Word: flails
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1940
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Chippewa men, standing erect in the bows, pole their canoes into the rice fields. In the stern of each canoe sits a squaw, holding in each hand a wooden flail. Gently, lest the plants be hurt, she presses a sheaf of rice stalks between the flails, bends the sheaf over the side of the canoe. Gently still, the flails knock the ripened heads off the stalks. The rice falls on a canvas cloth or into a birchbark basket; the canoe moves on; the rest of the grain sinks to the fertile mud on the bottom of the lake, to take...