STATE HORTICULTITBAL SOCIETY. 195 



Indian women; they wade in the water and gather the roots. It is of 

 oblong shape, of a whitish yellow, with a few black rings around it, 

 of a slightly pungent taste, and not disagreeable when eaten with salt 

 or meat. 



The psen-chah I believe to be of the same family as the last but the 

 tuber not so large. The stem and leaf are similar, but grow in deeper 

 water. The Indians are very found of them. Both of these tubers 

 are found in large quantities in the muskrat lodges, stored by them 

 for winter use. It is not saying too much to call them a luxury. 



The ta-wah-pah is another tuber, or rather a root, that the Indians 

 esteem highly as f )od. Like the two preceding, it is a water product. 

 The stem, leaf, and a yellow flower is like the pond lilly. It is found 

 in the lakes, in water and mud from four to five feet deep. The In- 

 dian women used to gather them in large quantities. The root is from 

 one to two feet in length, very porous; there are as many as six or 

 eight cells running the whole length of the root. It is slightly sweet 

 and glutinous. The Indians generally boiled it with wild fowl, but 

 often roasted it in the absence of wild game. All of these roots were 

 preserved by the Indians for winter use, by boiling and then drying 

 them over the fire, or in the sun. 



The greatest product of all was the wild rice, at least as an article 

 of food, of which the Indians themselves gathered instead of the 

 women. They used it in all of their great feasts. It .was found — 

 and I suppose it is to this day — in lakes and streams, where the mud 

 and water is from three or four feet deep upwards to ten or fifteen. 

 The rice harvest was a short one. It was only of a week's duration. 

 When ripe the slightest touch shakes it ofi", a strong wind of short 

 duration scatters it in the water. The Indians obtained it by pad- 

 dling a canoe among the rice, when with a hooked stick they drew 

 the stalks over the canoe and whipped off the grains. They continued 

 to push the canoe on and whipped off the rice until the canoe was 

 full, then carried the cargo to the shore, unload, fill again until the 

 . season was ended. 



To dry the rice they erected scaffolds about four feet high, eight 

 wide and twenty to fifty feet long, covered with reed grass. On these 

 the rice was placed and dried by a slow fire kindled under the scaffold 

 and kept burning about a day and a half. The beard is longer than 

 that of rye, and to remove it and the chaff the Indians made a 

 hole in the earth about one foot wide and one foot deep, in which 

 they placed a skin, and put about a peck of the dried rice at a time 

 in the hole. Then the Indian, holding himself by a stake planted 



