from flying out of control; but obviously, given what I can see in the list, there's no control over facts at all. "Take possession"? Read your history, and tell anyone who bitches or reverts to do the same. The US rattled its sabre in 1818 based on the treaties finaglings with Spain and Russia, but the upshot was a joint administration of the region (Oregon Country to the US, Columbia District to the Empire/HBC) until 1846, although the US never installed an administration until 1848. 1848, not 1818, and "taking possession" didn't happen until Gov. Stephens was appointed to the territory from 1846 on. Skookum116:51, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I just want to avoid a revert war. I have a feeling this page was built and maintained by pro-military people by its tone. I am new here too--today was my first edit here. Despite this, together, I think we can all make this page the very best and most comprehensive encycopedic article ever written anywhere on List of United States military history events(It already is). Again, I want to avoid a revert war, and focus my energies on building an encyclopedia, not fighting about the meaning of one entry or another. I hope you understand. I welcome your edits, be bold, but be sensitive too. Thats all I ask. Travb (talk) 07:20, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This page is also monitored by people on the Wikipedia:Wikiproject Indigenous peoples of North America although I agree with you it appears to have been started by military buffs. That's fine, so long as they don't overblow their history or MAKE STUFF UP. Which is what that 1818 nonsense is about. I gather the actual sabre-rattling over the Oregon boundary in the 1840s, the San Juans war (Pig War), and the Alaska Boundary Dispute may not count because there were no actual troop deployments, just the threat of war; er, there's probably another list of US irredentisms somewhere; any one of the three incidents I just mentioned could overnight have flared to a major war, however; the US similarly could have (but didn't) intervene in the Riel Rebellions. But back to the point: there's a number of American things to do with Canada that aren't here; mostly War of 1812 stuff, but.....Skookum116:55, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm; something just crossed my mind as I re-read this....thinking of those dot-dot-dots at the end, y'see. Because some of it has to do with American adventurists in a non-governmental way. Such is already the case with the 1830s filibuster in Nicaragua and other "proxy" actions. Not the same as the dirty wars exactly, as listed below, which were official and semi-official government operations; hmm haven't looked up Iran-Contra yet...one set of actual military things that did cross my mind was the border mobilizations in the Pacific Northwest, above and beyond the USS Ontario "incident"; I'm thinking of the Border Commission troops and the balance between them and the Royal Navy, Royal Engineers and Marines of the British Empire who had been brought onto the scene, almost too late, by Vancouver Island Sir James Douglas, during the hasty creation of the Colony of British Columbia in 1858; and they were stationed in Victoria, and were only brought to Fort Langley and Yale at the brink of what could have been war, not once but twice, the first occasion being the Fraser Canyon War, what was almost a proxy war but unlike Nicaragua did not have a political imperative, only forcing peace in the Canyon with the Nlaka'pamux (Thompson or Hakamaugh), also known as the Couteau, the Knife, Indians) and not directly a threat to the Crown, moreso to the Crown's ways of doing things; which was quickly brought down after each incident, though only with the cooperation of the restive Californians (and "Californians" is a better term than "American" in the case of the BC rush, since at least one the five or six companies of the Canyon War were composed of a mix of nationalities, notably "Austrian" troops composed of Germans and French (and likely Belgians, many of which showed up in the BC goldfields via California's; and many were Americanized gold rushers without military background, other than the "wars" of native extermination in California; and McGowan's War was entirely a spill-over of San Francisco civic politics into British turf Vigilance Committee vs Law and Order Party; but annexationist cries were already being heard in some back ends of the bars of Yale and the gold-bearing bars of the river, and the "California system" of claim staking and management had been informally applied already, and "miner's committees" formed; scaring the hell out of the Governor when he heard about it; his own officials in the goldfields were corrupt and venal and their greed and personal rivalries also led directly to the circumstances of McGowan's War, which is too complex a tale to tell here. The Fraser Canyon War, on the other hand, was brought to an end by six treaties negotiated at Camchin (present-day Lytton, British Columbia by the leaders of the two ramshackle regiments that had made it up the canyon that far; American-Austrian adventurers conducting diplomatic business without British say-so or mandate was an obvious threat to British tenure; the treaties have disappeared, possibly by being suppressed by officialdom of the day (I would have thought they'd been cited in the newspapers reporting the events, or in the oral histories of Thompson elders. During all this, the Border Commission was apparently on near-red alert.
So while not directly involved, the Border Commission troops were a critical factor in the chessboard of the McGowan's War fiasco/farce which caused panic in the colonial regimes (same guy, two governments, actually), as they were within relatively easy striking distance of seizing the Fraser Canyon goldfields; but there was a liaison between British and US forces and a joint survey of the Boundary, and a lot of diplomacy; including notably the supply of arms and other backing to Isaac Stephen's government in the new Washington Territory in the Yakima and Cayuse Wars, even though Douglas regretted to see the natives (who had been his customers and friends) wiped out and contained as is what happened "south of the line" (the 49th Parallel).
So other than restive US consul in Victoria (Nugent) there was little risk of Stephens approving of a campaign to push Douglas' authority out of the way (even though a few years later, during the Trent Affair, Douglas and other colonial authorities, including the senior military commander, were pressing Britain for authorization for a campaign to re-take Puget Sound once and for all; the Pig War was already in stasis by that time, but of course was part of the whole scenario, though a year or so after the Fraser Canyon wars.
Well, war and a half, because McGowan's War wasn't so much a war as a potential one; a rivalry between two gangs of political hoodlums, basically, over the jurisdictional rights of two corrupt British appointees, that triggered off a full-scale British mobilization (with what troops could be had, which were few, and the goal difficult to get at, especially in winter, which is when it all went down).
Then there's Soapy Smith's lockdown on Skagway, which was likely to have remained logically British, as the gateway to British territories inland, until he took over. Again not official but an adventurist (thug/crook-turned-mayor/spokesman) his managing of Skagway's affairs provided a pretext for the eventual success of the American claim there (clearly not, as is often assumed, something built in to the rights the US had bought from the Russians in 1867). The surveying of the Alaska-BC border was not a near-military one as the Border Commission had been, and other than the RNWMP manning the tops of the passes to control entry to the Yukon, AFAIK no troops were involved, although the US had threatened a war of annexation (for BC/YT) if Britain did not yield on the Yukon Ports.
And as far as proxy wars go, there's various adventurist stuff on the Prairies I'm not entirely familiar with but which is better-known than the obcure wars in darkest New Caledonia (as BC was then known); Fort Whoop-up which had more to do with o.c. than political clout, but could have led to the latter; and had the US pushed its pursuit of Sitting Bull, a war in that area (now Manitoba and Saskatchewan) which would have brought US troops in that probably wouldn't have left and the fate of the then-Northwest Territory hung in the balance. In BC it was different as it was neither booze nor direct military campaigns, but sheer local power dynamics, triggered off by a war with the natives and officially-unorganized Californians that nearly involved US troops; the whole border survey was a tense affair right across to the Rockies; I came across online diaries of a German serving in the Border Commission who had written home, complaining of the circumstances and talking somewhat about the situation, as if on a moment's notice they might be sent north to seize the remainder of what some Americans in the region (including OR and CA) still considered to be theirs, and takeable.
Also, during the Spanish-American War American garrisons on Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca were strengthened and put on alert on the pretext of an intervention on behalf of Spain by Britain; not incidentally in relation to the concurrent Alaska Boundary Dispute.
All pretty tangled and I hope I haven't left any unfinished sentences; but there are military actions, if not military events, involved in all this; not sure what's relevant, or where else they might be put; it's geotactical stuff related to the region's history in a very deep way. There's one other item that might strike students of the Yakima and Cayuse Wars: there's a tale in Keremeos, British Columbia of a US regiment, apparently Army, which pursued a war party of Similkameens up the river of the same name, and getting ambushed and wiped out in the area of Cawston, a few miles downstream from Keremeos. Some local native families have US military swords, and there's supposed to be a mound where the troops were buried by the natives. Also in that immediate area is another mound concerning the mysterious Spanish/Mexican adventurers of the Okanagan Mission (1780s apparently, maybe Mexican pirates from San Blas taken up shelter at Bellingham Bay, by one account; or come overland from New Spain to the Okanagan, then made for the Coast, getting wiped out by all the enemies they'd made during their migration; in search of Cibola, perhaps (El Dorado), or just safety from the warlike shores of Puget Sound; long story, but another story than anything to do with US military actions.
So sorry for the typically-long post; but if there's material here that can be isolated from the rest and condensed/integrated into the article I can dig the dates and cites up; but I'm obviously not good at point-form.Skookum103:31, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The Fenian Brotherhood organized openly in the Pacific Northwest states during the 1870s and 1880s, agitating to invade British Columbia. Although no raids were ever launched, tensions were sufficient that the British posted a number of large warships to the new railhead at Vancouver, British Columbia in for the celebrations opening the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1886.
Thousands of BC'ers lost their lives in WWI, many from the interior/Okanagan. Saw a bit about this on Pioneers & Places recently, most of the details escape me at the moment. heqs06:53, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I did some research on this a couple years ago after I first heard of the balloon bombs and was amazed. I'll try to remember to dig it up when I have some time; poke me if I forget. I found some info on bombs landing in the Pacific Northwest, but of course no one knows the true numbers as many landed in remote places never to be found. The best info I found involved scanned images of old newspaper articles written just after the war ended and, as one article put it, "censorship was lifted". There are some particularly interesting stories told, like one balloon bomb being shot down by fighter jets but landing on the main electrical transmission lines linking Grand Coulee Dam (or another major hydropower dam, I forget) to Hanford Nuclear Rservation, which at the time was of course making plutonium for the Manhattan Project. I think the balloon caused the Hanford reactors to be shut down for a day or so. These old newspaper articles are also interesting in the way they describe the censorship.. all very wartime patriotism like. There's also one that sounds rather racist today about a Yakima Indian family finding a balloon bomb and using the parachute "to make a teepee". Anyway, I'll try to find this info. It is on some backedup CD somewhere... Pfly03:57, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What were the extent of events involving PacNW? How militarized/fortified was the area? Was there ever really much espionage happening in the area? (Somewhat thinking out loud for my own benefit here) heqs08:41, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Came across an interesting book in the SFU library a few years ago, which I tried to find again the other day but didn't, on Russian military activity and tactical strategies in the North Pacific during the Great Game; despite the cordial relations and detente between the HBC and the Russian America Company, there were manoeuvres and other things offshore here; some of the Russo-British interaction in this region is subtle; John Campbell, on his exploration of the Stikine, was warned back from the coast by the Tahltans, who told him of "Russian Indians" (Tlinkits allied to the Russians); Fraser's notes on his visit to Lillooet seem alarmed that the carabines in the hands of the Lillooets/Stl'atl'imx seemed to be of Russian make. Carabine/carbine is kalapeen in Chinook, by the way, a step up from musket, if you know the difference, and fairly state-of-the-art for 1808 or whatever it was.Skookum116:27, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Somewhat tangential, I started this stub a few weeks ago. After starting & categorizing, it seemed to me that Category:Shipwrecks of the Canadian Pacific coast was rather empty. "Last month, the Vancouver Sun revealed the potential threat posed by the wreck of the Brigadier General M.G. Zalinski, a U.S. ship used in both world wars that sank in a storm in September 1946 in the Grenville Channel, near the site of the recent sinking of the BC Ferries vessel Queen of the North." [1]heqs06:53, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Graveyard of the Pacific used to redirect to the Columbia Bar; I de-Americanized that, can't remember how at the moment, and also meant to "get at it" on the shipwrecks, especially the Sophie; wish we could recruit Delgado to write this stuff, huh? Speaking of which, there's a certain Klondike-era piece of US legislation which requires ships travelling from US port to US port to not make any intermediary stops in another country; this was aimed at killing Vancouver and Victoria as departure points; half-worked, too....can't remember what it's called, but it should have its own article, and also be ref'd in the Alaska Boundary Dispute and Klondike articles.Skookum116:27, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The Minuteman Project -- aka "The Minutemen" (cf. Minutemen (militia)). "Retired Marine Corps officer Tom Williams heads the local branch of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps in Deming, Washington. [...] Although some of the members carry guns, Williams said they will simply observe and report people trying to cross illegally, and that he doesn't encourage his members to bring firearms to their patrols." [2]heqs06:53, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
When I first came across it, it was fully USPOV and had almost no British/Canadian/BC context; same deal with Oregon boundary dispute, Oregon Country, etc. Had some good catfights while establishing turf and rewriting them a bit. Still not done. My scanner's broken or I'd pluck a map from the Historical Atlas of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest (Derek Hayes) showing the overlapping claims.Skookum116:17, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Trying to figure out date-limits on this, as IMO its history doesn't end in 1846; more like '58 at least, or the end of the San Juans Dispute in 1871 (which is also when BC finally consolidated as part of British North America); and prior to 1818, which is the lead-up to the American claim and the ensuing dispute.
Maybe too far north for the scope of this page, but related as it regards the recent/current/likely future militarization of the Canadian north - heqs06:53, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, actually, the history of the Northwest Passage should have a legends section, which ties intrinsically into BC, or what they thought was here, as well as into the voyages of Cook, Vancouver, the Spaniards etc, as they were all looking for it. So was Lady Jane Franklin, when she got to Yale in 1859 - the closest she could get to where her husband froze his gentlemanly ass off. But the stories of Maldonado, de Fonte and the other liars (maybe also Juan de Fuca was a liar, too) are ripe stuff..."The Imaginary Geography of Western North America could be a whole article just on the Northwest Passage alone; add in the secret UFO base in the Northern Rockies, the hidden cities in the US Southwest, Cibola, Bergi, Anian...Swift placed Brobdingnag just about where Prince Rupert is, by teh way....you get the idea...Skookum116:17, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Had a look at that map you (?) ref'd me to and yeah, it's very POV. Can we place a POV tag on an image, I wonder? Or just weigh in on the discussion page? The French-Canadian boundary shown is a farce, and the particular trajectory of the George's Bank marine boundary is in hot dispute; the US also runs its own boundary down the middle of the Dixon Entrance, for which I've been meaning to write an A-B Line article for. More on this later after coffee, shower, groceries and trying to find an income....Skookum116:17, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Note that most of the Atlantic & Pacific boundaries shown are the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), not an "international boundary". In other words according to just the map Canada would not be claiming anything other than territorial waters. There are of course smaller disputes over this (Saint-Pierre and Miquelon? North Rock, Machias Seal Island (others in that area, ie., the boundary between Northeast U.S. and Maritimes?) and maybe around Dixon Entrance, Strait of Juan de Fuca etc as you mentioned. The Northern marine international boundary, on the other hand, is a different story. Canada's claims of sovereignty over that vast area are disputed. (Beaufort Sea and Hans Island are two particular hotspots, but the whole thing is categorically rejected by the US and EU) heqs17:19, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The Canadian government claims that the waters of the Northwest Passage are internal to Canada.
In 1985 the U.S. icebreaker Polar Sea passed through and the U.S. Government made a point of not asking permission from the Canadians for the passage. They claimed that this was simply a cost effective way to get the ship from Greenland to Alaska and that there was no reason for them to be asking permission to travel through international waters. The Canadian government issued a declaration in 1986 reaffirming Canadian rights to the waters. However, the USA, European Union (as an organisation - not the member states whose foreign affairs were completely sovereign matters outside of the EU structure at the time), and Japan, among other countries, refused to recognize the Canadian claim.
In late 2005, it was alleged that U.S. nuclear submarines had been traveling the passage without Canadian approval, sparking Canadian outrage. In his first news conference after the federal election then underway, then Prime Minister-designate Stephen Harper rebuked an earlier statement made by the American ambassador that Arctic waters were international, stating the Canadian government's intention to enforce its sovereignty there.
The allegations arose after the U.S. Navy released photographs of the USS Charlotte surfaced at the North Pole. A submarine traveling between oceans by way of the Pole would have to then travel over a thousand kilometers out of its way to use the Northwest Passage (as opposed to simply heading directly to either ocean). Furthermore, shallow waters and underwater navigational uncertainties would force any submarine to operate very slowly and carefully within the Northwest Passage to avoid running aground; by contrast, submarines can move between oceans at top speed in the deep, open waters under the Pole.
On April 9, 2006, Canada's Joint Task Force North declared that the Canadian military will no longer refer to the region as the Northwest Passage, but as the Canadian Internal Waters.[3] The declaration came after the successful completion of Operation Nunalivut (which translates from Inuit as "the land is ours"), which was an expedition into the region by five military patrols.[4]
There's also the voyage of the SS Manhattan back in, what was it, 1976? Only a private commercial vessel, but sailing the route in defiance of Canadian protest; and as with the Polar Sea, permission was granted retroactively to "save face".Skookum117:24, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Did some more research, and updated the map (click the thumbnail and look at image history to compare versions)
Saint-Pierre and Miquelon - effectively settled in 1992
Dixon Entrance - map updated to show that A-B line is disputed, thanks for pointers on that
Juan de Fuca - the remaining dispute at Juan de Fuca seems more to do with how the boundary is extended outwards to delineate EEZ interests, and I'm not messing with the EEZ lines, or adding/moving lines on this map, just changing color & key for disputed parts of IB claimed on original
Machias Seal Island, North Rock - was already depicted in map (gap in international boundary); otherwise Gulf of Maine boundary is settled
Arctic claims - generally in dispute map updated to reflect this
other small/minor disputes - not worth quibbling about on this map
I want to do a piece on the A-B Line, but the maps I have available are USGS and BC Basemap (not a direct link; scroll down to find it, or the Land and Resource Warehouse Catalogue); I think use of USGS maps may be OK with Wiki, not sure; but there are no BC copyright uses allowed that I've seen; as with the thing about historical photos; I've got some mountain pictures from S. Holland's Landforms of British Columbia which we (at bivouac.com) were granted permission for use in the CME, as it is for the public interest/education to see them and the book is out of print (in most libraries). The best way to illustrate the A-B line dispute is to show the USGS map alongside the BC Basemap, or another Canadian topo; the USGS map shows the drilling leases Alaska wants to auction off, for one thing; in waters that the Hay-Herbert Treaty (Alaska Boundary Treaty) specifies as Canadian. If you or or any Wikipedian you know can sort out these copyright issues, I can do the A-B Line article, or stub, fairly quickly; hard to illustrate without maps, though.Skookum106:43, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The polar "pie slice" is a take on the treaties governing Antarctica, but the same standard has not been formalized in the Arctic, though it is assumed by most of the circumpolar powers (but not, of course, all).Skookum106:43, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Skookum1! Seeing how neatly you arranged this page I don't know if this is the right place for others to write comments. It looks more like a project page than a talk page. Anyway, I just wanted to say that I added the page to my watchlist. Have a nice day! — Sebastian16:41, 7 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
