What's in a Name? Harney edition

When I moved to Vancouver several months ago, I noticed the name Harney in several locations. There is the Harney Heights neighborhood and Harney Elementary School located in the central part of town, and Harney Street that runs north from the west side of downtown discontinuously to Northwest Vancouver. The name is a bit unusual, so I was determined to do a little digging to find out the story behind the name.

The namesake of these locations is General William Selby Harney, leader of the U.S. Army’s Department of Oregon, which included Washington, from 1858 to 1860. Like myself, he was born in Tennessee; however, the similarities end there. Harney earned a reputation for hotheadedness and brutality in the Army during the Indian Wars and the Mexican-American War. Among his acts of savagery are the beating death of a slave woman in 1834 and massacre of a settlement of Lakota Sioux in the Battle of Ash Hollow in 1855.

His career in the Department of Oregon was a bit calmer, as he negotiated peace treaties with the local indigenous tribes and expanded military roads into the interior. His undoing as leader of the Department of Oregon was his involvement in the so-called Pig War. He escalated tensions with the British by sending troops to San Juan Island in response to the shooting of a pig owned by the Hudson’s Bay Company. He further inflamed the British by claiming the island, which was disputed territory at the time, to be the property of the United States. Harney was promptly removed from his post, and certain war was avoided. Earlier this year, Harney Channel, a strait between Orcas Island and Shaw Island in the San Juans, was renamed Cayou Channel following a petition from island residents that wanted a more deserving namesake.

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