By the month of June they had grown two feet above the surface of the shallow water, and were ripe for harvesting in September.

At this period the Amerindians passed in canoes through the water-fields of wild rice, shaking the ears into the canoes as they swept by.

The grain fell out easily when ripe, but in order to clean it from the husk it was dried over a slow fire on a wooden grating.

After being winnowed it was pounded to flour in a mortar, or else boiled like rice, and seasoned with fat.

"It had a most delicate taste", wrote Alexander Henry the Elder.
Fish was perhaps the staple of Amerindian diet, because in scarcely any part of the Canadian Dominion is a lake, river, or brook far away.
In the region of the Great Lakes fish were caught in large quantities in October, and exposed to the weather to be frozen at nighttime.