242 
After the tramping is completed, the chaff, dust, and ashes are winnowed 
from the rice by the women. The product is then sacked and is ready for 
sale as breakfast food. It sold for not less than ten cents a pound before the 
war at the village; and as high as twenty-five cents per pound in the cities. 
This rice is prepared and baked as gem cakes. It is also used to stuff 
ducks and other fowls when preparing them for dinners. A man in Salt 
Lake City sent all the way to Minnesota for wild rice for dressing for ducks 
for his Thanksgiving dinner. 
In preparing it as breakfast food, it is prepared and cooked the same as 
white rice and can be cooked in as many different ways. The preferable 
way, however, is to take a cupful of the rice and pour a cupful of boiling 
water on it at bedtime and then cover it up so as to keep the steam in and 
let it set till morning. Then put it on the stove and evaporate the remaining 
water. It is then ‘‘puffed-rice’ and is delicious with sugar and cream. 
“The Ojibwa (Chippewa) sometimes boil the excrements of the rabbit 
with rice ‘to season it’ and are said to esteem it as a luxury. To make the 
dish still more palatable, and one of the highest epicurean dishes, they occa- 
sionally take a partridge, pick off the feathers, and without any further 
dressing except pounding it to the constituency of jelly, throw it into the 
rice, and boil it in that condition.’ (Winchell, Aborigines of Minnesota, 
p. 595.) 
