Billy was there when the demonstrators gathered the next day, weary and frustrated, to meet with the Game Department: “When Judge Goodwin was a U.S. attorney, I begged him for help; when Representative Brock Adams was a U.S. attorney, I begged him for help; I’ve begged U.S. Attorney Stan Pitkin for help. None of them have helped us. All they’ve done is kept us going in circles.” Billy also complained to the Game Department about the missing gear: “You bastards never take any old stuff, just the new gear.” Crouse confirmed he would disclose a list of confiscated gear and pull authorities off the river until Friday.
The respite didn’t last. Even in the wake of projections that there would be “blood on the river,” the Game Department refused to pull back, arguing that many of the fishermen arrested were not enrolled members of treaty tribes. Billy rebuffed the charges, calling the fishermen family and Puyallup-Nisqually Indians who had every right to fish in usual and accustomed places: “There are Indians from all over the country fishing the river with nets within the reservation.”
Adams accused the state of spying on Indians, in particular the Nisqually and Puyallup tribes. He called on Congress to investigate. As it turned out, the dossiers discovered at the Game Department included personal information, gossip, and criminal records related to nearly one hundred Nisqually Indians and more than fifty members of the Puyallup Tribe. The Puyallup dossiers, as reported in the Washington Post, included “accounts on their marital problems, high school grades, cash purchases of such items as birthday presents and fuel oil, and the amount of food in household cupboards.” According to Adams, they “seized an uncompleted arrest report from the typewriter of Chief Neubrech. It disparagingly stated: ‘The Indians down at Franks Landing are trying a new tactic to get press attention. They got a bunch of horses trying to make out like their [sic] fierce Plains Indians. We think our arrest actions should take the fire out of them now.’” Adams says Nisqually Indians were likened in an office memo to “wild animals in the jungle.”
In mid-February 1973, two days after a major raid at the Landing, a group of Indians and Governor Evans privately agreed to suspend arrests and drop weapons.
As Native activists reclaimed land and buildings, the Nisqually River claimed portions of Willie’s six acres, chipping away at his shoreline. Land, and the fishing rights that came with it, were all that remained of treaty negotiations with Stevens, Superintendent of Indian Affairs. And the acreage suitable for a residence was eroding. Six acres became five; five became four; four became three. The Nisqually carved a hundred feet out of the riverbank in 1972 and swept away 1.5 acres. A tree tumbled to the ground and crushed a small fish-processing house. “He would go off by himself and into another room and lie down on his back with his arms outstretched and his eyes closed,” says Maiselle, Willie’s daughter. “He would be very still for quite awhile, almost like he had left his body.” It helps relax the mind, he told her when she finally asked.
The erosion also weighed heavily on Billy. It could sink his fish business. Worse yet, it could harm the families who made their homes there. It could weaken security at the Landing used by so many treaty fishermen. The Frank’s Landing Indian Trade Center sold fresh and smoked fish and had served as a general store since 1971. Its proceeds paid for court costs accrued during the fish wars, funded the Wa He Lut Indian School founded by Billy’s sister Maiselle, and supported Willie and Angeline. Soon, flooding threatened all.
High waters were not an overnight problem. The military owned the property across the Nisqually River, and it was “adding gravel bar and dry land as fast as Frank’s Landing was losing it.” After the Army land was riprapped with rock and cement in the early 1960s, it altered the course of the Nisqually River, causing Frank’s Landing to flood. The floods had persisted for years, yet generated little or no help from anyone, despite the land’s trust status with the U.S. government. The south corner of Frank’s Landing started to erode in 1965. Floodwaters crept underneath Willie’s home, which sat on pilings, and dug a six-foot hole. The house began to pull apart, creating inch-wide gaps between the floor and walls. “I told them, and they agreed, that the river would eventually make a new channel through their property, and that the two houses and cabins were not on safe grounds,” a property manager reported to the BIA. By 1968, the channel next to Frank’s Landing was thirty feet deep.
