43 
early explorer, Thompson, gives a good description of its harvesting 
among the Ojibwa. “ The wild rice,” he says, “ is fully ripe in the 
early part of September. The natives lay thin birch rind all over 
the bottom of the canoe, a man lightly clothed, or naked, places him- 
self in the middle of the canoe, and with a hand on each side, seizes 
the stalks and knocks the ears of rice against the inside of the canoe, 
into which the rice falls, and thus he continues until the canoe is 
full of rice; on coming ashore the women assist in unloading. A 
canoe may hold from ten to twelve bushels. He smokes his pipe, 
sings a song; and returns to collect another canoe load. And so 
plentiful is the rice, an industrious man may fill his canoe tliree times 
in a day. Scaffolds are jirepared about six feet from tlie ground, 
made of small sticks covered with long grass; on tliis the rice is laid, 
and gentle clear fires kept underneath by the women, and turned 
until the rice is fully dried. The quantity is no more than the scaf- 
folds can dry, as the rice is better on the stalk than on the ground. 
The rice when dried is pounded in a mortar marie of a piece of hollow 
oak with a pestle of the same until the husk comes off. It is then put 
up in bags made of ruslies and secured against animals.”^ 
Rice was but one of many wild plants that the Indians employed 
to give variety to their diet, and to tide them over seasons of scarcity. 
The tribes of British Columbia ate several species of seaweed, the 
camas root {Quamasia, a plant closely lelated to the hyacinth, which 
when steamed made a kind of sweetish bread), elderberries, goose- 
berries, soapberries, huckleberries, salal-berries, currants, crabapples, 
and many other roots and fruits that the women gathered during 
the summer and stored away for the winter months. A common 
dish, not restricted to times of famine, was the inner bark of the 
hemlock dried in cakes. The plains’ Indians had the wild turnip^ 
wild cherries, and service-berries. Their favourite food, next to fresh 
meat, was a variety of pemmican made of meat and fat that was 
dried, pounded, and mixed with crushed service-berries or wild 
cherries. Nuts — the hickory, chestnut, butternut, and acorn — were 
more prominent than fruits in the diet of the Iroquoians, although 
they gathered raspberries, strawberries, and cranberries. They also 
1 David Thompson’s Narrative; edited by J. lb Tvrrell, p. 275, The Ciiaiiiplain Society (Toronto 
1916). 
