Each family had a few canoes weighing between 65 to 100 pounds. An important food source for the Ojibwa was wild rice. Each fall the families canoed to the wild rice paddies to harvest the delicious food. Before the European settlers came to North America, wild rice used to grow from Lake Winnipeg south to the Gulf of Mexico and east of the Rockies to the coast. Rice was found in shallow lakes, and slow streams.
Rice grows best in areas where there is thick mud so that the roots can stick in.
There are still places in the north woods where wild rice can be found today. To harvest the rice, the Ojibwa used their canoes and paddled over the rice beds. One person would paddle while another person would gather the rice over the canoe and then beat it with a stick so that the grains spilled inside. Since they did not disturb the roots, the plants kept producing rice year after year. Once the white man settled in this country, life changed dramatically for the Ojibwa and all native people.