“The Fourth of July on the Skokomish Reservation began about a week beforehand and so lasted as long as a short potlatch. The Nisqually and Puyallup Indians, having resolved to have celebrations of their own, the attendance was smaller than it otherwise would have been. The Chehalis Indians came a full week before the Fourth in wagons and on horseback, while those from Squaxon, Mud Bay, and Seabeck came between that time and the Fourth. A few of the Skokomish Indians were at the head of the celebration, bore most of the expense, and received most of the honor. Other Indians besides these few, however, occasionally invited all the visitors to a feast. The guests, on arriving at Skokomish, brought more or less food with them,--much as at a potlatch, only on a smaller scale,--and they were received with less ceremony. A table a hundred feet long was made in a pleasant shady grove, and here for more than a week--when the guests were not invited to the house of some friend to a meal--they feasted on beef, beans, rice, sugar, tea, coffee, and the like: sitting on benches, eating with knives, forks, and dishes, and cooking the food on two large stoves brought to the grounds for the purpose; visiting, horse-racing, and other sports filled up the rest of the time. “The Fourth was the central day of the festival and was celebrated in much the same style with the other days, only on a larger scale, there being more Indians present, more flags flying, more firing of guns, and more whites on the grounds. By invitation the whites on the reservation were present and were assigned to a very pleasant place on the grounds, where they might have had tables if they had done as the Indians did: made them for themselves; but, as it was, they picnicked on the ground, while their colored brethren sat at the tables. A few white men, rather the worse for liquor, visited the horse-races after the dinner; but not an Indian is known to have tasted liquor during the week.” The Clallam Indians seldom have celebrations of their own. They usually attend those of the whites near them, often being invited to take part in canoe-races. There has always been much drunkenness among the whites at these times; the Indians have often been sorely tempted to do the same, and many of them have fallen then who seldom have done so at other times.