370 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1940 



times and finally asked, "To whom are you talking?" A small bush 

 replied that it had spoken. As no part of the bush above the ground 

 seemed edible, Wenibozho thought that the roots might be good to 

 eat. He uncovered the roots, tasted them, and liked the flavor of 

 them very much. Being hungry, he ate many of them and suffered 

 from overeating. For several days he was unable to travel, and when 

 he attempted to do so ho found himself as hungry as before and 

 quite weak. As he passed along seeking food, many plants spoke to 

 him. Wenibozho gave no heed to their entreaties until he was at- 

 tracted by the beauty of a graceful grass growing in a small lake 

 basking in the sunshine of the open woodland. Some of these plants 

 beckoned to him and said, "Sometimes they eat us." He was quite 

 hungry now, and observing that the upper part of the plants was 

 loaded with long seeds, he soon gathered some of them. Kemoving 

 the hulls, he ate the kernels and found the taste of them so pleasing 

 and their effect upon his hunger so gratifying that he exclaimed, 

 "Oh, you are indeed good! What are you called?" The plants 

 replied, "We are called manomin." 



These adventures and discoveries of Wenibozho have served as a 

 foundation for many legends that have been handed down through 

 generations of Chippewa, Menomini, and related Indians. In their 

 cliildhood, this story excited their imiigination, and as they grew 

 older they came to have veneration for this fruitful grass that 

 provides such palatable and nourishing food. 



Manomin,^ an Algonquian word meaning "good berry," is sugges- 

 tive and descriptive. By most of the tribes of this linguistic stock, 

 this grass and fruit are called manomin, and by the same name 

 became known to the early white settlers of the upper Alississippi 

 Valley. Many common names for this plant came into use when 

 the French and English population increased in this region. By the 

 French it was folle avoine, a name most frequently found in the 

 earlier accounts of that part of North America around the Great 

 Lakes. The English names for the plant are quite numerous. Such 

 names as wild rice, Indian rice, squaw rice, Canadian rice, black 

 rice, Indian oats, blackbird oats, wild oats, and water oats are found 

 in the literature. This plant, however, is not a species of rice or of 

 an oat, though the vernacular names so designate it. Some of these 

 names are only locally used. For example, this plant is known only 

 by the name of water oats to the older inhabitants living along the 

 tidal streams in the south Atlantic States. 



Among the adventurers who flocked to North America shortly 

 after Columbus missed his way to India and discovered a new world, 

 there was a sprinkling of naturalists who came to gather seeds and 



» Jenks, Albert Ernest, The wild rice gathorers of the Upper Lakes. Nineteenth Ann. 

 Rep. Bur. Amer. Bthuol., 1897-98, p. 1924, 1900. 



