In this way they collect a great many bushels in the course of the
day. The wild rice is not the least like the rice which your ladyship
has eaten; it is thin, and covered with a light chaffy husk. The colour
of the grain itself is a brownish-green, or olive, smooth, shining,
and brittle. After separating the outward chaff, the squaws put by
a large portion of the clean rice in its natural state for sale; for
this they get from a dollar and a half to two dollars a bushel. Some
they parch, either in large pots, or on mats made of the inner bark
of cedar or bass wood, beneath which they light a slow fire, and plant
around it a temporary hedge of green boughs closely set, to prevent
the heat from escaping; they also drive stakes into the ground, over
which they stretch the matting at a certain height above the fire.
On this they spread the green rice, stirring it about with wooden paddles
till it is properly parched; this is known by its bursting and showing
the white grain of the flour. When quite cool it is stowed away in
troughs, scooped out of butter-nut wood, or else sewed up in sheets
of birch bark or bass-mats, or in coarsely-made birch-bark baskets."
"And is the rice good to eat, nurse?"
"Some people like it as well as the white rice of Carolina; but it does
not look so well.
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