1102 WILD RICE GATHERERS OF UPPER LAKES (ETH. ANN.19 
he purchased wild rice on a sandy island in Lake of the Woods." And 
August 16, at Lake Winnipegon, or Winipee (Winnipeg) the Indians 
‘*made me the usual presents of wild rice and dried meat.”* AI of 
this rice mentioned by Henry was of the harvest of some preceding 
year. It is very remarkable that only one month before a new harvest, 
a village of 100 people could produce a bushel of rice per capita. No 
better testimony than Henry’s could be given for the dependence of 
traders upon wild rice during those early years.* 
Early in January, 1778, the provisions at the trading station at 
Lac la Mort gave out, so John Long, the trader, made a journey of 
several days to Lake Monontoye (this journey was south toward Lake 
Nipegon, north of Lake Superior), to try to get some wild rice of Mr 
Shaw, a fellow trader, as the Indians said it grew in swamps there.* 
From Mr Shaw’s station Mr Long returned in due time with ‘‘an 
Indian slay [sleigh] loaded with wild rice and dried meat.” On Feb- 
ruary 28, 1778, ‘‘another band [of Indians] came in [to Lac la Mort] 
consisting of about eighty, men, women and children, who brought 
dried meats, oats [wild rice], bears’ grease, and eight packs of beayer.”° 
Again Long said of Weed lake (Lake Schabeechevan): 
On this lake there are about one hundred and fifty good hunters, who make a 
great many packs of beaver, &c. and this was one inducement for settling here, 
which was increased by the prospect of a plentiful supply of fish, rice, and cran- 
berries, which are winter comforts of too great consequence to be slighted.® 
Mr Long wrote that the last of January, 1779, he was again 
reduced in provisions ‘‘to a few fish and some wild rice, or menomon 
(which are kept in muceucks or bark boxes), to support myself and 
seventeen men; the allowance to each being only a handful of rice and 
a small fish, about 2 lb. weight, which is boiled together and makes 
pleasant soup.” ‘ 
Jean Baptiste Perrault’s Indian Life in the Northwestern Region of 
the United States in 1783 (manuscript), as translated by Schoolcraft,* 
says it was the custom for the traders to buy provisions (wild rice and 
dried meat) of the Indians. But during the winter of 1783 **the 
greater part of them [Indians around Leech lake, etc.] had gone to 
pass the winter in the prairies west of the Mississippi [where butfalo 
were then plentiful] . . . they had no wild rice, the abundant 
rains. having destroyed it.” Notwithstanding this failure, early in 
May, 1784, these same Leech Lake Indians furnished two fawn skins* 
1Henry, Travels, p. 244. 2Tbid., p. 251. 
8 Voyageurs in their journeys subsist on what ever they can find in the country through which they 
are passing, rarely taking enough to last them through. The great waterway from Lake Superior to 
the Northwest, by way of Grand Portage, along Lake of the Woods and the Winnipeg system, fre- 
quently furnished four different varieties of staple; the first stage furnished maize, the next rice, the 
third pemmican, the last buffalo meat (Coues, Henry-Thompson Journal, vol. 11, p. 539). 
‘Long, Voyages and Travels, p. 58. 6 Tbid., p. 109. 
Ibid. pp. 75, 85. 7Tbid., p. 117. 
Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, vol. m1, p. 356. 
®Tbid., vol. 111, p. 356. Fawn skins were taken off nearly whole for use as rice sacks; see also the 
same work, p. 359. 
