March 10, 2023

Maple Sugaring

This Musings from Main is researched and written by Friends' Education Director, Liz Glaviano. It is written in anticipation and celebration of our first Maple Sugaring Event to be held in Nowashe Village on March 25, 2023 from 11-4pm. We hope you can join us.

Maple Sugaring
Maple sugaring has been practiced by New England’s Indigenous Peoples for thousands of years. Following a multi-step process for collecting and condensing maple sap into sweeteners, this process has been refined and passed down orally from one generation to the next.

The gathering of maple sap traditionally began in March, with the use of a wooden spile, or spout, inserted into a Y-shaped cut in maple tree’s bark. Oftentimes, spiles were made from cedar or slippery elm wood. Traditionally used for collecting sap were containers fashioned from birch bark. Maple products are made by evaporating sap.

Although silver and red maples can be tapped, the Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum) is by far the best choice, producing the largest amount of sap with the highest sugar concentration. Classified according to color, maple syrups range from lighter syrups with a delicate taste to darker syrups boasting strong flavor.

According to historical accounts, Native Peoples used maple products not only to season foods, such as venison, fish, squash, and pumpkins, but also in traditional medicine. Loaded with nutritious minerals, such as calcium, phosphorous, magnesium and iron, maple products treated a variety of ailments like croup, as well as heart and digestive problems. Lastly, maple syrup also served as an important commodity, traded in the form of dried, portable sugar slabs. Historically, in many Eastern Woodland Indigenous Tribes it was the women who performed most of the labor involved in the maple sugaring process.

Locally, according to historian Henry Stiles, Indigenous Peoples who lived “on the east side of the Connecticut River” were friends with the Tunxis Native Peoples of Farmington. He writes: “Whenever the latter paid them a visit they returned with them to the west side of the river at parting, bringing with them provisions for a feast, consisting of pounded corn, and, if in the spring, maple sap, and such other simple luxuries as they possessed.”

To many Eastern Woodland Indigenous Peoples, maple sugar and syrup represent new life and mark the beginning of their annual seasonal subsistence period. Celebrations and ceremonies surround maple sugaring today, highlighting its important role in Indigenous lifeways.

Sources used for this Musing are listed below.

- Chenevert, Brian, edited by Dan Shears. “Maple Sugaring Among the Abenaki and Wabanaki Peoples” © 2021 Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk – Abenaki Nation. https://abenakitribe.org/maple-syrup

- Moody, Hayley. “Indigenous Knowledge and Maple Syrup: A Case Study of the Effects of Colonization in Ontario” © 2015 Wilfrid Laurier University

- Regie de l’energie du Canada, Native Women and the Meaning of Maple Sugar, Chapter One. https://apps.cer-rec.gc.ca

Stiles, Henry Reed, The Histories and Genealogies of Ancient Windsor, CT © 1891 Lockwood & Brainard Co.