JENKS] HABITAT IN WILD-RICE DISTRICT 1033 
Thus it will be seen that Z/zan/a aquatica occurs in all the common- 
wealths of the United States, so far as ascertained by correspondence, 
except in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Indian Territory, 
Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, West Vir- 
ginia, and Wyoming. Most of these states lie in or west of the Rocky 
mountains. It is believed that the plant grows in both West Virginia 
and Tennessee, but it has not yet been reported. 4 
There are three states from which no data have been collected, viz, 
Missouri, South Carolina, and Washington. It is believed that the 
plant grows in the former two. 
Haprrat IN THE WILD-RICE DISTRICT 
Wherever the last glacier left little mud-bottomed, water-filled hol- 
lows, there wild rice has established itself, if other conditions are 
favorable. Such ponds and lakes are characteristic of the alluvial 
apron spread out over Wisconsin and Minnesota. In 1817 the interior 
of Wisconsin is spoken of as watered with innumerable small lakes 
and ponds which generally abound with folle avoine [wild rice], water- 
fowl, and fish, each in such prodigious quantities that the Indians are 
in a manner exempt from the contingence of famine.’ 
Within the wild-rice district sluggish streams and quiet bends in the 
rivers and creeks also produce wild rice, provided the bed is mud 
alluvium. The grain has followed the stream toward its mouth, the 
waterfowl has sown it in its flight, and the Indian has carried it to his 
favorite lakes and streams, until to-day it is safe to say that the grain 
is found wherever in these two states there is suitable soil (see plate 
LXVII @). 
Before the middle of the seventeenth century wild rice was reported 
as the staple food of the Menomini Indians, and as being very plentiful 
on what is now Menomini river, the boundary between Wisconsin and 
the upper peninsula of Michigan. Indian tradition first speaks of the 
grain as being found in this stream, and from here as a starting place 
the present memoir will follow the plant along the various waterways 
of the wild-rice district. Green bay, from above the mouth of 
Menomini river southward to the bay-head, has been fringed with the 
plant from earliest historic times, and to-day there are thousands of 
acres of wild rice in the shallows of its waters. Most of the streams 
which discharge into it—all of those which are suitable—bear the grain 
abundantly. Fox river, from Lake Winnebago to its source, has been 
reported as filled with wild rice from the time of Marquette, who spoke 
of it in 1673 as follows: ‘The way is so cut up by marshes and little 
lakes that it is easy to go astray, especially as the river is so covered 
with wild oats that one can hardly discover the channel.”* Carver, in 

1Samuel R. Brown, Western Gazetteer, p. 252. 
2 Quoted by Thwaites in Historic Waterways, Chicago, 1888, pp. 156, 157. 
