 This regiment was of the "a good Indian is a dead Indian" persuasion and was bent on a war of extermination.The Whatcom Company's name was taken from that of the Whatcom Trail, which traversed what is now Whatcom County, Washington state from Bellingham Bay on Puget Sound, and which was used in open defiance of the British colonial administration's edict that access to the goldfields be made from Victoria and via steamboat from there "only"; in other words, their name implicitly indicated their annexationist sentiments.The largest and most influential company formed in the chaotic situation was the New York Pike Guards, led by a Captain Snyder , who swayed the assembled miners' committees for a war of pacification, rather than a war of extermination as was the wish of Captain Graham and others.