Hudson Bay Company (1670-1873); the dyed and plucked fur, 
known as “Hudson seal,” increased the animal’s value. Although 
the beaver pelt was the most prized, it was exhaustible. Female 
beavers bear annually only one litter of four. By contrast, the 
female muskrat is prolific, able to produce up to five litters a 
year, each litter normally with eleven offspring (Ray, 1975). 
Hudson’s Bay Territory was largely conterminous with Can- 
ada’s Laurentian Shield, a boreal forest country with hundreds 
of fresh water lakes, an ideal habitat for Sweet Flag and the 
muskrat. Much of this vast wilderness was the territorial hunting 
land of Algonquian tribes, especially of the Cree and Ojibway. 
While on long hunting expeditions, the Cree chewed Sweet 
Flag rhizomes as a stimulant against fatigue and for endurance. 
In 1892, R. Strath visited Norway House, a former fur trade 
centre of Hudson Bay Company, located about 400 miles north 
of Winnipeg. His observations of the plant among the Cree are 
interesting: 
Large bundles of this plant can be seen hanging in every tepee or 
wigwam, tent or house wherever Indians are found, and seems to 
be the family medicine of the people, its virtues being known to 
all....A piece of root is carried by every tripper on his hunts and 
trips for the Hudson Bay Company and when feeling exhausted 
by hunger or fatigue, a small piece slowly chewed will restore the 
flagging energies in a most wonderful manner (Strath, 1903). 
The Indian may intentionally have propagated Acorus Calamus 
not for medicine alone but to insure a future supply for the 
muskrat upon which their livelihood depended. Thus, the fur 
trapping Indian, the muskrat, and Sweet Flag may have 
constituted a complementary interlocked ecologic system in the 
northlands. 
Extending across an immense territory, from maritime Can- 
ada and New England to the upper Great Lakes, Alberta and the 
Dakotas, the plant was named after the muskrat by several 
Indian tribes. The word muskrat originates from the Algonquin 
word musquash (Natick dialect). The following tribes have 
called the plant “muskrat root” or “muskrat food”: Algonquian 
language stock—the Abnaki of New Brunswick and Maine, 
moskwas’wask (Rousseau, 1946-48); Micmac-Montagnais of 
Newfoundland, ki we swask (Speck, 1917); Penobscot of Maine, 
muskwe s uwesk (Speak, 1917); Cree near Hudson Bay, weekas 
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