Willie, Billy’s father, organized an all-out search when Valerie failed to return from the river. Georgiana Kautz remembers a dog continually plunging into the river and returning to shore. Eventually, the canine led the search party to Valerie’s shampoo bottle, glasses, and comb; her body was discovered nearby. Most likely, Valerie had suffered a seizure or a leg cramp. She had been taking medication for periodic blackouts.
Indians came together 150-strong to bury Billy’s niece. Semu Huaute, a Chumash medicine man, directed in the production of a funeral wheel. “These people that I loved so much . . . all of a sudden are gone . . . Valerie, my niece . . .,” Billy says, reflecting on the time period. Until she died, Valerie fought for Frank’s Landing and the right of Indians to fish there. Days before the river claimed Valerie’s life, she and Alison swam out in the channel to “determine by string measure, how much land across the river should belong to their grandfather. The hope was to resolve the status of Frank’s Landing that by her death had been embroiled in debate.”
Valerie and her family had recently pored over documents at the bia, hunting for information on the condemnation of the Nisqually Reservation that could shed light on the status of Willie’s six acres. “In her lifetime, the state of Washington did not enact or promulgate one statute or one regulation that would have allowed Valerie to fish for salmon as a Nisqually or Puyallup Indian,” Hank Adams says.
At the time of her death, Valerie was awaiting sentencing for a third-degree assault conviction stemming from a September 1969 tussle with a Fisheries officer and a two-foot-long vine maple club. “I was going to protect my property,” Valerie told the court. In Valerie’s defense, Billy’s daughter Maureen Frank testified that officers treated her cousins like “men” and burst into tears on the witness stand. Valerie was named a codefendant in an upcoming trial on the jurisdiction of Frank’s Landing and whether the land should be treated as a reservation. “The trial meant so much to her,” said Adams. “Now the best memorial to her would be a free Frank’s Landing.”
The signs warned intruders to stay off Indian land. Puget Sound Indians established a camp in August 1970 on the banks of the Puyallup River, a glacier-chilled waterway that springs from the west side of Mount Rainier. Every September, the salmon run the Puyallup. For thousands of years, Indian fishermen caught a bountiful catch there as silvers and kings headed home to spawn in the Pacific Northwest.
But trouble was in the air on September 9, 1970. Campers, a mix of tribal fishermen and supporters, guarded nets to protect them from state raids.
“The camp was set up . . . because the pigs down there . . . beat up Indian people for fishing and just for being there,” said Sid Mills, a Frank’s Landing activist.
Billy headed for the Landing to wait out the storm. “What Billy did was take the children. His own daughter, Maureen, spent some time at the camp. Billy and Norma and probably Maureen babysat Powhattan at their home at Frank’s Landing,” recalls Burns, a documentary filmmaker who participated in the encampment that day.
Another group of children, including Billy’s son, Sugar, sought refuge at the home of Ramona Bennett, the Puyallup woman in charge of the encampment. “I just seen the panic in the guys’ faces,” Sugar says, “that they’re getting ready to come in and we need to get the kids out of here. So I got escorted out before they even got there.”
The departments of Game and Fisheries, supported by the city of Tacoma, descended on Indian land to “enforce fishing and health laws.”
“We are fishing! We’re armed and prepared to defend our rights with our lives,” Billy’s sister Maiselle shouted. “Lay down your arms! Peacefully leave the area,” authorities shouted.
“There was a net strung from the Railroad Bridge downstream for some 100 feet,” the Game Department’s Walter Neubrech recalled from the witness stand years later. “As the two officers launched a boat to seize this net, four shots were fired at them from the opposite bank on which we stood. We did not actually see anyone tending those nets, but our job was to remove them from the Puyallup River. At that time the Indians and their sympathizers attempted to burn the Railroad Bridge with fire bombs.
“The Indians challenged the Department of Fisheries making it known that they would defend these nets from confiscation with guns . . . a good number of them did discharge weapons. The bullets came dangerously close to some of the officers involved. They used fire bombs and large knives and clubs. They exploded at least three fire bombs.”
Many Dog Hides, head of encampment security, said an Indian activist threw a fire bomb on the railroad bridge to hold back the state as authorities moved across the bridge. “It’s a sad thing we have to bring guns out. But we are a dying people and have to fight for our survival, as we have been doing for 500 years,” he said.
