Perhaps that is why the quietly performed marriage between a U.S. infantry captain and an Indian teen largely went unnoticed in the Bellingham community. Or perhaps it was that Pickett normally kept to himself anyway, guarding his privacy and rarely staying at the fort he had built.
In the winter of ’56, within ten months of marrying his “little Indian savage,” as he liked to tease her in the Chinook jargon with which they communicated, she delivered a healthy, slight-framed boy. Four months later, she died in one night from a convulsive fever that followed a fit of dyspepsia.
Leaving the baby with a family living close to the home he had built for his family, Pickett wept repeatedly for days on a self-granted leave.
Ingalls and other friends couldn’t console him.
When he returned eight weeks later, he was sober and resolute with a sense of duty that stayed with him during the remaining time he spent in the Northwest. Those who served under his command knew him to be gentle and serious, carrying a grave sense of purpose devoted to maintaining peace while following orders with enough flexibility that it was sometimes misinterpreted as permissiveness by those prone to pushing their luck.
In April of ’57, after reporting rumors to the U.S. Commander, William S. Harney, of a possible move by the Esquimalt-based British Navy, Pickett received orders to make preparations to move his command. The dispute between the Brits and the United States over Puget Sound border territory seemed to be intensifying again.
With the Oregon Treaty of 1846, a prolonged and bitter international and presidential election dispute over the U.S. and British North American borders had been resolved, or so it seemed. But immediately after the signing of the treaty, Northwest and British Columbia residents found an ambiguity in it that established one new point of contention: the wording in the document had not named the boundary waterway to which the term “strait” referred. The Brits claimed it meant the Rosario Strait, which would have included San Juan Island with Vancouver Island as British territory.
But the Oregon territorial citizens believed it had meant the Haro Strait, which would have placed San Juan Island in U.S. possession.
Recognizing the strategic value of controlling by fort and gun the most direct pathway into the harbor-rich Puget Sound, Harney ordered Pickett to maintain the Bellingham garrison, prepare to take command of troops from nearby Port Townsend, and upon further orders, establish a new position—robust fortifications on this northernmost of a chain of islands that ran down the Puget Sound as far south as Tumwater.
In addition to maintaining an advantage over the British, Harney reasoned, hostile indigenous people, loosely aggregated into various tribes, occupied every one of the many islands. The five thousand United States citizen settlers who had moved into the Puget Sound area over the past eight years needed protection from the marauding Northerners who, in recent years, had raided white and native settlements as far south as Olympia. Harney knew that control of San Juan Island would be important to the success of that responsibility as well.
The British Hudson’s Bay Company had abandoned its outpost in Steilacoom, one hundred nautical miles south, twenty-one years earlier, but it still maintained a presence on San Juan, which was immediately across the Strait of Juan de Fuca from Vancouver, most certainly for the same strategic reasons that Harney had recognized.
The establishment of the fort might likely infuriate the Brits, but Harney believed the issue needed to be resolved. The venerable Harney had never been afraid of confrontation or controversy, whether from an enemy or a superior officer. He also knew that Captain George Pickett would discharge his duty with honor.
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While in Victoria, Pickett had listened in the taverns for discussion from the Brit marines about the San Juan controversy, or for any signs they were preparing for any new expeditions. But neither he nor Ingalls had heard any rumors, so he surmised that perhaps the dispute was dying down. Perhaps he would not have to move his garrison after all, he speculated. And further orders from Harney had not arrived.
Lost in thoughts as they traveled back to Bellingham on this late fall day, he briefly noticed the waters south of Vancouver were full of life that just was not present in the Chesapeake he had known back home in Virginia.
He observed in the distance, hundreds of sea lions chasing salmon, and boiling pockets of dogfish furiously feeding on squid. Seagulls and cormorants hovered over the tumultuous feeding.
It was beautiful, he thought, a rich, endless, beautiful bounty.
As they neared port in Bellingham, Pickett briefly turned to Ingalls and thought about their friendship and the events of the past few days. He wondered if he had diminished Ingalls’s regard for him in any way. He always worried about things like that.
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Ingalls, who sat on the starboard side of the rig, had been observing Pickett staring off into the distance. He knew his friend Pickett well and also how difficult the past year had been for him. Ingalls had cajoled the young captain into this trip, hoping it would pull the man out of his doldrums. And Ingalls knew what was troubling him. He was still in mourning.
George Pickett and Rufus Ingalls had been friends since their days at West Point. Ingalls, three years older than Pickett, had the privilege of seniority at the academy and the opportunity to discipline Pickett and other plebes during the hazing that accompanied initiation.
Observing the accommodating manner in which Pickett responded to the top-down pranks the upper classmen bestowed on frightened newcomers, Rufus marked him to be a good fellow. Thereafter, he always enjoyed Pickett’s company and jollity, in comparison
