STUDIES OF PLANT LIFE 
eleven feet; but with the culm and flower it would have 
measured twelve or thirteen feet in length. 
The month of September or later, in October, is the 
Indian’s Rice harvest. The grain, which is long and narrow 
and of an olive green or brown tinge, is then ripe. The 
Indian woman (they do not like to be called squaws since 
they have become Christians) pushes her light bark canoe 
or skiff to the edge of the Rice beds, armed not with a 
sickle, but with a more primitive instrument—a short, thin- 
bladed, somewhat curved wooden paddle, with which she 
strikes the heads of ripe grain over a stick which she holds 
in her other hand, directing the strokes so as to let the grain 
fall to the bottom of the canoe; and thus the Wild Rice 
crop is reaped to give pleasant, nourishing and satisfying 
food to her hungry family. 
There are many ways of preparing dishes of Indian Rice: 
as an ingredient for savory soups or stews; or with milk, 
sugar and spices, as puddings; but the most important 
thing to be observed in cooking the article is steeping the 
grain—pouring off the water it is steeped in and the first 
water it is boiled in, which removes any weedy taste from 
it. It used to be a favorite dish at many tables, but it is 
more difficult to obtain now. 
The grain, when collected, is winnowed in wide baskets 
from the chaff and weedy matter, parched by a certain 
process peculiar to the Indians, and stored in mats or rough 
boxes made from the bark of the birch tree—the Indian’s 
own tree. Formerly we could buy the Indian Rice in any 
of the grocery stores at 7s. 6d. per bushel, but it is much 
more costly now, as the Indians find it more difficult to 
obtain. Confined to their villages, they have no longer the 
resources that formerly helped to maintain them. The birch- 
bark canoe is now a thing of the past; the Wild Rice is now 
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