A Sailor’s Memory of the 1841 Fourth of July
Before Seattle, Tacoma, or Olympia existed, the Wilkes Expedition celebrated Independence Day on the prairies near Fort Nisqually with a roasted ox and brass howitzers.
George Erskine, a survivor of the U.S. Wilkes exploring expedition of 1841, has published a memoir titled 'Twenty Years Before the Mast.' Erskine recounts the expedition's arrival at Puget Sound, noting that Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia were then unheard of. On July 5, 1841 (celebrating the Fourth), the crew held a grand celebration near Fort Nisqually. They fired a national salute with brass howitzers, which astonished the local Indigenous people and the British 'redcoats' at the fort. The crew roasted an entire ox in a trench, played football, and enjoyed a day of festivities. Erskine describes the scene as a vivid memory of home, despite being thousands of miles away on the frontier.
“The reports of the guns not only astonished the natives, but waked up the redcoats in the fort, who came running up to the observatory with the Indians, nearly out of breath, to inquire into the racket.”
The 'prairie' near Fort Nisqually where the 1841 celebration took place is now part of the Joint Base Lewis-McChord area. It serves as a reminder that the urban landscape of the South Sound was once a site of early American military projection and colonial encounter.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.