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18spirit of the fatherbusinessman’s dream—every dollar invested in a Puget Sound fishtrap returned $2.50. By the 1870s, however, the great fish runs of theNorthwest started to diminish. Statehood brought fishing regulationsand a commercial licensing system to apply uniformly to alloff-reservation fishermen. By the 1890s, the state banned weirs,required a license for off-reservation fishing, and closed rivers tosalmon fishing at usual and accustomed fishing grounds of theIndians. “A salmon bound for its native stream was much more likelyto end up packed in a can before it could reach the nets of the Indiansor its birthplace,” writes Faye Cohen in Treaties on Trial. Salmonrichwaters of the Northwest were losing their fish.The assumption in 1854, that the salmon-rich Northwest couldnever become salmon-poor, proved dangerously incorrect in time.Demand for salmon and friction between Indians and non-Indianssent treaty fishing rights to the U.S. Supreme Court seven times inseventy years. The origin of those court battles was language in theTreaty of Medicine Creek brokered on the delta in 1854.Among the many mysteries of Indian Country is the exact birthdate of Gramps. Not that it matters much. The Nisqually Indianprovided far more answers than questions. His body of knowledgepredated statehood. Over the course of his 104 years, the Wrightbrothers invented the airplane, Americans explored their first personalcomputers, and the once strong runs of Pacific salmon landed on theEndangered Species List. Gramps had seen it all, and he could tell youhow it used to be.Sometime in 1879, Gramps was born Qu-lash-qud in the village ofYell-Whahlse. The former home of Chief Leschi sat on the south sideof Muck Creek prairie, roughly eight miles from the mouth of thetributary. Throughout history, Indians had speared and trapped theirfish along the creek. Well into his later years, Gramps remembered themix of forest, wetland, and prairie grass that dominated hischildhood. He remembered Muck Creek in the old days. “This, ahsalmon, he comes up the river once every four years and they come