Location
Rice is in Clearwater County Rice Lake and the Upper Rice Lake, and the Wild Rice River, have probably borne these names in four successive languages, the Dakota , the Ojibwe, French, and English. The oldest printed reference is in the narrative of Joseph La France, a French and Ojibwe parentage, who in 1740-42 traveled and hunted with the Indians of a large region in northwestern Minnesota and in Canada northward to Lakes Winnipeg and Manitoba and Hudson Bay. In the story of his wandering, given by Arthur Dobbs in An Account of the Countries adjoining to Hudson's Bay, published in London in 1744, La France described the Upper Rice Lake, in Bear Creek and Minerva Townships of this county, as follows: "The Lake Du Siens is but small, being not above 3 Leagues in Circuit; but all around its Banks, in the shallow Water and Marshes, grows a kind of wild Oat, of the Nature of Rice; the outward Husk is black, but the Grain within is white and clear like Rice; this the Indians beat off into their Canoes, and use it for Food" (Minnesota in Three Centuries, 1908, vol. 1, pp. 299-302). This French name, Du Siens, seems probably to be from the Dakota word psin, meaning "wild rice." From: Upham, Warren. Minnesota Place Names: A Geographical Encyclopedia. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, First edition 1920. Third Edition 2001. Print.
