241 
WILD OR INDIAN RICE. 
BY 
ALBERT B. REAGAN. 
Along the swampy borders of streams and in the shallow water of the 
numerous small lakes throughout the Great Lake region and on westward 
through Minnesota to the Red River valley in that state, grows the water 
oats or Indian rice, Zizania aquatica L. This plant belongs to the grass 
family. It is an annual; flowers monoecious; the staminate and pistillate 
both 1-flowered spikelets in the same panicle. Glumes 2, subtended by a 
small cartilaginous ring, herbaceous-membranaceous, convex, awnless in 
the sterile, the lower one tipped with a straight awn in the fertile spikelets. 
Palet none. Stamens 6. Stigmas pencil-form. A large reed-like water- 
grass. Spikelets jointed upon the club-shaped pedicels, very decidous. 
Culms 3 to 9 feet high; leaves flat, 2 to 3 feet long (and lie flat on the water 
when they first emerge; later they stand erect and finally decline at 
the tips), linear lanceolate; lower branches are of the ample pyramidal; 
panicle staminate, spreading; the upper erect, pistillate; lower glums long 
awned, rough; styles distinct; grain linear, slender, 6” long. 
I became acquainted with this plant at Nett Lake, Minnesota, where I 
had charge of the Bois Fort Indian Reservation as Superintendent and 
Special Disbursing Agent from 1909 to 1914. Nett Lake, the lake that bears 
that name, covers three-fourths of a township in area and is the shape of a 
great lobster’s paw with the claws pointing eastward, the major claw being 
the northern member. It is very shallow, the greater part being less than 
four feet in depth. In this the wild rice grows in such quantities that the 
lake looks like a great barley field. 
The rice does not ripen all at once, so can not be cut like a barley field. 
But as the grains drop from the stalk very: easily when ripe, it can be 
pounded off into a canoe with a stick and the green still left to ripen. 
The rice begins to ripen in the latter part of August. As soon as it be- 
gins to ripen, the Indians have a secret ceremony and much powowing. 
Then the chief medicine man gives permission for the Indians to go out 
and gather rice. 
With canoes, the Indians go among the rice and beat the heads over the 
eanoe with short clubs. This they keep up till they have a canoe full of rice. 
They then go to the village with it. 
At the village the rice, which has just passed the milk stage when gath- 
ered, is parched and scorched in a large iron kettle inclined over the 
fire so that a squaw can stir the rice the while to keep it from burning. By 
this scorching process the hulls are burned from the kernels, or are so dried 
and charred that they can be loosened and removed by the next process. 
As soon as the scorched rice is removed from_the kettle and is cold enough 
to handle, it is placed in a cylindrical hole in the ground that has been 
lined with cement or marl from the lake. Then the Indian man of the 
house gets into this hole and tramps the hulls off with his bare feet. (Some 
people say they wash their feet—after they get through the tramping.) 
