JENKS] METHODS OF THRASHING 1069 
rice was hulled by tramping ina hole in the earth. The laborer was 
supported by leaning upon a single stick or light post driven into 
the ground. But the greater part of the crop, the fire-cured grain, 
was thrashed otherwise. Usually 15 to 25 bushels were dumped in a 
ditch 10 or 15 feet long and 2 feet deep; then two men with crooked 
sticks, pawa'quikanidg'tik, flailed the hulls loose. High screens were 
erected on both sides of the ditch to check the flying kernels. 
At Fond du Lac, Lake Superior, the grain is ‘*‘ churned or pounded” 
with a stick ‘‘shaped like a handspike, being largest at the butt.” 
The hole is about ‘*knee-deep with a solid block in the bottom, the 
sides being lined with staves, after the fashion of a barrel and of about 
the same diameter.” * 
Besides treading off the hulls the Indians at Lac Courte Oreille 
reservation thrash their grain with the churndasher-like sticks. <A 
deep hole is lined with the previously mentioned handmade staves, 
or a barrel is sunk almost its full length into the ground; this is 
then nearly filled with the grain. One or two persons, of either sex, 
pound up and down with the heavy-end sticks—frequently holding two 
of them (see plate LXxvir @). 
The Potawatomi of St Joseph river valley, Michigan, sometimes 
pounded the grain in a sack made for the purpose, and sometimes in 
askin-lined hole in the earth. This instance and the ones immediately 
preceding and immediately following are the only ones in which 
reference is made to the women asthrashers. The late Chief Pokagon 
wrote that this work was done by the women and children, and some- 
times by the men.” 
The Winnebago thrash their rice on a blanket laid upon the ground; 
around three sides of this blanket a cloth screen 2 or 3 feet high is 
erected in order to confine the flying kernels. The thrasher, man or 
woman, sits at the open side of the blanket with a stick in each hand 
and flails the grain.‘ Hoffman refers to exactly the same process for 
the Menomini in 1892, except that mats are used on the ground and 
for screens, and a depression is dug, into which the ground mat is laid.* 
The present Mississagua Indians thrash their rice also by shaking it 
in large open baskets after the grain has been thoroughly dried.” 
Carver wrote that after the grain was cured the Indians trod or 
rubbed off the hull.® Williamson says that the Dakota beat the grain 
until the hulls burst, when they will rub off." About 1840 the Pot- 
awatomi at Grass lake, Lake county, Illinois, had two ways of hulling 
their rice. One method was employed immediately after gathering, 

1Phalon, letter, December 27, 1898. 
2 Pokagon, letter, November 16, 1898. 
3Information from Winnebago near Elroy, Juneau county, Wisconsin, winter 1898-99. 
4Hoffman, op. cit., p. 291. 
5Chamberlain, op. cit., p. 155. 
6Carver, Travels, p. 524. 
7 Williamson, letter, November 39, 1899; also Kinzie, Wau-Bun, p. 67. 
19 prH, pT 2—O1 33 

