59 
“Tts banks are flat and thickly wooded and conspicuously bor- 
dered by aquatic plants. Among them the common bulrush and 
the wild oat or rice may be noted. The latter plant, to which 
the natives apply the soft name of monomin*, presents a beautiful 
aspect when in flower, but it does not attain that luxuriant 
growth which we have observed near the sources of the Missis- 
sippi and along the shores of the Fox River, so abundant in this 
native grain. * * In ordinary seasons the quantity which is 
_ gathered in certain parts of Michigant and Hudson’s Bay Territo- 
ries is truly surprising. We are informed by Mr. Harman that 
ata single post on Rainy Lake, the Northwest (now Hudson’s 
Bay) Company purchased from the natives an annual supply of 
twelve or fifteen hundred bushels, and it constitutes a principal 
article of food at the trading posts in that quarter.”"t{ AndI may 
add that Carver alone did not find the plant of the lower lakes 
€qual to that farther west. He devotes the last chapter of his 
volume to the plants which attracted his attention, especially 
those of use to the Indians, and says of the wild rice: “I found 
great quantities of it in the watered lands near Detroit, between 
Lake Huron and Lake Erie, but on enquiry I learned that it 
never arrived nearer to maturity than just to blossom, after which 
it appeared blighted and died away.”§ This he ascribed to cli- 
matic conditions that the present experience of fruit growing and 
agriculture in Michigan would hardly warrant. Whether the 
condition was temporary or still holds would be well to verify, 
since it seems to have been well-marked at the time. 
From these extracts and observations it appears that the 
wild rice, though plentiful and known to have been gathered by 
the Indians in the regions between Lake Huron and Lake Michi- 
gan, as well as elsewhere, had its principal field in the country 
west of Lake Michigan, in Wisconsin, Minnesota and a part of 
*Chippeuay. He ay 
+Michigan Territory then embraced the region of the Upper Mississippi, or at 
least was governed from Detroit after 1818. 
tTravels in the Central Portions of the Mississippi Valley. Performed under 
the sanction of Government, in the year 1821, by Henry R, Schoolcraft. New York, 
1825, pp. 20, 21. 
§Travels through the interior parts of North America inthe year 1766, 1767 and 
1768, by J. Carver, Esq., 3d Ed., London, 1781, p- 525. 
