In May, twenty-four Indians met at Frank’s Landing, where they were urged by Wallace Anderson, a Tuscarora tribal chief who goes by Mad Bear, to join the cause. “The Indians and other races in this country cannot be kicked around any longer,” Mad Bear told them.
Billy’s family caravanned to Washington, D.C. Maiselle Bridges and Edith McCloud recruited marchers. Billy arrived to join the cause when he wasn’t on the job as a highline electrical worker.
In the midst of the campaign, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a mighty blow. Together with a case involving Puyallup Indians, the high court considered off-reservation treaty rights of Billy and five other “renegades” to fish with nets on the Nisqually River in 1964. It examined the Treaty of Medicine Creek and considered the constitutionality of state fishing laws. The major case known as Puyallup I, of the Puyallup Trilogy, upheld the state of Washington’s rights to restrict off-reservation fishing, provided that regulations conserved the resource and did not discriminate against the tribes. Whether a total ban was necessary and whether regulations were discriminatory remained unanswered by the court. “The manner of fishing, the size of the take, the restriction of commercial fishing and the like may be regulated by the state in the interests of conservation, provided the regulation does not discriminate against the Indians,” the court held.
“The Supreme Court ruled that they have a treaty right to fish there with rod and line but not with the forbidden nets. In granting them the right to fish at the ‘usual and accustomed places,’ the treaty did not grant the right to fish in the usual and accustomed manner,” reported the Washington Post.
“The decision reflects nothing more than a political compromise and a surrender to industries of the Northwest,” Hank Adams told reporters. Marchers pounding the pavement to bring justice to the poor protested on behalf of Indian fishermen. They attempted to pry open the doors of the court and broke at least four windows. Adams led the charge and persuaded police to allow protestors to personally request the court to amend its decision. “We expected the doors to be shut because the doors of justice have been closed to American Indians for many years, for centuries. We came here to open them and we opened them.”
“We want Justice!” cried George Crows Fly High.
“We had not been able to get the support of all the other Indians in the Poor People’s Campaign to support that decision to protest,” Adams says. “But we did secure the support of all the Hispanic, Chicano, Puerto Rican, and Mexican-Americans that were involved. We had about five hundred Indians and Hispanics make this major demonstration at the U.S. Supreme Court protesting. We were there all day protesting. We were going by the U.S. Supreme Court building single file. There were all these court personnel, clerks, everyone out standing up on the top of the steps looking down.
“When we got the full length past the Supreme Court, we stopped and turned. Primarily female personnel, clerks, secretaries, so forth— they started screaming. ‘Ah, they’re coming in here!’ and they all ran back through the doors.’”
