Chapter Five
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Pickett and Ingalls
We have increased the vigilance in our patrols of the region, due to the thwarted attack on the Elliot Bay settlement by a loose coalition of aboriginal people, and also due to fears from local citizens about similar raids planned against this Bellingham milling community.…
Regarding the request by the regional tax collector, Isaac Evers, urging the territorial government’s subsidization of settlers onto San Juan Island to bolster our claim to that strategic location, the rumors persist that the British covet the same and may increase their efforts to secure it. Plan to investigate further.
— 1857 Report by Captain George E. Pickett to General William S. Harney, Commander, U.S. Army, Oregon Territory
The swell and chop pounded the small sloop, turning his stomach into an inelegant distraction. George Edward Pickett wondered why he hadn’t left the espionage to others and instead, had let himself be talked into the trek across the strait into Victoria again.
Accompanied by his best friend, Lt. Colonel Rufus Ingalls, Quartermaster General for the Department of Oregon, and two of his casual companions, the brothers Will and Darby McIntyre, Pickett had made the trip again in civilian garb. But this time he was immediately recognized by two of his officer counterparts in the Royal Infantry Brigade stationed in Victoria.
Despite their reassurances that he could enjoy the boom town without exposure, by the third night, he was certain he had been saluted by a few drunken noncommissioned officers he passed on the streets. His attempted espionage, his ruse to disguise a junket, had been thwarted.
Pickett had other reasons to be concerned. Although none of his own superior officers was likely to hear about this trip, Ingalls being exceptionally discreet, Pickett had reason to be concerned about the ill effects of nasty gossip. Despite the protection from hostiles that the fort afforded to the Bellingham community, because of repeated episodes of disorderly conduct by the soldiers under his command, the county’s townspeople already had a substantial contempt for the military establishment stationed there. So, even unfounded rumors about the drunken or wanton behavior of the officer in charge of the outfit would make it all the more difficult for him to get the cooperation necessary for the sturdy challenge of maintaining peace between the white settlers and the natives in the region.
They were always at each other’s throats, each using the slightest of incidents as provocation for escalated violence. He hated the mess the violence created.
Pickett fretted about that during the long heaving ride back south and debated whether the small pleasure he had found cavorting in the makeshift pubs was likely to do much harm to his reputation. He thought about his comportment and decided it had not been scandalous.
He was an officer and a gentleman, after all.
He had learned to hold his liquor in a genteel manner as a young West Point plebe, and he had practiced that control in the lonely years after the death of his first wife and daughter while stationed in Texas several years before his commission to the Northwest. Thus, the gossip in Victoria, at least, would not be based on any public displays of rowdiness on his part.
He realized during the crossing, however, much to his chagrin, that the McIntyre brothers’ antics in the main street bordellos might be confused with his own more civil behavior. At least they hadn’t been arrested. But he knew they were loud, and grew louder still if drinking in each other’s company.
He would hear about it soon enough, he decided, because gossip from Victoria and Olympia was a favorite pastime for all the citizens of the region.
Victoria, a town whose rowdiness would have embarrassed the Queen, its royal namesake, had outgrown order after gold had been discovered near the Fraser River in ’56. Within a few months after the rich find, the town’s population had quickly reached five thousand, swelling to become an international tent city whose population equalled that of the entire Puget Sound to the south.
In less than a year of the Fraser strike, thirty thousand travelers had passed through Victoria, and the town’s promise of sexual favors, gambling, and instant wealth, built on rampant speculation, had seduced the naïve and stripped the foolish. The desperate hunger of the wayfarers passing through made it dangerous for anyone not adept at defending himself.
Pickett, trained in pugilistic and knife fighting, knew he could handle himself well, but kept a small six-barreled pepperbox pistol concealed in his vest, nevertheless.
On this trip, he’d only used it on one occasion, while into his spirits and departing from a large tavern tent. He had brushed against a surly drunkard who took offense and pulled a knife. Pickett had reached for the pistol’s reassurance. Fortunately, the Brits kept good order and enough sober military presence that a constable intervened before Pickett had to put the inebriated aggressor down.
He hadn’t gone to Victoria for female companionship, despite the prodding of Ingalls, who had often expressed that sexual intercourse was the solution to everything.
Pickett was over women for now, feeling a bitter unluckiness. The two times he had fallen in love and committed to marriage, each wife had passed on a few months after childbirth.
The thought of that happening again to him, such an emotional toll with all the unmanly weeping that transpired afterwards, overwhelmed him.
And despite a powerful ache from his groin up to his stomach, his heart just needed peace.
He could not bring himself to play undignified games without love in sight; nor could he condone the thought of paying for the discharge of his baser passions. So, on this occasion, he behaved as he usually did, drinking with his companions to lighten, for a bit, the duty of his office, but keeping to himself mostly, a decorated knight without a Guinevere in a savage land.
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A few years before this trip, in the late winter of ’55 and several years after the death of his first wife,
