1086 WILD RICE GATHERERS OF UPPER LAKES [ETH. ANN. 19 
oatmeal, and eaten alone, was their entire diet nearly every meal. 
At times also the rice was used to thicken venison and dog stew. 
The white people near all the reservations in Wisconsin and Min- 
nesota, where wild rice is produced are, asa rule, very fond of the 
food. As a result of many personal interrogations I believe that 
fully 90 per cent of the white people who have eaten wild rice are 
fond of it. 
Both the Indians and the whites wash the grain three or four times 
before cooking. Sometimes a small quantity of soda is added to the 
water used in the first washing. The green wild rice will cook by 
simply having boiling water poured over it. The parched wild rice 
needs to be cooked about half an hour, while the fire-cured or black 
wild rice requires nearly an hour for cooking. When it is cooked 
like oatmeal twice as much boiling water as rice is used. The grain 
cooked in this manner may be warmed over, and its flavor and whole- 
someness in no way impaired. In cooking it swells probably a little 
less than commercial rice, but a coffee-cup full, measured before cook- 
ing, will furnish a full meal for two Indians, or sufficient breakfast 
food for eight or ten persons. The grain is especially wholesome as a 
breakfast food served with sugar and cream; and when treated in any 
way with wild game, whether as a dressing, in soups or stews, or as a 
side dish dressed with the juices of the game, it is at its best, and is 
delicious and wholesome. 
John Long wrote of a baby food in which wild rice was the most 
important ingredient. He said that the northern Indian women fed 
their little children on rice and oats, which, when cleaned from the 
hull, were pounded between two stones, and boiled in water with 
inaple sugar. ‘‘This food is reckoned very nourishing, and with 
broth made from the flesh of animals and fish, which they are fre- 
quently able to procure, can not fail of supporting and strengthening 
the infant.”' Hunter, who was a captive among the Osage Indians 
from childhood until the age of 19 years, in the first quarter of the 
present century, says of their treatment of cholera morbus: ‘* They 
resort to the steam-bath and cathartics, after which they give copiously 
of a gruel made of wild rice, and wild licorice tea. They also apply 
fomentations to the stomach.” ? 
PrRIODS OF CONSUMPTION 
The subject of mealtime is still open to study. Why it is that peo- 
ple of one nation have three meals regularly every twenty-four hours, 
while others haye five, isa matter for sociologic speculation. As habits 
of industry become more fixed and the food supply comes more under 
control, mealtime correspondingly tends to become more regular. 

1Tong, Voyages and Travels, p. 61. 
* Hunter, Captivity Among the Indians, p. 433. 
