7D NATURK STUD\. 



The Wild-Rice Indians. 



BY EDWARD ]. BURNHAM. 



When Sieur Jean Nicollet, in 1634, first visited Green 

 Bay, on the western shore of Lake Michigan, he found 

 there a tribe of Indians lighter in color than their neigh- 

 bors and remarkably well formed. They subsisted largely 

 on wild rice, called in their language " manonia " — from 

 which they took their name, Menomini (wild rice men). 



The wild rice, upon which these Indians fed and grew 

 to such fair proportions, is the Zizania aqtiatica of the bot- 

 anies, a single-stem water plant, belonging to the grasses, 

 a member of that useful family of which Mr. Batchelder 

 has written so entertainingly in previous numbers of Na- 

 ture Study. 



The grain or kernel of wild rice is a slender cylinder in 

 form, about half an inch long, and of a dark slate color. 

 Each grain is enclosed in a husk, or glume, and each husk 

 has a beard, or awm, about an inch in length. These 

 glumes grow in clusters, called panicles, much like the 

 heads of oats. 



The grain is shed into the water when it ripens in the 

 autumn, and lies in the soft ooze at the bottom of a lake 

 or river until spring, when it germinates, or sprouts, and 

 the shoot grows rapidly to the surface of the water, where 

 it appears early in June and at once begins to prepare its 

 head. Catharine Parr Traill, in her " Backwoods of Can- 

 ada," has thus described the plants at about this stage: 



When seen from a distance, they [the rice beds] look like low 

 green islands on the lakes ; on passing through one of these rice 

 beds when the rice is in flower, it has a beautiful appearance with 

 its broad grassy leaves and light waving spikes, garnished with 

 pale yellow green blossoms, delicately shaded with reddish purple, 

 from beneath which fall three elegant straw-colored anthers, which 

 move with ever}^ breath of air or slightest motion of the waters. 



