Feasts.
It has been said, “It is always a feast or a famine with a native.”
Whether that is true or not, certain it is that the natives of the Pacific Coast have a great variety of feasts. Indians, wherever you find them, are very hospitable to strangers—the travellers and miners of this vast country would all testify to this. They are most generous, even reckless, with their food. If you are invited to a feast among them the food is piled up before you, and after having satisfied your appetite you are expected to take away all you cannot eat. If the visitor is a chief or important person, what he has left is sent home by messenger to his family. If he be any ordinary guest, he sweeps off what remains—which is usually much more than he has eaten—into a corner of his blanket or his shirt, and carries it away. If the feast be of whale’s blubber, porpoise, fish of similar kind, or venison, bear or mountain goat, it is cut up into slices and strung on a sharp stick, or carried in his hand to the rest of his family.
At a big feast there are always several masters of ceremonies and a number of waiters in attendance. These never sit down while the eating is going on, though often a feast will last for six or seven hours, having as many courses. There are numerous small, every-day feasts where neighbors call upon each other in a happy, social way.
One of the greatest offences to an Indian is to refuse to accept an invitation which he has given you to eat with him and his friends.