JENKS] METHODS OF THRASHING 1067 
the fruit head and hull. It seems also true that as soon as small seed 
was gathered in any considerable quantity the feet were taught to 
do the work of hands. Here, then, is the invention of the treadmill 
thrashing-machine. This is the power mostly employed in the thrash- 
ing of wild rice, although sticks are used—sometimes like flails and 
again like churn dashers. The hull is also rubbed or shaken off in 
blankets and baskets. 
Along the west shore of Lake Koshkonong, in Jefferson county, 
Wisconsin, a great many holes were yet visible in 1895 which were 
the basins in which the rice hulls had been tread loose from the grain, 
though it is questionable whether wild rice has been gathered there 
during the last half century. Fifty years ago Schoolcraft also 
reported such depressions in great numbers around Rice lake, Barron 
county, Wisconsin. He said: ‘‘A skin is put in these holes, which 
are filled with ears. A man then treads out the grain. This appears 
to be the only part of rice making which is performed by the men. 
The women gather, dry, and winnow it.” Edward Tanner said that 
in 1820 a hole was dug in the ground about a foot and a half deep and 
3 feet in circumference, into which a moose skin was usually put. 
The rice was then put in and trodden out by an Indian. ‘This is 
very laborious work,” he says, ‘and always devolves upon the men.” ?” 
Ellis, in speaking of the Indians in Green Bay county, Wisconsin, 
wrote that a hole is made to contain about 1 gallon; ‘‘the rice is then 
tied up in a deerskin, placed in the hole, and tramped upon with the 
feet till the hull is removed.” * 
Another variety of the treadmill is found in the following two 
accounts: ‘*A hole is dug in the ground, and about a bushel of rice is 
put in it and covered with a deerskin. A man, steadying himself by 
a stake driven into the ground, jumps about on the grain until the 
hulls are removed.”! At Lac Courte Oreille reservation, Wisconsin, 
two such stakes are driven into the ground and tied together. They 
project from the ground at an angle of about 60° and lean slightly 
away from the thrashing hole (see plate LXXv 6). The man supports 
himself upon these props while treading out the erain. It isonly fair 
to say that he tries to have a new pair of buckskin moc vasins for this 
work—but sometimes buckskin is scarce. The thrashing holes are of 
two varieties. One isa simple excavation about 2 feet in diameter 
and 18 inches deep. This is lined with a deerskin, into which the rice 
is poured. The thrasher treads directly on the grain. The other kind 
of hole is similar in size, but is lined at the bottom with a block of wood 
and at the sides with hand-made staves about half an inch thick, which 
overlap like clapboards. In this hole also the thrasher treads directly 
on the grain. 

1Schooleraft, Thirty Years with the Indian Tribes, p. 389. 
° Edward Tanner, Detroit Gazette, December 8, 1820. 
8 Ellis, Recollections, p. 266. 4Seymour, Sketches of Minnesota, pp. 183, 154. 
