1066 WILD RICE GATHERERS OF UPPER LAKES [ETH. ANN.19 
** When it is desired to parch it, the rice is placed in pots over a slow 
fire until the grain bursts and shows the white, mealy center.” ' The 
Ojibwa Indians of northern Wisconsin kiln-dried (i. e., parched) their 
rice in kettles during the fifties and sixties of the nineteenth century.’ 
At Bad river, Wisconsin, it is cured in kettles, but is apparently not 
parched, as is seen from the following: ‘‘ Indians like it in dry kettles 
and pots over a fire until it is scorched brown. The hull will then 
slip off easily.”* At Rat Portage, Ontario, as soon as the men come 
ashore with the rice ‘*the women commence to parch the first day’s 
gathering in the manner corn is popped. They use a kettle over a 
slow fire.” * The remainder of the harvest is fire-cured on a rack. 
The Menomini in 1892 did not cure all the rice as soon as it was 
gathered; at times it was not dried until after the threshing and win- 
nowing.’ In 1899 the same Indians had two methods of curing the 
rice. Such grain as was for immediate use was parched in a kettle, 
while the remainder of the crop was fire-cured on racks covered with 
rush matting. No new phases of the curing process were learned at 
the Lac Courte Oreille reservation. They cure the grain both by 
parching in a kettle and by fire-drying on a rack, the closely laid 
cross sticks of which were covered with long fresh marsh grass. <A 
bireh-bark box, or mocock, is generally used to carry the grain both 
from the canoe to the rack and from the drying rack to the place of 
threshing. Although these Indians esteem the parcked rice more 
highly than the fire-cured variety, yet, on account of the extra labor 
in parching, they fire-dry fully four times as much as they parch. 
Not many mechanical implements are used in curing the rice. It is 
sun-cured on blankets, on birch bark, and on scaffolds of sticks. It 
is fire-cured and parched in kettles. Scatfolds are covered with sticks, 
cedar slabs, reeds, grass, and mats of basswood and cedar bark. These 
scaffolds are at times nearly surrounded by a hedge of pine or cedar 
branches. A paddle is used to stir the grain while parching in the 
kettle, and also at times while drying on the rack. 
THRASHING 
From the time the grain is removed from the fruit head until it is 
thrashed, it is covered with a close-fitting hull. The grain while in 
this dress appears almost exactly like a long-bearded oat (see plate 
LXxv1). With few exceptions all the preceding work of harvesting is 
done by the women, who, at times, are assisted by the children. The 
work of hulling falls to the men, or now and then to the boys, only 
two instances being noted in which the women did this work. 
There is little question that woman was man’s first thrashing-machine, 
and that her hands were first employed to separate the seeds from 
1 Chamberlain, op. cit., p. 155. % Patterson, letter, November 28, 1898. 
2 Stuntz, letter, November 24, 1898 4 Pither, letter, December 5, 1898 
Hoffman, op. cit., p. 291. 
