Note 60 — Chapter II · The Sioux or Dakotahs.

The first is the correct, the second is the old and incorrect form of writing the name.

[61] The Folles Avoines are a small tribe esteemed by the whites and respected by their own race; their hunting-grounds are the same as those of the Winnebagoes. They speak a peculiar dialect. But all understand the copious and sonorous, but difficult and complicated Algonquin or Ojibwa—the language of some of the old New England races, Pequots, Delawares, Mohicans, Abenaki, Narragansets, Penobscots, and the tribes about the Lake regions and the head-waters of the Mississippi, viz., Ottawa, Potawotomies, Menomene, Knisteneaux or Cree, Sac, Kickapoo, Maskigo, Shawnee, Miami, Kaskaskia, etc. The other great northeastern language is that of the Mohawk, spoken by the Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, Cayuga, Tuscarora, Wyandotte, and Cherokee.

“Folles Avoines” is the Canadian French for the wild rice (Zizania aquatica), a tall, tubular, reedy water-plant, plentiful on the marshy margins of the northern lakes and in the plashy waters of the Upper Mississippi. Its leaves and spikes, though much larger, resemble those of oats. Millions of migrating water-fowl fatten on it before their autumnal flights to the south, while in autumn it furnishes the Northern savages and the Canadian traders and hunters with their annual supply of grain. It is used for bread by most of the tribes to the northwest.