1058 WILD RICE GATHERERS OF UPPER LAKES [ETH. ANN. 19 
gathered in Prairie lake, Barron county, Wisconsin, and sown in Lake 
Chetak, Rice lake, Bear lake, Moose-ear lake, and Lae Courte Oreille 
river, all in the near vicinity of their reservation. Allof these waters 
are harvest fields for the Ojibwa of Lac Courte Oreille reservation 
today. 
Awa’sa sowed the grain in Lac Courte Oreille river, and his grand- 
children’s families now harvest the crop. Several other families on 
the reservation gather wild rice in harvest fields which they them- 
selves haye sown. In the fall of 1899 at least one family gathered 
grain with which to sow a private field. 
TYING 
Various reasons are assigned for tying the standing stalks into little 
bunches or sheaves while the grain is in the milk stage (plates Lxx1, 
Luxx). The stalks are tied with strips of bark, and are left standing 
two or three weeks to ripen.’ 
Hennepin said in 1697 that the ‘‘ Nadouessiou” (Dakota) Indian 
women at Mille Lacs, Minnesota, tie the stalks together with white- 
wood bark (basswood, 77/ia americana) to prevent it from being all 
devoured by flocks of duck, swan, and teal.” The unknown author of 
the Memoir of the Sioux, written some time after 1719, says that 
the Titoha (a Dakota tribe living 50 leagues west of St Anthony 
falls, in Minnesota) tie the wild rice into bundles while it is standing, m 
order that it may die (ripen); then when it is dead they gather it.* In 
1820 Edward Tanner wrote that the Ojibwa Indians at Sandy lake, 
Aitkin county, Minnesota, formerly gathered the tops into large 
shocks, **to render the collecting of the grain easier when ripened. 
By this means they also obtained it in much larger quantities than at 
present.”* In 1820 they did not tie it into bunches. 
General Ellis wrote of the Indians in Green Bay county, Wisconsin: 
**One mode is to go into this ‘standing corn’ with their canoes, and 
taking as many stalks as they can compass with their hands, give them 
a twist and kink, and then turn the bunches downward, leaving them 
to ripen on the stalks. This gives the party twisting the bunches, a 
kind of pre-emption to so much of the rice, which before was all com- 
mon.” Caryer said: ‘* Nearly about the time that it begins to turn 
from its milky {tate and to ripen, they run their canoes into the midft 
of it, and tying bunches of it together juft below the ears with bark, 
1 Rodman, letter, November 11, 1898; Schooleraft, Summary Narrative, p. 180; Eleventh Census of 
the United States, 1890; Indians, p. 340, 
“Hennepin, Nouvelle Decouverte, p. 313* (fol. 0*4); Williamson, letter, November 80, 1898; Flint, 
Geography and History, vol. 1, pp. 84-85; Martin Bressani, Relation Abrégée de Quelques Missions, 
p. 332; Brown, Western Gazetteer, p. 267; Stuntz, letter, November 24, 1898. 
Neill, in Macalester Coll. Cont. Dept. of Hist., Lit., and Pol. Sei., ser.1, number 10, St. Paul, 1890, pp. 
25>-230, 
‘Edward Tanner, in Detroit Gazette, December §, 1820. 
Ellis, R 

collections, p. 265. 
