serve Ojibways processing wild rice 
in the unbelievably laborious tradi- 
tional manner. First, the green rice 
has to be cured so that it will not 
spoil in storage and so that the hull 
can be removed. Originally, this was 
done with the heat of the sun or over 
smoky fires. But when white settlers 
introduced metal pots, Ojibways 
quickly switched over to them, toast- 
ing the rice in caldrons set over wood 
fires and stirring the grains with a 
canoe paddle. At this point, men take 
over the process. They dig a shallow 
hole in the ground, line it with skin, 
and pour in cured rice. Wearing moc- 
casins and leather gaiters to keep rice 
from working its way inside the moc- 
casins, they literally dance on the rice 
to loosen the hulls. To gain more lev- 
erage and better balance while they 
“jig,” they steady themselves by hold- 
ing on to poles placed outside the hole. 
Finally, the winnowed rice is poured 
over a blanket, so that the wind can 
blow away the chaff as the heavier 
grains fall to earth. 
Few Indians do this any more. Com- 
mercial processors with mechanical 
parchers, threshers, and winnowers 
can do the job much faster. But the 
old ways have not completely died. 
At Cass Lake, Minnesota, I was able 
to purchase a small quantity of jigged 
rice so meticulously produced that it 
lacked all but the faintest light-brown 
trace of hull. 
The majority of Ojibways prefer to 
sell their rice as a cash crop to com- 
mercial processors. The ultimate prod- 
uct is hard to fault and would probably 
have been approved by the Ojibways 
of yesteryear. At Northern Lakes 
Wild Rice Company in Cass Lake, 
for example, Ernie and Cindy Ander- 
son do custom processing on a small 
scale. They live in the midst of In- 
dians, and in the title of the cookbook 
they have published, Minnesota Mah- 
nomen Recipes, they show their re- 
spect for Indian ways by perpetuating 
the Ojibway word for wild rice ( mah - 
nomen is also the source of the name 
of a neighboring tribe, the Menom- 
inees). 
Strictly speaking, one could argue 
that the A'ndersons are paying lip ser- 
vice to a tradition they are also ex- 
ploiting for personal profit. But it is 
Paddy grown wild rice is harvested 
by combines rigged with extra-large 
headers to match the plants’ height. 
It was as if I was on hand for the 
domestication of corn and wheat from 
their original wild grasses in prehis- 
toric times. But in twentieth-century 
Minnesota, a band of green-thumbed 
businessmen and inventive farmers are 
accomplishing in a decade the same 
job that occupied ancient agricultur- 
ists for generations. 
Modern science and machinery help 
a great deal. Laser-guided land planes 
can smooth a paddy on a slight slope 
so that water drains in and out of 
an ingenious system of dikes and 
ditches. Old-time American ingenuity 
has improvised flotation wheels for a 
Rotavator that tills the paddies’ peat 
soil without churning it excessively as 
a plow would. Combines to harvest 
ordinary rice, built on halftracks and 
full tracks suitable for soft peat, have 
been rigged with extra-large headers 
hard to work up much animus against 
their cottage industry after you have 
visited the holdings of a new company 
that has as its aim the cultivation of 
Zizania aquatica on hundreds of acres 
of paddies. 
The very idea of domesticating 
America’s most folkloric wild plant 
may strike you as an abomination, a 
final blow struck against the aborigi- 
nal order by the same kinds of free- 
wheeling entrepreneurs who raped the 
country’s forests and pillaged Appa- 
lachia’s hills. But I was reserving judg- 
ment as I flew over the neat paddies 
in the amphibious plane of one of the 
company’s investors. After all, the 
original stands of wild rice on the lakes 
are as safe as a strict environmental 
code can make them. Meanwhile, be- 
low me, an agronomic drama of the 
first order was in full swing. 
100 
