PAT NEAL: Helen of Dungeness

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, July 29, 2026

SEEN ANY GOOD movies lately? I did. “The Odyssey” is a 3,000-year-old morality play about the enduring themes of pride, greed and violence and the consequences of breaking the basic laws of civilization.

Early in the movie, Odysseus informs that the Trojan War was not all about rescuing Helen of Troy, it was the dominance of trade routes, a concept that endures to this day.

That was the reason Hudson Bay Company Chief Factor John McLoughlin in 1828, sent a “punitive expedition” against the S’Klallam for the killing of HBC trader Alexander McKenzie and four company employees.

Trader McKenzie had hired two S’Klallam youths to paddle him in their canoe from Port Gamble to Port Angeles, across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Victoria, then on to Langley and then return to Port Gamble.

This canoe voyage was in January. The old-timers were of a different breed.

Trader McKenzie was a mean one. He beat and kicked the lads who were paddling the canoe and then refused to pay the boy’s father for their services. McKenzie should have known better. He camped without placing a guard. He and his party of four were killed by the S’Klallam at a place called Deadman’s Spit ever since.

A woman travelling with the party was taken captive.

When word got back to Fort Vancouver, McLoughlin, who ruled over the Oregon Territory, (todays Pacific Northwest plus B.C. and the Yukon,) sent a military force to Puget Sound as a warning to all the tribes that HBC fur brigades and traders were not to be harassed.

On June 17, Trader Alexander McLeod left Fort Vancouver with a force of 63 men bound for revenge against the S’Klallam. They planned to meet in the Strait of Juan de Fuca with the Cadboro, the Hudson Bay Company schooner which had sailed from the Columbia River.

Frank Ermatinger, a clerk at Fort Vancouver, kept a journal of the expedition’s voyage.

Approaching the Chimacum portage, he said the “Iroquois, Owyhees and Chinooks, (a tribe from southwest Washington) members of the expedition painted themselves getting ready for battle.” It was not much of a battle. Two families of the S’Klallam were killed in a surprise attack.

The expedition reached Dungeness Bay on July 3, where Ermatinger noted there was “much talk to procure the woman, but not a word of the ostensible cause of our trip.” He said “this Helen of ours will cause a siege as long as that of Troy.”

On July 4, while negotiations were still underway, the Cadboro opened fire with three cannons destroying the village where the S’Klallam had prepared for the assault by wetting their blankets to ward off cannon balls. Illustrating the level of cultural misunderstanding. Eventually, the captive woman was rescued.

The expedition returned to Vancouver, having killed 27 people in the village at Dungeness and burning another village in Port Gamble on the way. The attacks on the S’Klallam by McLeod were judged to be injurious to business. He was not promoted to Chief Factor by the HBC. The Cadboro was later seized by U.S. Customs for non-payment of duties, then shipwrecked.

McLoughlin’s son was murdered at Fort Stikine. McLoughlin was later stripped of his authority and ordered to move to Victoria. Which he refused, ending his lonely days feeling humiliated and cheated while being suspected by the British of being pro-American and by the Americans as being pro-British.

Today, the Hudson Bay Company is history. The S’Klallam are still here.

Those who ignore history are doomed to watch the nightly news.

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Pat Neal is a Hoh River fishing and rafting guide and “wilderness gossip columnist” whose column appears here every Wednesday.

He can be reached at 360-683-9867 or by email via patnealproductions@gmail.com.