The Salmon War at Point Roberts: Lummi Tribe Battles Cannery Giant Over Treaty Fishing Rights

The case of the Lummi Indians against the Alaska Packing Association will be heard tomorrow by Judge Hanford, who recently granted temporary orders restraining defendants and others from putting in fish traps within 5,000 feet of the Point Roberts reefs, or 3,000 feet of Mileage Point, over which the salmon run on their way to the Fraser River. The case is one of the most interesting ever in the Federal court from Whatcom County, and its early determination is very important to the packing association, which is said to have a quarter of a million dollars invested in its plants at Point Roberts and Semiahmoo, including $80,000 in preparations for this season's run. It will take two weeks to complete the new traps, work upon which was stopped by the injunction, if that is dissolved and the work allowed to go on, and as the sockeye salmon run at Point Roberts generally begins the first week in July the company is naturally anxious to press the case to a hearing. It all seems to rest upon the court's construction of the rights granted to the Indians by the treaty of 1855, which secured to them the right, in common with the whites, of fishing in their "usual and accustomed places," without, however, designating any of those places, the latter question of fact being one upon which much testimony will be introduced by both sides. The canneries, it is said, furnish a ready market for all the fish the Indians can catch. It is hinted that while the case is nominally brought in the interest of a score or so of Indians who long since severed their tribal relations, and who can catch more fish in a day at either point designated than the whole tribe can eat in a year, it is really in the interest of the Fraser River cannerymen, who regard with considerable dissatisfaction the interception of any portion of the salmon run in American waters. The packing association employs at Point Roberts now 100 white men, and 250 during the packing season, besides many Chinamen. Should the injunction be made permanent, its effect will be to seriously cripple, if it does not absolutely ruin, one of the biggest enterprises in the county or the state.