1042 WILD RICE GATHERERS OF UPPER LAKES [ETH. ANN. 19 
souls. They raised large quantities of maize and potatoes; ‘‘ they also 
collected each autumn large quantities of wild rice, which abounded in 
many of their lakes and streams.” ' 
The following facts shed light on the importance which the Indian 
attached to wild rice. Almost every bend of Chippewa and Red Cedar 
rivers has been the scene of an Indian battle, and each of these streams 
has borne a name synonymous with ** Wild-rice river.” Prairie-rice 
lake (** Mush-ko-da-mun-o-min-e-kan,” Prairie lake, Barron county, 
Wisconsin) has been the scene of several battles between the Ojibwa 
and the Dakota. It is about 8 miles long and averages less than a quar- 
ter of a mile wide. It is shallow, miry-bottomed, and almost entirely 
coyered with wild rice, which is so thick and luxuriant that the 
Indians have to cut paths through it for their canoes. ‘From the 
manner in which they gather the rice, and the quantity which a family 
generally collects during the harvesting season, this lake alone would 
supply a body of 2,000 Indians.”’ From the earliest period of their 
occupation of the Chippewa river country, the most fearless of the 
Ojibwa came to this lake each fall of the year to collect a portion of 
the abundant rice crop, notwithstanding its close vicinity to the Dakota 
villages, and notwithstanding that they lost lives from the sudden 
attacks of the Dakota almost yearly.’ 
Some of the Ojibwa villages near the wild-rice fields were named 
** Wild-rice village.” In 1852 Warren' said that the Ojibwa living on 
“Rice” lakes of the St Croix were called ‘* Mun-o-min-ik-a-sheenh-ug, 
or Rice-makers.” In 1831, Schoolcraft, in naming the Ojibwa bands, 
mentioned the ‘* Folle Ayoine country ” as including Lac du Flambeau, 
Ottowa lake, Yellow river, *‘ Nama Kowagun” of St Croix river, and 
Snake river.’ Indeed, the French called the Indians of all this section 
of country—the river sources of northern Wisconsin—the ‘* Fols 
Ayoin Sauteurs.”°  Arrowsmith’s map (London, 1796; additions, 
1802) shows the Ojibwa occupying the territory both north and south 
of Lake Superior, and shows Burntwood river (Bois Brulé) as the 
“passage into the country of the Wild Rice Indians.” It leads to 
the headwaters of St Croix river, half-way down the course of which 
is a ‘*Chippeway village called the Rice people.” 
About 10,000 Ojibwa Indians had access to wild rice from the time 
they drove the Fox Indians out of the wild-rice fields until, say, the 
year 1825, or in round numbers two hundred years, and this is about 
the present Ojibwa population in the United States who use wild rice.’ 

1 Warren, op. cit., p. 299. 
* Ibid., p. 309. 
*Thbid., pp. 309-310. 
4Tbid., p. 38. 
* Schooleraft, Narrative, appendix, p. 576. 
® Coues, Pike, vol. 1, pp. 342-343. 
7 The portable wigwams in which these Indians visit the rice fields are illustrated in plates LX VII 
b, UXXIX, 
