The battle for aboriginal fishing rights secured by treaty continues through chapter six, culminating in the “Battle of Franks Landing.” The battle continues as arrests continue and celebrities as well as other personalities come to the aid of the Washington Indians.
But, in chapter seven, we read of an era where both Martin Luther King Jr and Robert Kennedy lose their lives to assassins.
We also read of a decision by the Supreme Court upholding the state of Washington and the demonstrations that that decision spawned.
In chapter seven, the documentary As Long as the River Runs is made.
Chapter Seven | As Long as the Rivers Run
More than a fisherman and the face of the struggle for treaty rights, Billy lived at its nerve center, on six acres, fast becoming a landmark in one of the most tumultuous decades in modern American history as a tide of opposition rose in the 1960s. After the Battle of Frank’s Landing in 1965, Billy’s family enclave continued to bear witness to the Indians’ battle for sovereignty.
Take the year 1966. Talk of a rally percolated through the rumor mill that January. Northwest Indians planned to burn the sitting governor, Dan Evans, in effigy at Frank’s Landing. “I don’t think up to now I’ve been burned in effigy,” the governor quipped. Still, Evans held firm, “If we allow people to determine which court injunctions and directives they choose to follow and which they choose to break, we descend to the rule of the jungle.”
Two hundred Indians from more than fifteen tribes arrived at the Landing. Some, like the Walla Walla and Nez Perce, crossed snowy mountain passes to air their grievances, to rally and to dance. They lit a teepee-shaped bonfire in a drizzling rain.
Janet McCloud, Billy’s sister-in-law, lashed out at Evans: “He unleashed his Game Department to come down upon us like a bunch of mad dogs!”
fisherman Al Bridges with several chinook. Image-Washington State Archives
Yakima Indians led the war dance as drums sounded and “two maidens threw a life-sized effigy of Governor Dan Evans on the fire, while the Indians cheered and emitted war whoops in approval in a two-hour rally.”
“I think our ancestors were fools to sign the treaty,” shouted one Indian woman. “What have we got to lose? What are you fighting for?”
In the court of public opinion, the symbolic hanging did not reflect well on the tribes. Evans was picked on “because he happens to be the state’s chief executive, who is required by the Constitution to enforce laws as they are written and interpreted by the courts—not as he might wish to apply the laws,” criticized the Seattle Times. “It is apt to do the cause more harm than good. It certainly will not damage the governor’s image any more than will the flames of the ‘burning in absentia’ singe his jacket,” the newspaper opined.
Dan Evans is hardly a stranger to the pitfalls of public office. The m
