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62surveillanceattempted to form their own intertribal fish commission to workthrough the struggle, but it never got off the ground.In 1963, the headline “Skagits on Warpath?” appeared in theSeattle Times. “They [the Indians] have been crowding us,” Neubrechreported to the seven-member game commission. “They’ve threatenedus and there has been some bodily contact with some of our people.”The crackdown pushed on and drove Indian fishing underground.What was once the open pride of the tribes was practiced in secretand in silence.“I fished at night,” Billy remembers. “I pulled my nets out at dark.I hid my canoes. ”“We’d go to this island just right above the Landing, probably amile or so, and he’d drop me off there,” recalls Sugar Frank. “Theyhad a little coffee can full of gasoline and he’d light that on. I’d standaround that coffee can with all the other fishermen at nighttime.They’d make two or three drifts and fill up his canoe. He’d come pickme up and we’d head back down about eleven at night with a boatloadof fish.”Peering through binoculars, officers prowled riverbanks forcanoes, gillnets, and Indian fishermen. Often, they confiscated nets.Sometimes, the Indian fishermen fought back. Billy was the selfproclaimedgetting-arrested guy. “We were fighting for our life—oursurvival,” he says. “We fished. We sold our fish. We ate fish. That waswhat we did. You go down there and there ain’t no fish. There ain’tno boats. There ain’t nothing. So, that really pisses you off, youknow? So you do whatever you got to do.”“Are we under arrest?” asked Al Bridges, Billy’s fishing companionand brother-in-law during one encounter.“This net is illegal gear and we are taking it at this time,” a Fisheriesofficer yelled. “I’m telling you right now . . . you are under arrest.”“The Fisheries people were bad, but the Game Department wasreally awful, real thugs,” remembers Tom Keefe. “They were alwaysout there on behalf of the white steelhead fishermen, harassing Indianfishermen, cutting loose their nets. The Game Department people just