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A long-ago October military battle in Eastern Washington. Dusty old books describing a hasty retreat, with American soldiers disabling and burying a prized 鈥� but heavy 鈥� piece of artillery so they could get away faster.

Add to this some old newspaper clippings reporting phantom sightings of lost cannons, and it鈥檚 a story that just about anyone who loves history 鈥� and a good old-fashioned treasure hunt 鈥� can鈥檛 help but get pretty worked up about.

Shane Riley lives in Pierce County. On social media earlier this month, he posted about a lost cannon 鈥� something called 鈥� with a barrel made of bronze, about three feet in length, weighing a few hundred pounds and typically carried, by horse, in three separate pieces. This piece of artillery, Riley鈥檚 post said, was supposedly buried 聽as part of his retreat from the battle of Toppenish Creek in the Yakima Valley in October 1855.

is sometimes called 鈥淗aller鈥檚 Defeat.鈥� Five American soldiers died, and 17 were wounded; and it鈥檚 believed that there were approximately 20 casualties among the Indigenous combatants. It鈥檚 considered the first formal military engagement in the Treaty Wars of the 1850s, when the U.S. Army was part of the effort to quash Indigenous resistance following a dubious treaty聽process, and an influx of settlers and miners into what had been home to native people for millennia.

While not a key part of the social and political story of the Treaty War, the burying of the howitzer is mentioned in several volumes of local history dating back more than a hundred years 鈥� seemingly to underline the hastiness of Major Haller鈥檚 retreat.

Riley 鈥� who spoke with 成人X站 Radio earlier this year about a mystery headstone聽in Buckley 鈥� shared some of his research about the buried cannon, including a newspaper clipping from the Goldendale Sentinel from June 1941 detailing a sighting of Haller鈥檚 lost howitzer at a spot called Potato Hill, which is also called 鈥淧otato Butte鈥� on some more recent maps.

鈥�’The cannon said to have been hidden near what is now known as Potato Hill has been the object of many futile searches,鈥欌�� Riley said, reading from the old clipping. 鈥�’Arthur Vincent, pioneer Goldendale sheepman, says he recalls that as a boy herding sheep in that area, he once discovered the old cannon, but made no effort in bringing it back to camp.鈥欌��

Riley stumbled across the story of Haller鈥檚 lost cannon while he was chasing down a rumor about another allegedly lost piece of artillery, this time on the west side of the Cascades 鈥� which, it turns out, has its own twisted history 鈥� or, maybe a better word is 鈥渕ythology.鈥�

鈥淚 only became interested in this because I used to work for the Forest Service, and one of the old-timer employees was telling me there was a cannon on ,鈥� Riley said. 鈥淎nd I was like, 鈥榃ow, I feel like I would have heard of that before.鈥欌��

鈥淪o, I started looking it up on the internet,鈥� Riley continued. 鈥淎nd there is no record of [a cannon] being abandoned along the Naches Trail, but that [other cannon] repeatedly popped up 鈥� Haller’s cannon.鈥�

But this didn鈥檛 mean the 鈥渃annon above Greenwater鈥� had gone away.

鈥淚 made that post, and there’s another guy who says, 鈥榊eah, up by , on the Naches Trail, above Greenwater, a hunter found a cannon up there,鈥欌�� Riley said. 鈥淪o there might actually be two abandoned cannons.鈥�

Gideon Pete is in his 60s and lives in Puyallup. He鈥檚 a volunteer , and he鈥檚 been participating in reenactments of 19th century military activities for years, with a group he and friends founded around the time of the 1976 bicentennial called 鈥淐ompany M, First U.S. Artillery.鈥� It was Gideon Pete who commented on Shane Riley鈥檚 social media post. Pete and his fellow reenactors used to camp out at Government Meadows back in the 1970s, and spent considerable time searching for the cannon purportedly buried there.

鈥淭here is a guy in our unit called Bob Urie, and he was copying down all sorts of articles from the old Pioneer and Democrat [newspaper] back when it was all on microfiche,鈥� Pete told 成人X站 Radio, which, Pete says, is how the group learned about Government Meadows.

Government Meadows, Pete says, 鈥渋s a high, thousand-acres series of meadows at the top of the Naches Pass, and it was a common refreshing area for the mountain men from Fort Nisqually, Indians, as well as the U.S. Army going back and forth to Eastern or Western Washington.鈥�

鈥淭hey could stop up at the top of the pass 鈥� there鈥檚 really lush grass 鈥� to put some weight back on their horses before going back down the other side,鈥� Pete continued.

鈥淎nd so we thought we’d go up there and check it out,鈥� he said. 鈥淎nd we鈥檇 heard at that time of rumors 鈥� unsubstantiated, not documented 鈥� of the Army, on one of their trips during the Puget Sound Indian Wars, abandoning a mountain howitzer up there. So we thought, 鈥榃ell, 聽good. That’s a good excuse to go up and take a look at this thing.’鈥�

Gideon Pete and his buddies searched Government Meadows many times in the late 1970s but never had any luck finding any trace of a cannon. However, a few years after the last of those expeditions, Pete was staffing a booth at the Puyallup Fair to recruit new reenactors. A man came to the booth and told Pete, unprompted, a curiously relevant tale.

The man and some friends had been hunting several years prior, and were caught in snowstorm at Government Meadows, he said. He told Pete that he and his friends had to make a quick bivouac camp to get out of the extreme weather. They holed up under the trees and built a fire to keep warm.

鈥�'[When we were] sitting around the fire,鈥欌�� Pete said the man told him, 鈥�’I saw something that didn’t look like a log, but it looked like a log outside the firelight.鈥� And they went over there and it was this little cannon barrel. It looked like it was brass or bronze and it was about three feet long.鈥欌��

鈥淲ell, that immediately got my attention,鈥� Pete continued. 鈥淚 said, 鈥榃ell, what鈥檇 you do?鈥� And he said, 鈥榃ell, of course, there so much snow, and we’re going to have to get out of there ourselves, and we couldn’t pack this heavy cannon with us. But we made a motion to go back and get it in the spring.鈥欌��

鈥淗e said, 鈥榃e looked all over for it in the spring, and couldn’t find it,鈥欌�� Pete recounted. 鈥淎nd I said, 鈥榃ell good, that makes two of us up there looking for it.鈥欌��

Jo Miles is an author and historian based in Yakima. He wrote a book a few years ago called , and he really knows his stuff about the Treaty War and the military activity during those years in the Yakima Valley.

When 成人X站 Radio asked Miles about the rumored Greenwater cannon and the Potato Butte cannon, he knew the details and backstory of each, and he quickly added that those aren鈥檛 the only two stories he鈥檚 heard about phantom artillery in Washington.

鈥淲hen you talk about two cannons being buried, there was another battle, the Steptoe Battle up near the Spokane area,鈥� Miles said, referring to another U.S. Army defeat and retreat, which is also known as the Battle of Rosalia or the Battle of Pine Creek, and which took place late in the war in 1858.

鈥淚t turns out that [Colonel Edward J.] Steptoe also had to bury cannons,鈥� Miles said, to lighten the load as the officers and soldiers headed south. 鈥淎nd in his instance, he did bury two cannons before he made his retreat back to Fort Walla Walla.鈥�

Jo Miles says a lot of the stories of buried cannons in Eastern Washington that persist to the present day likely trace back to the 1888 publication of .

General Sheridan, a Civil War figure who spent earlier years of his career in the Pacific Northwest, mentions Major Haller鈥檚 travails at Toppenish Creek, but writes, incorrectly, that there were two cannons lost there. Rumors of the Government Meadows cannon, Miles said, can be traced to 1913, when an article appeared in an Olympia newspaper with speculation about a cannon buried somewhere on the west side of Naches Pass.

This fueled speculation not about Major Haller鈥檚 howitzer, but instead about other notable U.S. Army figures in the Northwest in the 1850s: controversial figure Captain George B. McClellan and Lieutenant William Slaughter 鈥� the one-time namesake聽for what鈥檚 now Auburn.

As it turns out, there are likely good reasons why no solid evidence has ever turned up when it comes to hidden cannons on either side of the Cascades 鈥� Goldendale sheepman Arthur Vincent and Gideon Pete鈥檚 mysterious hunter notwithstanding.

Over the past few decades, Jo Miles has systematically debunked all of the rumors surrounding buried artillery in the Evergreen State. He located the official record of Major Haller burying a single cannon in October 1855 during his retreat from Toppenish Creek, but then Miles found the official record of that same cannon being recovered later by the Army 鈥� and the same goes for Colonel Edward J. Steptoe鈥檚 two cannons south of Spokane in 1858.

As for the Government Meadows cannon, Miles says both McClellan and Slaughter did indeed travel over Naches Pass in the 1850s, but neither had a cannon in their possession (nor would they have had need to bury it).

How did all of this get so mixed up?

鈥�Documentation wise, everything was pretty cut and dried and very clear,鈥� Miles said. 鈥淏ut when people started talking about those incidents and the different soldiers involved, it looks to me like they started transposing the names of officers and the locations of the cannons, and that’s how this oral history started to go kind of wild.鈥�

Human nature is such that with stories like these 鈥� rich with classic elements of history, mystery, and lost treasure 鈥� it鈥檚 easy to understand why the mixing of fact and fantasy is so irresistible, and perhaps even unavoidable.

But maybe that works two ways? With all the various threads and fallible humans keeping those military records, could Jo Miles imagine a scenario whereby there might be at least one phantom howitzer out there, waiting to be discovered, somewhere in the wilds of Washington?

鈥淚 personally don’t believe so, because for the last 30 years, I’ve seen people with metal detectors, just poring all over, you know, areas of interest throughout the state,鈥� Miles said. 鈥淥ne of those guys would have found it by now, I believe, if it existed.鈥�

鈥淚t鈥檚 kind of like a Sasquatch,鈥� Miles said, chuckling.

Of course, as any Northwest history buff knows, that may not be the best choice of words to discourage further searches.

You can hear Feliks every Wednesday and Friday morning on Seattle鈥檚 Morning News, read more from him鈥�here, and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast聽here. If you have a story idea, please email Feliks鈥�here.