JENKS] CAUSES FOR. CONSUMPTION ILS} 
with them it was incapable of extensive cultivation. Its supply was 
precarious, and there was no way of making it certain. One year the 
gathering of 3 or + per cent of the crop gave food for a winter’s con- 
sumption, another year its failure, which might occur for any one of 
many reasons, threatened the people with starvation. _ In civilization 
one class of people at least must have comparative leisure in which to 
develop short-cut methods of doing old things, of acquiring the tradi 
tions of the race, and of mastering new thoughts and methods. Such 
leisure is impossible with a precarious food supply. But, in spite of 
these facts, for barbaric people during the period of barbarism, the 
most princely vegetal gift which North America gave her people 
without toil was wild rice. They could almost defy nature’s law that 
he who will not work shall not eat. 
The facts presented in this section prove that the wild-rice district 
gave natural support to a larger number of Indians (besides many 
hundred whites) than did the adjoining territory of nearly five times 
its area. The facts further prove that wild rice was a chief means 
which made possible this greater population. 
The causes which led to the use of wild rice for food are lost to his- 
tory. Even tradition, with her many volumes written so full of inter- 
esting and valuable facts, gives no information on the subject, except 
that man’s hunger caused him to eat the grain. The best evidence 
now known is that of the Relations des Jésuites. It has been noticed 
that Ojibwa Indians and early settlers used wild rice in Canada on 
Quinto bay and the north shore of Lake Ontario, on the north and 
west shores of Lake Erie, on the east shore of Lake Huron, and on 
Georgian bay, as well as on Rice and adjacent lakes in the included 
point of Canadian territory, now Ontario. The Jesuit fathers lived 
in Indian wigwams, subsisted on Indian foods, were interested and keen 
observers and intelligent chroniclers of the entire life of the Indian. 
Religious, social, and economic life received their careful attention. 
Yet not one word appears to have been written, either by them or 
contemporaneous chroniclers, about the use of wild rice in this district.’ 
Its first mention is that of 1634 in connection with the Menomini 
Indians, who even then were called ** wild-vice men” by their Algon- 
quian kinsmen. It therefore seems probable that in the Ontario dis- 
trict described above the Indians did not use wild rice until scarcity 
of game, caused by the fur trade with the whites, drove them to it. 
The Menomini Indians, however, did depend upon it extensively before 
such scarcity. What influence the scarcity of game had upon the use 
of wild rice by the other Indians in the wild-rice district it is impossi- 
ble to say. However, the Winnebago and several thousand Dakota 


1 Miss Emma Helen Blair, assistant editor of the Thwaites’ edition of The Jesuit Relations and Allied 
Documents (Cleveland, 1896 +,73 volumes), is the authority for the above statement, made before the 
volumes were accessible. 
