The early history of maple syrup unfolded right here in North America!
Among other crops, Native North Americans first developed corn, beans, cotton, tobacco and maple. Unlike with the first four products, a handful of prominent European immigrants purported to take credit for the discovery of maple syrup or maple sugar. However, history and common sense weigh heavily against these lonely historical voices. Rather, European writings overwhelmingly describe the processing of maple as a traditional activity engaged in by tribes covering a vast geography of present day United States and Canada. The language, customs and legends surrounding North American maple show that it was a practice of cultural importance.
Sugar Country
Contemporaneous European writings indicate that maple sugar making was an activity widely engaged in across the continent among tribes that lived—at least at the time Europeans made landfall—across and even slightly beyond present-day sugar country. To appreciate this geographical scope, note the traditional territories of the Abenaki, Algonquin, Chippewa, Cree, Housatunnuk, Iowa, Iroquois, Kansa, Kickapoo, Menomini, Ojibwe, Omaha, Osage, Ponka, Tuscarora and Winnebago peoples. European writings about maple mention all of these tribes. And this awesome map shows the traditional territories of the early history of maple.
Language
Native American words for maple are interesting too. Algonquins call maple sugar sinzibuckwud (drawn from wood). Tuscarora and Omaha/Ponka call sugar –
Sugaring Season
Far from being decried as “the cruelest month(s),” however, many Americans celebrated March or March and April as the “sugar moon.” European accounts of the ceremony, dance, feasting and revelry that attended what we now call “sap season,” “boil-off season,” or “maple syrup time” abound. This, perhaps, should come as no surprise, as at least one European immigrant noted that maple sugar sometimes functioned as a stopgap against famine here in the early spring months.
According to European writings, Ojibwe tribal leaders mixed together maple sugar from the prior year’s harvest with the first grains produced in the present year to kickoff an annual feast. And several tribes recounted to Europeans legends explaining the origins of maple. One of these legends involved the unintended consequence of cooking with sap instead of water in order to save an arduous trip to the river. Another featured a divine being watering down what used to flow out of the tree as syrup as an instruction in proper work ethic (or rebuke for the lack of same).
Methods
The way the Americans made maple sugar, however, sounds quite familiar to the backyard sugar makers of today. As was common among the descendants of European (and other) immigrants up until just half-a-century ago, Americans typically set-out to live in a camp nearer to the family’s sugar stand when the sap began to flow. In a number of traditions, the camps belonged to the women and were passed down matrilineally.
Unlike today, where practices vary, it was predominately the women of the family who ran the sugaring show. Children, youth and grown men took helping roles. American women made bark sap buckets and bark buckets for transportation and storage of sap. They “tapped” the tree with a gash and a wooden chip, and oversaw the boiling itself. Until Europeans brought and traded metal cookware, boiling took place in hollowed out logs into which were placed hot rocks.
Like we do today, the Americans threw the ice off of the top of a sap or sap-storage bucket to concentrate the sugars. They even stored sap in large shallow pans to produce more ice. Americans drank the sap, ate fresh syrup and maple toffee during the boil, and made gifts of their maple bounty. They made these gifts by pouring almost-sugar into carved wooden molds of animals, birds, people, celestial bodies and more!
Storage
Because of the non-existence of glass and metal, however, Americans made sap into sugar and packed into bark baskets for transportation and year-round storage. They did this by continuing to boil past the syrup and toffee stages, and by stirring constantly until crystallization occurred. Apparently, the Americans’ maple sugar lumps, like mine, sometimes needed a good whacking in order to resemble sugar. Which is also nice to hear.
Recipes
Americans ate maple products on their own but also relied upon it, in the same way Europeans relied on salt, to season their food. By way of example, European immigrants recorded eating corn porridge sweetened with maple sugar, rice, nut and fruit dishes seasoned with maple sugar, and dipping sauces made from maple sugar and bear fat on dry or cooked venison. American mothers gave their children small baskets containing sugar from the year’s first sap run, and lumps of sugar throughout the year when quiet behavior was unattainable using other methods.
There’s much more to the early history of maple than what I’ve related here. If you are interested, pick up this book as a start. Now go make yourself a nice stack of pancakes and enjoy the taste of maple!