where the salmon run - Washington Secretary of State

spirit of the father 29
For Willie, the hardships kept right on coming. He’d married twice
already and shortly after moving to his enclave, he buried his third
wife, Josephine Pope. Pneumonia killed her in 1923. Three years after
Josephine’s death, Willie lost his younger sister, forty-year-old Lizzie
John.
Whites came for Willie again in 1936. They caught him fishing off
the reservation without a license. “You can’t fish the river with a net,
Willie Frank. It’s against the law,” whites had hollered at Willie. They
routinely crept along the riverbank at dusk, pushing tree branches
out of the way and peering through the brush for Indians who dared
to fish.
“Well, maybe so, but I’ve got a treaty. . . . The Treaty of Medicine
Creek in 1854 with my people. . . . I’m Willie Frank, Nisqually
Allottee No. 89.” Throughout his lifetime, Nisqually Allottee No. 89
watched as authorities arrested and interrogated his family. He later
recalled a warden telling him, “Your treaty isn’t worth the paper it’s
printed on.” Each time officers dragged someone he loved up the riverbank
in handcuffs, Willie knew why. The traditions of the American
Indian collided with the whites. “They got beat up, locked up, berated
and belittled physically and verbally, inside and out,” says Hvalsoe
Komori.
In 1937, Willie got his day in court. He secured an injunction to
keep the state away from Indian fishermen. “That was the time that
he started fighting for the river,” says family. “And he got into federal
court, and got an injunction.” The injunction held through 1944.
Through the years, Willie kept right on fighting. “From the days of
his adolescence when he fished, and worked in the woods and the
hop fields, he labored for all Indian people, particularly young people.
. . . People who come into Frank’s Landing would gain strength to
take into the world,” Hank Adams says.
Eventually, rheumatism got the best of Willie’s hands. In 1954, he
caught his very last fish. His legs grew too stiff for the canoe, the water
too cold for his hands. His eyes dimmed with age. “I don’t see too