1072 WILD RICE GATHERERS OF UPPER LAKES [ETH. ANN. 19 
maize in the ground to keep it from being stolen.’ Throughout Wis- 
consin in 1843 the grain was deposited in the ground to be taken out 
when needed for food.” 
After winnowing the grain ‘‘They [the Titoha band of Dakota, in 
the early part of the eighteenth century] carry away as much of it as 
they think they need and store the rest in the ground. They also put 
some to rot in the water, and when they return in the spring they find it 
delicious, although it has the worst kind of an odor.”* The ** Man- 
tantons” (Mandan) kept rice in sacks, for, after a great feast made in 
honor of Le Sueur, the chief ‘‘fit present a M Le Sueur d’un esclave 
et dun sac de folle avoine.”* 
At Sandy lake, in 1820, the rice when cured was ** put into sacks of 
about a bushel each. A sack is valued at two skins. ... A skin is 
valued at two dollars.”° Carver wrote one hundred and thirty years 
ago that when the rice was fit for use the Dakota put it into skins of 
fawns and young buffalo, taken off nearly whole for this purpose, and 
sewed into a kind of sack, wherein they preserved it until the next 
annual harvest. The Indians at Rat Portage, Ontario, ‘“‘make bags 
of the inside bark of cedar in which they store the rice. They hold 
from # to 1 bushel each.”? Schooleraft said that the winnowed rice 
‘tis then put into coarse ‘mushkemoots,’ a kind of bag, made of vege- 
table fiber or twine, with a woof of some similar material. Occasion- 
ally this filling material is composed of old cloth or blankets, pulled 
to pieces.” * Birch-bark boxes were also used, which, after being filled, 
were frequently buried. The Ottawa Indians used them in the middle 
of the seventeenth century." The Potawatomi also used these boxes.”° 
They were sewed together at the corners with ** bast,” the inner bark 
of the basswood, and were called (from the Algonquian) mococks (plate 
LXXIX (@). 
The Indian granaries here noticed are very simple. They consist 
of a hole in the ground, into which are put boxes of birch bark and 
bags made of skin, bags made of the inside bark of the cedar and 
sometimes of other vegetal fiber, together with twine, ete. 
PROPERTY-RIGHT IN Winp RICE 
As has been pointed out, most of the labors of wild rice production 
are performed by women. The women of more than one family fre- 

1 Atwater, Indians, p. 102. 
2Indian Affairs Report, 1843, p. 434. 
‘Neill, Memoir of the Sioux, p. 236. 
4La Harpe, Journal Historique, p. 66. 
> Edward Tanner, Detroit Gazette, December 8, 1820. 
®6Carver, Travels, p. 524. 
7Pither, letter, December 5, 1898; see also Gheen, letter, November 16, 1898, and Hoffman, The 
Menomini Indians, p.291, for the same use of bags. 
® Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, vol. 111, p. 62. 
Relations des Jésuites, 1663, p. 19. 
10 Pokagon, letter, November 16, 1898. 
