What’s the History of Maple Sugaring?
When I was an undergrad during my first semester at NYU, it amazed me that so many of my fellow students didn’t know where maple syrup came from, or that brands like Aunt Jemima or Mrs. Butterworth’s were, in fact, not actual maple syrup. NYU is a well-respected school that’s somewhat challenging to be admitted to, so hearing that this wasn’t common knowledge was shocking to me, to say the very least.
Here in the North Country, where “sugaring” is a way of life, I’d like to think that the majority of us are well aware that maple syrup comes from maple trees.
And that brands like the ones I mentioned above aren’t technically maple syrup at all, but are instead “pancake syrup” or “table syrup”, made out of a formulated blend of not-so-good-for-you ingredients like high fructose corn syrup, caramel color, hexametaphosphate, and cellulose gum (with the occasional dash of maple flavoring in there to make you feel like you’re eating the real thing).
Last year, Josh began working with Davis Family Farm and Uncle Jack’s Sugar Shack to help with their sugaring operation. J&R Pierce Family Farm now proudly collaborates with them and we plan to share more information about maple sugaring as part of our Factual Friday series.
Today, we’re going back to the start to explain the origins of sugaring. It’s quite an interesting history!
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When Was Maple Syrup Discovered?
As you likely know, maple syrup is made from the sap of maple trees. The trees store starch in the trunks and roots before cold weather arrives, which is then converted into sugar that rises in the sap in the late winter and early spring.
Our processes, equipment, and techniques for producing maple syrup are much more advanced now than they were at the start, and we’ll get into more detail about how we make syrup in the coming weeks.
But at the beginning, it’s not super clear how this was done. There aren’t clear records on how maple syrup was produced and consumed at the very start. While it was formally chronicled on paper starting in 1609, it’s clear that syrup production started long before that.
The indigenous peoples of northeastern North America were the first groups known to produce maple syrup, and they did this long before Europeans arrived in the area. One Iroquois legend tells a story of Chief Woksis, who threw a tomahawk into a maple tree one winter. The next day, the weather turned sunny and warm. When he removed the tomahawk from the tree, sap flowed from the cut.
Another explanation suggests that Native Americans simply saw icicles with frozen sap in the middle of them - “popsicles” - and discovered maple syrup by accident that way. Talk about a sweet surprise!
Yet another legend from the Chippewa, Ottawa, and Algonquin tribes says that people drank maple syrup directly from trees since the beginning of time. The legend states that the god named NenawBozhoo saw his people were becoming lazy, choosing to drink maple syrup from the trees rather than to hunt or forage for their food. To make things more difficult for them, he turned the syrup into a watery sap that required additional processing before it could be consumed.
Capturing and Processing the First Maple Sap
No matter which story you choose to believe, once people realized what maple trees could do, they quickly developed ways to capture and process the sap. As spring approached, they’d create “sugar camps” near the base of the trees to prepare for the sap flow. They’d cut into the tree’s trunk and collect the sap with reeds into pots, then allow it to concentrate overnight by leaving it exposed to cold temperatures and discarding the layer of ice that formed. Then, they’d boil it.
Various tribes have had different ways of doing this. For example, the Menominee people made a cut in the tree for the sap to ooze from, then inserted a wooden spout to carry sap into a birch bark receptacle.
White the sap boiled, they would cook fish or squirrel meat in the receptacles. When the meat was done it would be removed. The sap would then be strained through a wool blanket to remove any bits of the boiled meat, and it could be used that way. Or, if sugar was the desired finished product, they’d continue boiling and stirring until it was dry.
The Growing Popularity of Maple Syrup
No matter how it was collected or prepared, maple sap was wildly popular. Interestingly, maple sugar was actually more common and widely used than maple syrup, since it was easier to store and transport. It was often used in trade and frequently eaten with bear fat or berries.
When the first settlers arrived, they realized that the local indigenous peoples were on to something, and quickly learned how to do it themselves. Instead of making incisions in the bark, they drilled tap holes with augers. Sap was used as a source of concentrated sugar in both liquid and solid form, and it became popular quickly, since cane sugar had to be imported and tough to come by.
Our processes have involved quite a lot since then, and we no longer prepare maple syrup by boiling it with squirrel carcasses (thank goodness). We are more efficient, clean, and technical in the process - making maple syrup is now just as much of a science as it is an art and a tradition.
Stay tuned as we continue to dive into more of the nitty (hopefully not gritty) details of maple syrup production in our next posts!
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