At the time, Judge Boldt had shut down the Nisqually River to net fishing, both on and off the reservation. The state maintained that the fifteen patrol officers were protecting a Game patrol boat while officers confiscated a net from a closed section of the river. According to Carl Crouse, Game director, Indians threw large rocks at his employees as they confiscated nets. Crouse did concede that one officer sitting in a car used “fog Mace” to protect himself when an Indian approached.
The allegations grew more serious. Adams, on behalf of Survival, also claimed in the letter to have documentation “that the Washington Game and Fisheries Patrols have acted to set up confrontations with Indian people in order to seriously injure or kill particular Indian persons.” Adams accused the attorney general’s office of compelling “a number of these enforcement officers to knowingly execute false affidavits and to swear false testimony in both civil and criminal cases.” Nothing came of the charges.
Meanwhile, U.S. v. Washington climbed its way through courts, further polarizing the tribes, non-Indian fishermen, and the state. Washington State appealed the Boldt Decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. It lost in 1975 under sharp criticism from the court: “It it has been recalcitrance of Washington State officials (and their vocal non-Indian commercial and sports fishing allies) which produced the denial of Indian rights requiring intervention by the district court. This responsibility should neither escape notice or be forgotten,” the court ordered.
In 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the case, fueling the fire within the non-Indian commercial fishing industry. “We’re totally disgusted!” a fisherman snapped. “The Court just upheld the white fishermen’s status as second class citizens.” Governor Dan Evans urged the state to enforce Boldt’s decision despite the high pitch of rancor from the water.
In the summer of 1976, Jim Waldo, an assistant U.S. attorney, met Billy for the very first time. Waldo was assigned to help implement the Indian treaty decisions. Billy was blunt.
“You came in and met with Stan Pitkin and myself,” Waldo reminds Billy years later, “and you were introduced to me as someone who spent more time in jail than out in the last two years. Your reply: ‘If you guys would just do your job, I wouldn’t have to go to jail.’
“His view was that the U.S. had up until the time, basically until Pitkin came in as U.S. attorney and got the backing from the administration, had never acted to really protect their rights and protect them,” Waldo continues.”So, the demonstration and the going to jail and everything around that was sort of the only option that was open to them. And I think they were right. I think the federal government just looked the other way on those treaties for the better part of the century.”
Between May and November of 1976, Waldo appeared in court some twenty-six times on treaty fishing rights. One day he went in to see Pitkin: “We’re treating this solely as a legal issue, if the law is clear, that everything is going to be OK. We’ve got economic issues, a feud with non-Indian fishermen—this is for many of them as much a way of life as it is for the tribes. And we’ve got racism, and we’ve got history. If the conflict between the state and federal courts proceeds . . . the federal government will end up having to take over management of the fisheries in court.” Waldo was right.
The backlash to the court ruling escalated at Foulweather Bluff in October 1976. The entrance to Puget Sound, at the north end of Hood Canal, had witnessed illegal fishing, damaged boats, and clashes between angry gillnetters and patrol officers.
Most officers within the Fisheries Department viewed the Boldt Decision as patently unfair, says Frank Haw, a former Fisheries director. To put more fish in the hands of Indians, non-Indians had to give up theirs. Morale was down and the department was grossly unprepared for the anarchy that followed, Haw says. One of Haw’s officers, Jim Tuggle, recalled a frightening scene:
Initiated by a few hotheaded gillnetters, multiple assaults against officers occurred as small patrol boats were rammed repeatedly by much larger and heavier gillnet boats. Shouts from enraged fishermen could be heard on the radio urging their cohorts to sink the patrol boats and kill the officers. Patrol boats were maneuvered quickly to avoid sinking and certain disaster. Despite attempts to avoid collisions, gillnet boats still managed to ram the much smaller patrol vessels. The confrontation became so violent that the U.S. Coast Guard dispatched a cutter and the commander of that vessel, Chief Bob LaFrancis, ordered the bow-mounted 50-caliber machine gun uncovered, loaded and manned. No closed season gillnet fishing arrests took place that night, but if it were not for Chief LaFrancis’ decisive actions, several Fisheries Patrol Officers might have died that night—and perhaps some gillnetters as well.
One night in late October, the Alaskan Revenge, a large vessel, nearly rammed the Roberts, a patrol boat, intentionally, says Haw. Tuggle remembered the turn of events:
Here came the Alaskan Revenge on a certain collision course with a boatload of Fisheries Patrol Officers. Others aboard the Roberts had also focused their attention to the approaching disaster. Frightened shouts of the impending crash were acted on by Glen Corliss as he quickly put the engine of our vessel into gear in an attempt to avoid disaster. The Alaskan Revenge never wavered from its course as the other gillnetters had, and as I screamed, “lookout!” and as I dove for the opposite side of the deck away from the impact area, I heard two quick gunshots. As I scrambled to my feet, Glen maneuvered our boat so that the Alaskan Revenge seemed to pass through the would-be watery grave where our aft deck had been two seconds before, narrowly missing our boat. The Alaskan Revenge had missed us!
The engine of the Alaskan Revenge could be heard to drop in rpms as I stood and looked around at my fellow officers to see what exactly had happened. Officer Howard Oliver had been the one to fire the two quick buckshot blasts that had saved our lives. Now the Alaskan Revenge was in reverse, backing away from our position, and apparently not under command or control.
