JENKS] SPIRITUAL OBSERVANCES 1091 
The Good Mystery gave them maize, and they were also the makers 
of fire. They visited the Bear phratry, offering maize and fire in 
exchange for wild rice, which was the property of the Bear and the 
Sturgeon, and which grew abundantly along Menomini river. The 
bargain was concluded, and since that time the Bear and the Big 
Thunder phratries have lived together.’ The Potawatomi of St Joseph 
river, Michigan, have a similar tradition. The Bear phratry gave 
maize and fire in exchange for wild rice.” The Winnebago say that 
the ‘Great Spirit” gave maize and wild rice to one man at the same 
time.2 From the above, and from other facts known about these 
Indians, it seems plain thatthe Menomini came into possession of wild 
rice relatively early—that is, before the complete organization of the 
tribe—while the Potawatomi and the Winnebago obtained it at a 
much later time. 
The periods of the wild-rice harvest, as indeed of most opportuni- 
ties for social gatherings, are gala days to the Indians. Social pas- 
times and religious ceremonies are strangely commingled. Some of 
the ways in which the Indians express themselves at the rice harvest 
are here given, and others are presented which wild rice seems to 
characterize more or less distinctly. The Indians of White Earth 
reservation, Minnesota, give a rice feast. ‘* The Manomin (wild rice) 
feast comes in the fall after gathering rice and before the winter hunt. 
It isa sort of thanksgiving, and prayers are offered to Manitou.”* 
The Ojibwa Indians in Canada, about Lake of the Woods, perform 
the following ceremony: ‘* Before commencing to gather the rice they 
make a feast, and none are allowed to gather the grain till after it. 
They thank the Master of Life for the crop, asking him to keep off 
all storms while they are harvesting.”° The first fruits gathered by 
the Dakota ‘tare set apart for the purpose of a spiritual or holy 
feast: the first corn or wild rice of the season, the first duck or goose 
killed when they appear in the spring, are all reserved for the feast, 
at which those Indians only who are entitled to wear the badge of 
having slain an enemy, are invited.”® Tanner, who spent all his life 
with the Ojibwa, continually speaks of such feasts. At the sacred 
dow feast on the White Earth reservation the Ojibwa Indians usually 
kill and stew a dog in rice; certain ceremonies, including a dance, are 
then performed, after which the dog is eaten.’ Mr Long wrote of the 
“* Poes” (Potawatomi) that they compelled their prisoner, Mr Ramsey, 
of the American Fur Company, to eat his death feast at the war kettle 

1 Hoffman, The Menomini Indians, Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, par 
p. 40. 
2Pokagon, letter, November 16, 1898. 
2Information from the Winnebago near Elroy, Wisconsin, winter of 1898-99. 
4 Eleventh Census of the United States; Indians, p. 346. 
5 Pither, letter, November 18, 1898. 
6 Lockwood, Early Times and Events in Wisconsin, appendix 6, pp. 95-196, in Wisconsin Historical 
Collections, vol. 11, p. 181. 
7Eleventh Census of the United States; Indians, p. 346. 
tI; 
