10386 WILD RICE GATHERERS OF UPPER LAKES (ETH. ANN. 19 
is a string of marshy or muddy-bottomed lakes in which the water is 
but a few feet deep, and wherein the wild rice grows luxuriantly. 
** Possessing these and other advantages,” he says, ** there is not a spot 
in the northwest which an Indian would sooner choose as a dwelling 
place than Mille Lacs.”? 
Jefferson Davis wrote, in 1885, that in 1829 in the country about 
**Tay-cho-pe-rah,” **The four lakes country,” i. e., Madison and its 
vicinity, in Wisconsin, *‘the Indians subsisted largely on Indian corn 
and wild rice.”* In 1816 the grain was gathered in Rock river, 
Wisconsin, and chapter vir will show that the plant existed throughout 
the southeastern part of the State. 
A general view of wild rice in Wisconsin and Minnesota was given 
by Upham in 1883, who quotes as follows: 
Wild rice . . . acquires in the Northwest an economical importance second to no 
other spontaneous production. It is the only instance in this region of a native 
grain, occurring in sufficient quantity to supply the wants of ordinary consumption. 
It is particularly abundant on the lake-like expansions of rivers, toward their 
sources, which give such a marked feature to the distribution of these northern 
streams, and is so grandly illustrated in their main type, the Mississippi. It seems to 
select, by preference, the lower terminations of these expansions, which generally 
debouch by a narrowed outlet and considerable fall, constituting rapids... It is 
rarely met with on inland lakes which have no outlet.* 
This section has shown that most of Wisconsin and the northern 
half of Minnesota bore wild rice so abundantly that the Indian popu- 
lation depended very largely upon it for food. This ** wild-rice dis- 
triet.” as considered in chapter v1, includes Wisconsin, excepting the 
southwestern part, and that part of Minnesota lying east of Missis- 
sippi river. This boundary is fixed almost arbitrarily, the only rea- 
sons being that more accurate statistics of Indian population, and a 
more precise knowledge of Indian food conditions, were here obtainable 
than for the territory west of the Mississippi, which consequently is 
left out of consideration, though it has abundant wild-rice fields. 
This view of the habitat within the wild-rice district shows that 
no other section of the North American continent was so characteris- 
tically an Indian paradise, so far as a spontaneous vegetal food is con- 
cerned, as was this territory in Wisconsin and Minnesota. 
ForrIGN Haprrar 
Immediately north of the states of Wisconsin and Minnesota, in 
Canada, the entire system of waterways, extending from Grand Port- 
age of Lake Superior through the Winnipeg system, produces wild 
rice abundantly. Still farther north and east there are lakes in 
which John Long reported the grain one hundred and fifty years 
Warren, History of the Ojibwa, p. 156. 
2 Butler, Tay-cho-pe-rah, in Wisconsin Historical Collections, vol. X (1883-1885), p. 75. 
Upham, Catalogue of the Flora of Minnesota, p. 109. 
