In late summer nearby Lakes are covered with wild rice, it's sacred to the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Native Americans, says the tribe's Natural Resources Director Kelly Applegate.
Those are legumes and beans, you know, and also like I'd say some really good rices, quinoa, sweet potatoes, squash, all of those things, you know, wild rice, black rice.
The year leading up to October 1871 had been unprecedentedly dry, with the marshes drying out to the degree that local Native Americans did not use canoes to gather wild rice.