Chief Seattle Days

On the Saturday morning of the third weekend in August, people gather in the Suquamish Cemetery on South Street. The cemetery sits on a hillside that looks across the Salish Sea toward the city named for the man buried there. At 10 a.m. on August 15, 2026, the Suquamish Tribe held its honoring at Chief Seattle’s grave. Tribal Elder Della Crowell, a direct descendant of Chief Seattle, helped officiate. The tribe describes the ceremony plainly: its people practice their traditions, invite others to tell stories, and remind those present of the history of Chief Seattle and the Suquamish people. There is no admission fee, and the public is welcome.

The honoring is the center of Chief Seattle Days, a three-day festival the tribe holds each year in Suquamish, Kitsap County, on the Port Madison Indian Reservation. The whole weekend is free and drug- and alcohol-free. According to BainbridgeIsland.com, it is staffed by more than 100 volunteers. Cameras are welcome. Personal drones are not permitted over ceremonies, camps, or other tribal areas.

A grave above the water

Chief Seattle died on June 7, 1866, and was buried in this cemetery. The Suquamish Museum notes that the cemetery was already established before his death. The tribe rebuilt the gravesite monument in 2011. An interpretive kiosk stands at the cemetery entrance on South Street, next to St. Peter’s Catholic Mission and near the Suquamish Museum.

The ceremony also recalls the treaty. As the tribe tells it, the Suquamish were one of more than twenty tribal groups party to the Treaty of Point Elliott, signed near Mukilteo on January 22, 1855. It was the second of five treaties Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens negotiated with tribes in western Washington. Chief Seattle represented both the Suquamish and the Duwamish at the signing. The Suquamish gave up title to lands covering most of present Kitsap County. In exchange they received acknowledgment and protection of their fishing and hunting rights, health care, education, and a reservation at Port Madison.

Salmon at noon, canoes at the ramp

An hour and a half after the honoring, the parade sets off at 11:30. Its route runs Park Boulevard to Prospect Street to Division Avenue to Suquamish Way to Augusta Avenue. The 2026 theme was Dress to Impress, and Tribal Elder Patti Medina organized it. Afterward the tribe reported that what “must of been a metric ton of candy” was thrown from the floats.

At noon on Saturday and Sunday, the salmon bake opens at the House of Awakened Culture and runs while supplies last. In 2026 a meal cost $25 for the public and $15 for Tribal Members, bottled water included. Tribal Member Elders received two meals free over the weekend. In 2023 the price was $20, cash only, with seating “on the slab.” On the Sunday of the 2026 festival, the tribe posted that the grill was warming for “the world-famous Chief Seattle Days Salmon Lunch.” That same morning brought the fish fillet contest. Shellene George defended her title as Fish Fillet Champion against David Sigo Jr. and won for the second year running.

The canoe races run at the Charles Lawrence Memorial Boat Ramp on Saturday afternoon into the evening and on Sunday from noon. Racing is open to tribal-affiliated canoe clubs, and anyone may watch. The tribe’s own posts call them war canoe races.

Smaller contests fill the rest of the weekend:

• Golf: A tournament at Whitehorse Golf Club in Kingston opens the week on Thursday. The 2024 edition was the thirteenth, a four-person shotgun scramble with proceeds going to Chief Kitsap Academy athletics.
• Softball: A co-ed tournament plays all weekend on the field off Totten Road in Poulsbo. In 2026 the Brady Bunch took first, Suqsklamuck second, and the Tomahawks third.
• Saturday games: Horseshoes and cornhole run on the Fitness Center Field. A teen dance runs Saturday night at the Chief Kitsap Academy Commons.
• Sunday events: Crab races and youth activities fill the day. The Elders Walk is open to Suquamish Tribal Member Elders, and each walker receives a Chief Seattle Days T-shirt.

The 5K Fun Run on Sunday morning starts and finishes at the House of Awakened Culture. It passes Chief Seattle’s grave and Old Man House Park, with views of salt water and mountains. The winners of the elder, adult, and youth divisions each receive a commemorative blanket. After the 2026 race the tribe allowed that “some of those hills may not be exactly ‘fun.’” It also reported that the Tribal Chairman category had been won “once again” by Leonard Forsman.

The longhouse and the drum

The House of Awakened Culture stands on the waterfront in downtown Suquamish. It was completed and dedicated in February 2009 and was designed to honor the longhouse of the dxʷsəqʼʷəb village. According to the Suquamish Museum, the Suquamish had no traditional communal space between the burning of Chief Seattle’s longhouse in 1870 and the completion of this building.

Inside the front door, the first pole on the left tells a Suquamish Creation Story. The Changer set People against Animals in the Sla-Hal Game, a game of chance played with bones, discs, and sticks. The People were losing until Wolf took pity on them and gave them a song for strength and endurance. The game is still played, between people only. Sla-hal stick games were on the 2023 festival schedule, with a first prize of $950.

On Friday evening, after a 5:30 dinner, tribal families share songs and dances at the Coastal Jam. The powwow follows on Saturday and Sunday on the lawn. Saturday has grand entries at 1 and 7 p.m., with featured dancers and a dinner break between them. Sunday has a grand entry at 1, awards at 3, and the retiring of the colors at 4. The host drum for 2026 was Blackfoot Confederacy, with Anthony Bluehorse as MC. Dozens of Native makers, artists, and food vendors sold jewelry, art, and food through the weekend.

The powwow has not been held every year. In 2023 there was none. The tribe explained then that powwows had become part of Suquamish life during a time when Native Americans were not allowed to practice their culture. It said it was working “to bring back the traditions of our ancestors, with our traditional songs and dances.” That year it held what it called Coastal Sharing, with songs and dances shared alongside other local tribes. By 2024 the powwow had returned, alongside the Coastal Jam.

On Friday afternoon the Royalty Pageant names Senior, Junior, and Tiny Tot Warrior, Miss, and Two Spirit from among Suquamish youth aged four to eighteen. In the tribe’s words, the celebration “is remembered and honored each time our Suquamish youth wear their crown and sash year around.”

Foot ferries from Seattle, 1911

Chief Seattle Days began in 1911. By the account on BainbridgeIsland.com, the first celebration was held on the present Celebration Grounds. It was started by local tribal and community residents together with civic leaders from the City of Seattle. The new town of Suquamish was then linked to Seattle by foot-passenger ferries, which carried city residents across Puget Sound for what was then a one-day event. That account lists these among the 1911 activities:

• a salmon bake
• canoe races
• baseball
• drumming and dancing
• a “Memorial Service to Chief Seattle” at his gravesite

The tribe’s own telling differs on the last point. It says the gravesite ceremony was added as the celebration grew. A 2024 report in the North Kitsap Herald dated the honoring to the early 1900s. In 2020 the tribe wrote that it had gathered at the grave in late August “for as long as anyone can remember.” That year, the tribe wrote, “things must be done a little differently.” Suquamish Elder Marilyn Wandrey led a special celebration at the grave, set to Bearon’s Floor Song by the Sacred Water Canoe Family, composed by James Old Coyote.

Suquamish Elders still remember visitors arriving at the old Mosquito Fleet ferry dock downtown. A community pier replaced it in the 1950s and later became unusable. In 2008 the tribe built a new public dock next to the House of Awakened Culture.

The Suquamish Museum credits Charles Russell Lawrence with reviving Chief Seattle Days. He was born in Suquamish in 1923. As a child he and his siblings were sent to Chemawa Indian Boarding School in Oregon, where they were forbidden to speak Lushootseed. He came home to find most of his family and tribe gone. He enlisted in the Army and was shot in the knee in the Normandy invasion. He then spent years in a hospital with tuberculosis, where he met his future wife. Back in Suquamish, he served several terms on the Tribal Council and worked to secure funding for the boat ramp where the canoes now race. He died at 39. A memorial pole was dedicated in 2012, carved by several artists, among them his granddaughter Kah-Ty-Ah Moran. Its markings stand for his knee wound and his tuberculosis.

Old Man House and a boulder from 1940

The museum gives Chief Seattle’s birth as around 1786. His father, Schweabe, was from the Suquamish village of dxʷsəqʼʷəb, and his mother, Scholitza, was Duwamish. As a boy he watched Captain Vancouver arrive in 1792, standing beside his father. In 1854 he spoke to Governor Stevens in Lushootseed. The speech was translated by his friend Doc Maynard and has been recognized worldwide.

He lived at Old Man House on the shore of Agate Passage, the site of the largest Suquamish winter village and Big House. Archaeological work there documents more than 2,000 years of habitation. The U.S. government had the house burned in 1870. The tribe regained ownership of the land in 2004.

In 1940 the Seattle Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution erected a bronze plaque on a granite boulder in his memory. It gives his dates as 1787–1866 and calls him “friend, counselor, and protector of the pioneers.” It says he “lived and died on this reservation at ‘Old Man House.’” Road construction displaced the marker, and the tribe moved it near the waterfront. In March 2026 it sat in view of the dock, with a dedication ceremony still to come.