During the early days of our country, different tribes of Indians gathered the wild rice for food, and many battles were fought for the rice fields.
From the birch trees of the forest the men obtained bark for their canoes. In these light boats the women pushed their way through the thickets of ripe grain. They beat the stalks with short sticks, letting the rice fall into the canoes.
The wild rice was eaten raw from the growing plants. It was also parched while green for daily use, and bushels of the ripe grain were stored away for the long, cold winter.
At harvest time there was always good hunting, for great flocks of ducks, geese, and other birds flew to the rice stalks to eat the seeds.
In the spring the women, boys, and old men spent weeks at the sugar camp. They caught the maple sap in small bark dishes and boiled it into sugar. The boys kept the fires going under the kettles and, for the first few days, ate nearly all the sugar they made.
Many kinds of berries grew in this northern country. These the Indian women picked and dried. Indeed, the underground storehouse of a wigwam housekeeper was full of good things to eat.
Hiawatha is said to have lived on the shore of one of the Great Lakes. Before the white men sold fire water to the Indians, there were many happy homes in the forest. The ways of living were the same as we read about in Longfellow's poem, and the children were trained to be brave and honorable and to respect their elders.