Book of Days Tales

Today is the birthday (1902) of Julian Haynes Steward, a Boasian anthropologist best known for his role in developing the concept of cultural ecology, as well as a theory of culture change. Steward was born in Washington, D.C., but at 16 he went to a boarding school in Deep Springs Valley, California, in the Great Basin, high in the White Mountains which had a significant influence on his academic and career interests. As an undergraduate, Steward studied for a year at Berkeley under Alfred Kroeber and Robert Lowie, after which he transferred to Cornell University where he graduated in 1925 with a B.Sc. in zoology. Although Cornell, like most universities at the time, had no anthropology department, its president, Livingston Farrand, had previously held an appointment as a professor of anthropology at Columbia University. Farrand advised Steward to continue pursuing his interest in anthropology at Berkeley. Steward returned to study under Kroeber and Lowie and received his Ph.D. in 1929. He then founded the anthropology department at the university of Michigan.

Let’s look at the diet of the Paiute, a group from the US Great Basin that Steward studied extensively. They were foragers, and a substantial portion of the intake was grass seeds, including rice grass, also known as sandgrass, Indian millet, sandrice and silkygrass.  Rice grass occurs naturally on coarse, sandy soils in the arid lands throughout the Great Basin. They also foraged for tubers and greens, including cattail sprouts, and for berries and pine nuts. The seeds of rice grass were ground into meal. Whenever possible they fished and hunted, especially for migratory ducks. Today, though, I want to focus on wild rice. The species most commonly harvested as grain are the annual species: Zizania palustris and Zizania aquatica. The former, though now domesticated and grown commercially, is still often gathered from lakes in the traditional manner, especially by indigenous peoples. They harvest wild rice by canoeing into a stand of plants, and bending the ripe grain heads with two small wooden poles/sticks so as to thresh the seeds into the canoe. One person knocks rice into the canoe while the other paddles slowly or uses a push pole. Some seeds fall to the muddy bottom and germinate later in the year.

You cook wild rice much like brown rice. Put 3 parts water to 1 part rice in a saucepan, bring to a boil, lower the heat to a simmer, cover, and cook for 40 to 45 minutes. The rice is ready when the hulls split open.  You can use stock in place of water and add any number of seasonings, but plain wild rice is just fine – and traditional !!!