CHAPTER IV 
PRODUCTION 
INTRODUCTION 
The world is fortunate indeed that it has turned its attention to the 
scientific and historic study of human efforts and institutions before 
primitive man has entirely disappeared. When attention is directed 
to the effort of production, one is convinced that the first act was simply 
that of appropriation—as of a club to strike, a stone to throw, a hole 
to crawl in, fruit to eat. One can not make use of commodities in the 
past or in the future; he must use them in the present. The hungry 
primitive man was satisfied when he found food to eat. His want was 
a present want, but he was often hungry when he could not find the 
desired food; so at the moment when he conceived the thought of 
keeping food from a stock of present plenty until a time of future 
need he took a highly important step in the varied progress of civil- 
ization. 
In the study of vegetal food production the first attention should be 
given to indigenous products which require no care, or, in other words, 
to purely native and spontaneous products.’ Wild rice is a plant of 
this sort. It was so seldom planted and the stalks were so seldom cared 
for that in this regard it is near the bottom of the ladder in the ascent 
of cultivated plants. Production with regard to wild rice, thérefore, is 
confined chiefly to the gathering and care of the seed. After a general 
description of the processes of harvesting and preparing the grain, a 
detailed study of each step in the production will be made, as the 
methods vary greatly in different localities. 
The grain is matured in the latter part of August or in September. 
Shortly before that time the women often go to the rice fields in their 
canoes and tie the standing stalks into small bunches (plate Lxx). 
When the grain is sufficiently mature, two persons, generally women, 
go together into the fields to garner the seed. The stalks are usually so 
close together in the harvest field that it is impossible to use a paddle, 
so the canoe is pushed along by a pole. As the harvesters pass among 

the rice, standing 4 or 5 feet above the water, one of the women 
reaches out, and, by means of a stick, pulls a quantity of the stalks down 

1Tt is not meant here that all agriculture began with such food products as are produced sponta- 
neously in great abundance, It is quite probable that want did much toward causing primitive 
people to cultivate the soil. See W J MeGee, The Beginning of Agriculture (American Anthropolo 
gist, Washington, October, 1895). 
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