The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

the JoLt fRoM BoLdt 123
Lane, a scholar who had studied Chinook Jargon, the trade language used
to translate the treaty language for the tribes in 1854. Also familiar with
the minutes kept by the white negotiators, the professor testified that the
U.S. government “had intended, and the Indians had understood, that
Indians would continue to fish as they always had, selling their catch as
before.” The phrase “in common with” the white citizens of the territory
“was intended and understood to mean simply that the Indians could
not exclude whites and that both peoples would share equally in the
fishery.” 9
On February 12, 1974, as Gorton was weighing his speech suggesting
that Nixon should resign and preparing to argue a reverse discrimination
case before the U.S. Supreme Court, he was jolted by the news that Judge
Boldt had handed the tribes a landmark victory. 10 Boldt knew it was Lincoln’s
birthday, and some would say his ruling was to Northwest Indians
what Brown v. Board of Education was to the integration of public schools. 11
“In common with,” Boldt said in a 203–page decision, meant the Indians
were entitled to up to 50 percent of each run of fish that passed through
their usual and accustomed fishing grounds. Further, he said the treaties
made no distinction between salmon and steelhead. He ordered the state
to take action to limit fishing by non-Indians to ensure the tribes got their
share, emphasizing that “off-reservation fishing by other citizens and
residents of the state is not a right but merely a privilege which may be
granted, limited or withdrawn by the state as the interests of the state or
the exercise of treaty rights may require.”
The director of the Game Department was “extremely disappointed,”
the chairman of the Steelhead Committee of the State Sportsmen’s Council
“flabbergasted.” The outdoor editor of The Seattle Times said it seemed
like “an extreme manifestation of the nation’s guilt pangs over centuries
of shoddy treatment of its native people.” 12 Indians, who comprised less
than one percent of the state’s population, were going to get half the fish,
angry steelheaders and worried commercial fishermen fumed. It was a
highly volatile situation. Everyone worried about the hotheads, of which
there were plenty. Judge Boldt was burned in effigy and received death
threats. He was also accused of having an Indian mistress and, later, of
being senile. 13
the stAte Agencies Met with Gorton and quickly resolved to appeal the
decision. As his point man, Gorton picked 29–year-old James M. Johnson.
A tall, athletically slender Harvard man, with a reedy, chin-first style of
speaking, Johnson was dubbed “Son of Slade” by DeLaCruz. When a con-