72 NATURE STUDY. 



The result is a long and interesting paper, or " memoir," 

 concerning the entire subject, which has now been pub- 

 lished in a report of the Bureau. Dr. Jenks found some- 

 thing worth doing, and did it well. 



Dr. Jenks learned, by his researches, that before the 

 middle of the seventeenth century, more than 250 5^ears 

 ago, wild rice had been reported as the staple food of the 

 Menomini Indians, who found it very abundant on the 

 Menomini River, the boundary between Wisconsin and 

 the upper peninsula of Michigan. But these were not 

 the only Indians who knew the value of the wild-rice 

 fields. The Sauks and the Foxes, the Ojibwa, or Chippe- 

 wa, the Dakota, or Sioux, all struggled for the prize of 

 abundant food, and in some cases nearly exterminated one 

 another by their fierce battles. 



Then came the white man, who at length prevailed, and 

 now the Indians remaining on the reservations gather the 

 wild rice in peace, but in much the same rude way as in 

 former times. The Indians learned long ago that they 

 must in some way protect their prospective harvest from 

 the great flocks of wild fowl which came to feed upon it. 

 So, sometime in August, the Indian women, to whom 

 most of the labor falls, set out in bark canoes, two in each, 

 with great balls of string made from the tough inner bark 

 of the linden, or bass-wood trees. This ball of rude 

 string is placed in the canoe behind the woman who is to 

 do the tying, and the string is drawn over her shoulder, 

 through a loop in her clothing. A stick, curved like a 

 sickle, is used to bring a bunch of heads together, when 

 they are twisted, bent over and tied. In this way, most 

 of the rice in the bundle is protected from the birds and 

 prevented from falling into the water when ripe. When 

 a bunch has thus been tied on each side of the canoe, the 

 woman in the stern paddles along a few feet, when two 

 more bunches are gathered and tied up. In this way lon^ 



