Lady Mary and her Nurse | Page 5

this in which your papa lives. They do not know the names
or uses of half the fine things that are in the houses of the white people.
They are happy and contented without them. It is not the richest that are
happiest, Lady Mary, and the Lord careth for the poor and the lowly.
There is a village on the shores of Rice Lake where the Indians live. It
is not very pretty. The houses are all built of logs, and some of them
have gardens and orchards. They have a neat church, and they have a

good minister, who takes great pains to teach them the Gospel of the
Lord Jesus Christ. The poor Indians were Pagans until within the last
few years."
"What are Pagans, nurse?"
"People, Lady Mary, who do not believe in God, and the Lord Jesus
Christ, our blessed Saviour."
"Nurse, is there real rice growing in the Rice Lake? I heard my
governess say that rice grew only in warm countries. Now, your lake
must be very cold if your uncle walked across the ice."
"This rice, my lady, is not real rice. I heard a gentleman tell my father,
that it was, properly speaking, a species of oats, [Footnote: Zizania or
water oats.]--water oats he called it, but the common name for it is wild
rice. This wild rice grows in vast beds in the lake, in patches of many
acres. It will grow in water from eight to ten or twelve feet deep; the
grassy leaves float upon the water like long narrow green ribbons. In
the month of August, the stem that is to bear the flower and the grain
rises straight up, above the surface, and light delicate blossoms come
out of a pale straw colour and lilac. They are very pretty, and wave in
the wind with a rustling noise. In the month of October, when the rice
is ripe, the leaves turn yellow, and the rice-heads grow heavy and droop;
then the squaws--as the Indian women are called--go out in their
birch-bark canoes, holding in one hand a stick, in the other a short
curved paddle, with a sharp edge. With this, they bend down the rice
across the stick, and strike off the heads, which fall into the canoe, as
they push it along through the rice-beds. 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 plant stakes, 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. It is a great blessing to the poor Indians, who boil it in
their soups, or eat it with maple molasses. And they eat it when parched
without any other cooking, when they are on a long journey in the
woods, or on the lakes. I have often eaten nice puddings made of it with
milk. The deer feed upon the green rice. They swim into the water, and
eat the green leaves and tops. The Indians go out at night to shoot the
deer on the water; they listen for them, and shoot them in the dark. The
wild ducks and water-fowls come down in great flocks to fatten on the
ripe rice in the fall of the year; also large flocks of rice buntings and red
wings which make their roosts among the low willows, flags, and lilies
close to the shallows of the lake."
"It seems very useful to birds as well as to men and beasts," said little
Lady Mary.
"Yes, my lady,