Maple Syruping: A History

By: Katy Anderegg, Naturalist
RBNC has been collecting maple sap for many years and educating young minds on how the maple sap to syrup process works. While there have been many advances in how to collect and cook down the sap into syrup in today’s world, Indians were the first to have begun the activity of collect sap hundreds of years ago. Legend has it that maple trees used to run thick with sweet syrup right from the tree. The Indian God Manabozho was out searching for his people one day and they were nowhere to be found. He eventually came across them in a maple tree grove, laying on their backs under the trees, drinking syrup. Manabozho was not happy that his people had become so lazy, neglecting hunting, fishing and fields. To punish them, Manabozho made a large birch bark basket and went down to a river to collect water. He poured baskets of water over the trees, watering down the syrup and making it run like water. This drastically reducing the sweet flavor and shortened the collecting season to winter and early spring. The Indians now had to collect large amounts of sap and cook it down to make sweet syrup again.

Indians cooked the sap down to sugar form for easier storage. They used hollowed out tree baskets or birch bark baskets to collect the sap. Sugar camps were set up each year during late winter and early spring and occupied until the season was over. They collected and cooked enough sap to last them through the year.
RBNC still practices maple sap collecting each spring to educate children and adults alike.

1. The History of Maple Syrup: https://maplevalleysyrup.coop/the-history-of-maple-syrup/

2. Caduto, Michael J., and Joseph Bruchac. Keepers of the Earth: Native American Stories and Environmental Activities for Children. Fulcrum Publishing, 2014.

“Indian woman tapping maple sap” by photographer Reed, Roland, 1908, courtesy of Library of Congress

“Indian sugar camp/Capt. S. Eastman, U.S. Army; John C. McRae, 1853, courtesy of Library of Congress