Wisconsin Historical Collections, Volume VII (1876)

              kokthekst wisconsin ik 1820 190 and palatable when boiled to these may be added the wild rice — fols avoine — and such game as they occasionally kill eating every kind and every part i saw them yesterday cooking a skunk but when it was prepared for for the table it was impossible to ap proach the lodge except to the windward they boil the excre ments of the rabbit with their rice u to season it and esteem it a luxury to make that dish still more palatable and one of their highest epicurean dishes they accasionally take a partridge pick off the feathers and without any farther dressing except pounding it to the consistency of jelly throw it into the rice and boil it in that condition in this they seem not far above the brute creation it is scarcely possible to account for such an appetite or relish ex cept it be that necessity having compelled them frequently to re sort to this loathsome food for sustenance they have at length ac quired a preference for it a band of the sandy lake tribe of indians resides at pauc-quau me-no-min-ie-con or rice lake between twenty and twenty-five miles south of sandy lake there are only thirteen grown men in the village their number of young men squaws and children is forty-seven they hunt in the woods adjoining the lake to the east of their village and near fond du lac they accasionally kill a few moose this band has never been much noticed by the english government and has been generally well disposed towards ours all of the men at sandy lake and south of it annually in the month of march go to the borders of the sioux country and as far beyond as their fears will permit them to hunt the beaver which hunt is called by them no-tah-mic-qua and signifies " searching for beaver " — " mic " meaning beaver their families be ing left at home in this hunt repair to the sugar camps,and are en gaged in manufacturing sugar during the absence of the men of which they make very large quantities the indians around sandy lake in the month of september re pair to rice lake to gather their rice in no other place does it grow in as large quantities as there this lake is about five miles long and three broad it might perhaps be called a marais for the water is not over five feet deep and its surface is almost entirely covered with rice it is only in morasses or muddy bottoms that this grain is found