A Woman Rice Planter

by Elizabeth W. Allston Pringle

Casa Bianca, October 8, 1903.

The harvest has come and with it real harvest weather—crisp, cool, clear; and the bowed heads of the golden grain glow in the sunshine. The hurricane which was reported as wandering around last week frightened me terribly, but after waiting Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday for it to materialize, I had to cut on Thursday, for the rice was full ripe, and though we have had some light showers, there has been no serious bad weather. To-day the hands are "toting" the rice into the flats.

"You see a stack of rice approaching, and you perceive a pair of legs, or a skirt, as the case may be, peeping from beneath."

You see a stack of rice approaching, and as it makes its way across the plank which bridges the big ditch, you perceive a pair of legs or a skirt, as the case may be, peeping from beneath. Men, women, and children all carry, what look like immense loads, on their heads, apparently without effort. This is the gayest week of the year. Thursday the field was cut down by the hands with small reap-hooks, the long golden heads being carefully laid on the tall stubble to dry until the next day, when it was tied into sheaves, which the negroes do very skilfully with a wisp of the rice itself. Saturday it was stacked in small cocks to dry through Sunday, and to-day it is being loaded into the flats, having had every advantage of weather.

If only no rain or wind comes until it is unloaded at Cherokee, fifteen miles up the river! I have sent for a tug to tow the two flats up on the flood-tide this evening—just now it is dead low water, and the flats are aground, which always scares me; for, if by any chance they get on a log or any inequality, they get badly strained and often leak and ruin the rice. Flats are one of the heavy expenses on a rice plantation—large, flat-bottomed boats from twenty to eighty feet long and from ten to twelve feet wide, propelled in the most primitive way by poles and steered by one huge oar at the stern. They can be loaded up very high if the rice is properly stowed.

I have sent to try and get some rice-birds for my dinner. These are the most delicious little morsels, so small one can easily eat six for breakfast, and a man makes nothing of a dozen for dinner. We used to get them in great abundance only a few years ago, but now the rice-bird industry has become so big a thing we find it very hard to get any at all. Formerly a planter hired bird minders, furnished powder and shot, and got several dozen birds from each one; but now the negro men go at night with blazing torches into the old rice-fields, which are densely grown up in water-grasses and reeds, the birds are blinded and dazed by the light, and as the fat little bodies sway about on the slender growth upon which they rest, they are easily caught, their necks wrung, and they are thrust into the sack which each man has tied in front of him. In this way a man sometimes gets a bushel by the time the reddening dawn brings him home, and he finds waiting for him on the shore buyers from the nearest town, who are ready to pay thirty cents a dozen for the birds, so that one or two nights of this sport give as much as a month's labor. Of course, it is hard to come out to cut rice the next day, so probably illness is pleaded as an excuse for his absence in the field.

This makes it more and more difficult to get the rice harvested; no one but one of African descent could spend his nights in the rice-field, where the air is heavy with the moist malaria, so it is his opportunity. The shooting of rice-birds has almost gone out, for the bird minders are so careless. They shoot into the rice and so destroy as much as the birds, almost; now blank cartridges are almost entirely used to scare the birds. Going round the field one day with Marcus, I said, with great relief: "I'm so glad not to see a single bird to-day." He laughed and said: "Miss, wait till de bird minders shoot." In a few seconds the bird minders became aware of my approach and up and fired very nearly at the same time. The birds rose in clouds so that the sun seemed darkened for a few seconds, and the noise of their wings was deafening. It seemed tantalizing not to be able to get any to eat. In spite of the tremendous report of the firing, it did no execution, for the old-fashioned muskets which are used have an enormous load of very coarse powder, but no shot.

Now, my flats are loaded, and I must start on my twelve-mile drive to the pine-land. As soon as I can have the flats unloaded I must send them back for the hands to harvest their rice. I do not pretend to overlook this. I try to put them on their mettle to do the best possible. Some respond, but the majority just poke along, doing as little as possible each day, so as to have longer time to strip the rice from the straw, and carry it home in bags, so that when it comes to mill, there is not enough to pay their rent. They know how I hate to take all they bring, I so like for them to have a nice little pile of their own to ship; it is very hard for me to believe what the foreman tells me, that they have been eating this rice for three weeks past.