ENKS] SOWING AND OTHER EARLY CARE 1057 
over the side of the canoe. Then with a similar stick held in her free 
hand she beats the fruit head, thus knocking the grain into the bottom 
of the canoe. In this way the grain on both sides of the path is 
gathered. When one end of the canoe is full, the laborers exchange 
implements, the harvester becoming boatman and the boatman har- 
vester, and the other end of the canoe is filled on the return trip to 
the shore. The grain is then taken out, dried or cured, its tenacious 
hull is thrashed off, and, after being winnowed, it is stored away for 
future use.* 
“Tn the golden-hued Wazu-pe-wee—the moon when the wild-rice is gathered; 
When the leaves on the tall sugar-tree are as red as the breast of the robin, 
And the red-oaks that border the lea are aflame with the fire of the sunset, 
From the wide-waving fields of wild-rice—from the meadows of Psin-ta-wak-pa- 
dan, 
Where the geese and the mallards rejoice, and grow fat on the bountiful harvest, 
Came the hunters with saddles of moose and the flesh of the bear and the bison, 
And the women in birchen canoes well laden with rice from the meadows.”’ 
Gordon, Legends of the Northwest, pp. 58-59. 
Sowing AND OrHerR Earty Care 
Perrot wrote that the Assiniboin Indians, west and northwest of 
Lake Winnipeg, Canada, sowed wild rice in their marshes, which they 
later came to gather. He says: ‘‘ Les Chiripinons ou Assiniboiilas 
sement dans leurs marais quelques folles avoines quils recueillent, 
mais ils n’en peuvent faire le transport chez eux que dans le temps de 
la navigation.” * 
At the present time, near Rat Portage, Ontario, there are two small 
lakes in the vicinity of Shoal lake where the Indians (Ojibwa) have 
sown wild rice, and where they procure quite a harvest.’ 
The Ojibwa Indians at Rice lake, near Crandon, Forest county, Wis- 
consin, at times both sow the grain and weed out the large flat grass 
which grows among the stalks. 
The Ojibwa Indians of Lac Courte Oreille reservation, Wisconsin, 
have a tradition that all the wild rice between their present habitat and 
Red river of the North has been sown by their ancestors.‘ The finest 
harvest field now on the reservation is that of Lac Courte Oreille river. 
It isa sown field. Piiskin’, a woman estimated to be slightly over a 
hundred years of age, says that she remembers when wild rice was 

1 Attention is called to the following published illustrations of wild rice harvesting by the Indians: 
1, Ojibwa Indians: Schoolcraft Indian Tribes, vol. 11, pl. 4, p. 64; ibid., vol. vi, p. 552; same by 
Stickney, Indian Use of Wild Rice, American Anthropologist, vol. 1x, pp. 115-121, April, 1896; 2, 
Chicago Tribune, Sunday edition, October 6, 1898, p. 1. 3, An early picture of the harvest: Bressany, 
Relation Abrégée de Quelques Missions, Montreal, 1852, p. 237. 4, Dakota Indians: Catlin, Tllustra- 
tions of the manners, customs, and condition of the North American Indians, 10th ed., vol. 11, pl. 278, 
p. 208, London, 1866. 5, Wisconsin Indians: Olney, Quarto Geography, 1849, p. 37; Bryant, Popular 
History of the United States, 1878, vol. 11, p. 014. 
2Perrot, Mémoire, p. 52. 
3 Pither, letter, December 5, 1898. 
4See chapter VI. 

