JENKS] FOOD OF EARLY WHITES 1108 
of wild rice, which had been saved from the harvest of some previous 
year. 
Pike, in 1805,‘ describes the Northwest Company’s fort at Leech 
lake as being 60 by 25 feet, one and one-half stories high, with a loft 
extending over the entire building, and containing, besides bales of 
goods and peltries, ‘‘chests with 500 bushels of wild rice.” The same 
author says of this company’s station at Lake de Sable (Sandy lake) in 
1806: 
They raise plenty of Irish potatoes, catch pike, suckers, pickerel, and white-fish 
in abundance. They haye also beaver, deer, and moose; but the provision they 
chiefly depend upon is wild oats, of which they purchase great quantities from the 
savages, giving at the rate of about one dollar and a half per bushel.’ 
Harmon wrote in 1804: 
This grain is gathered in such quantities, in this region, that, in ordinary seasons, 
the North West Company® purchase, annually, from twelve to fifteen hundred 
bushels of it, from the Natives; and it constitutes a principal article of food, at the 
posts in this vicinity. 
In 1813 (probably) a party of 70 persons, composed of Hudson Bay 
Company traders, Indians, and John Tanner, made the trip from Rainy 
lake to the mouth of the Assinneboin river. They had Indians as 
hunters to accompany them, ‘‘and as we had great quantities of wild 
rice, we were pretty well supplied with food.”* Colonel Robert 
Dickson, Indian agent for the British during the war of 1812-15, 
wrote to John Lawe of Green bay from Lake Winnebago, February 
14, 1814: ** All T have left at present is 8 handfulls of foll avoin [wild 
rice|—10 Ibs. Flour —2 Shanks Deers legs three frozen Cabbages & a 
few potatoes.” ” 
Still further light is thrown on the use of wild rice by the traders 
from the three following extracts. Mr Doty wrote to Governor Cass, 
under date of November, 1820, of the Indian trade on and about Sandy 
lake, Aitkin county, Minnesota: ‘‘A skin is estimated at $2... The 
articles received from the Indians are sugar, rice, furs. A mocock 
of sugar, weighing about forty pounds, is received for four skins; a 
sack of rice, two skins;” ete. ‘The American South West Fur Com- 
pany have the chief trade of this country.” They sent in packs from 
Leech lake, Sandy lake, and Fond du Lac in the years 1819 and 1820.° 
The Detroit Gazette, of November 24, 1820, says: ‘‘The fish and the 
wild rice are the chief sustenance of the traders, and without them the 
trade could scarcely be carried on [in the Leech lake and Sandy lake 
districts].” 

1Coues, Pike, vol. 1, p. 282. 2Pike, Expeditions, p. 60. 
3In 1792 the Northwest Company operated all over the Ojibwa country in the United States. They 
had four departments: First, the Fond du Lac; second, the Folle Ayoine, including the country 
drained by the St Croix river; third, the Lae Courte Oreille, including the country drained by the 
Chippewa river; fourth, the Lac du Flambeau, including the country drained by the Wisconsin 
river (Warren, History of the Ojibwas, chapter XXXIV). 
4Tanner, Narrative, p. 219. 5 Wisconsin Historical Collections, yol. XI, p. 292. 
6 Morse, Report, p. 59. 
