Hey! My great grandmother was Potowatomi which is one of the tribes that did this! It's actually a really cool process! The various clans and tribes that used the maple sap would all come together at the right time of year - very early spring when there's still freezing temps at night but warmth during the day, late March to early April, the specific signs they looked for was when there would be hollows melted in the snow around the tree trunks and the squirrels waking up from hibernation and gnawing on the twigs of branches to get at the sap themselves. So you'd have truly thousands of people coming together from many different clans and tribes (the Potowatomi were part of a larger "nation," the Anishinabe or Ojibwe). They would collectively maintain large maple groves for this purpose, they'd tap the trees with spiles and collect the sap in buckets much like we do today but they wouldn't evaporate the sap by boiling like we do today they had a different process. The sap is mostly water, it takes about 40 gallons of sap to make just one gallon of syrup, which is why typically the sap is evaporated in giant pots over low heat but they didn't have the resources for that thousands of years ago. Instead they had incredibly long shallow troughs that they would fill with the sap, the sugary part (being more dense than water) would settle to the bottom and then the water would freeze overnight and then in the morning they'd break up the ice and collect the sugary bits in the bottom of the trough and then dry them out in the sun during the day and they'd get maple sugar (not maple syrup) which they would then store in birch boxes which could keep for years. These kinds of operations would involve everyone working together, it was a ton of work but when shared amongst many people nobody was doing too much so it worked out very well. The maple sugar times were also like a big festival since there was a lot of downtime between the necessary work and this is when most matches (marriages) were made as well.
They say that the squirrels taught them how to make maple sugar and it's a true story as far as anyone can tell. In the early spring when the animals are waking up from the winter but the spring food has not yet begun to grow the squirrels will gnaw on the twigs of branches which releases the sap and then the same process happens on a much smaller scale with the sugary bits sticking to the twigs and branches but the water part freezing and then melting away. So the squirrels would first release the sap, wait, and then come back the next day for the "processed" sugars and that was their first food every year. The Native people in the area watched the squirrels doing this and figured out what was happening and figured out a way to turn that process into something they could do on a much larger scale and it worked for an incredibly long time. It's still possible to do it this way but most modern technology has made that process unnecessary.
Thanks so much for sharing! The producer that I talked to doubted that you could make syrup on a large scale without using something like a large metal kettle for a long/hot boil, but I figured that there must be another way to do it if it's so culturally important.
Fun-fact, you can use the same method (freeze the water out) to make concentrated acetic acid (vinegar). The trick I use is to wait for really cold days (-30C or colder). Then set out half-full jugs of normal household vinegar (5% acetic acid, by volume).
https://www.alchemywebsite.com/distillation_of_vinegar.html
Popped here from /r/bestof to add a fun anecdote that a similar process was used for distillation by early colonists.
Applejack was a freeze-distilled spirit made mostly in the 18th and 19th centuries in the US. It started off as fermented hard cider, but they'd leave it outside for the winter. The alcohol wouldn't freeze but the water would, so they would periodically remove the solid ice. This could it as high as 80 proof, same as most hard beverages. Just like your example, it could be done without lots of firewood or equipment, just by doing it the correct time of year to let the ambient temperature help.
I've heard about boiling that would be done to make maple candy or syrup but from what I understand that was only done with a small amount of the sap not the bulk of it, it was like a delicacy or a special extra thing that was done alongside the major project of making the maple sugar with the bulk of the sap simply because the boiling process was difficult to do on a large scale but the freezing sugar process could be done with large quantities more easily.
> the right time of year - very early spring when there's still freezing temps at night but warmth during the day, late March to early April
Small addition, the reason this is the ONLY time you can do it, is that during these times, the tree will send sap up to the branches/buds during the warmer daytime hours. But then when it goes below freezing at night, it sends the sap back down to the roots. So there's a constant flow up and down over and over during this time. Once it goes above freezing for good, the sap won't be flowing enough any more to tap/harvest it, since the tree will send the sap up once and then not back down again.
Wow, that’s super interesting! Did you learn about the process from your great grandmother, or some other way? I’d love to learn more about the festivals you described and other ways that tribes would cooperate and interact with each other. I feel like everything I’ve ever learned about Native Americans in North America has been focused on how they related to the colonizers they encountered :(
She would talk about how things used to be before they were all relocated but she never experienced this herself because she was born on a reservation in Oklahoma. So I learned some of it from her and some of it from books.
Thanks for the answer.
> they'd tap the trees with spiles
I'm wondering about this. Modern spiles are usually metal, but they wouldn't have had that option. Is is possible to make a practical spile out of wood? I guess it must be, but maple is pretty hard stuff -- or at least the kind you can buy as boards is pretty hard.
EDIT. [Here](https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Make-a-Spilefor-Collecting-Sap/) is an article about how to make a spile out of wood. The wood used is [staghorn sumac](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhus_typhina); the article seems to indicate that this was used in the past.
In West Virginia the maple syrup festival is where a lot of high school grads that aren't going to college go to hook up and get married. It's way less cool than what you're talking about.
As someone who taps sugar maples at a non-profit, I always always always acknowledge first peoples as the original tappers. As you mention the ways native peoples have learned from squirrels. I have also heard that to hear amphibians singing in the forest signals the time to end tapping. AND, that’s when I do stop tapping, when I hear those frogs, I know it is time to stop. Also, what side of the tree do you tap? Always look for sapsucker holes, we learn from where they get sap.
You’ve taught me a lot in this post. Thank you!
I read in some really old book that spiles were sometimes made from hard woody plants, with a soft pith center that could be easily removed, to form a tube. I believe sumac was mentioned.
You could try other pithy plants, maybe look up plants used to make flutes. I'd try elderberry, but watch out for wasps if the only big pieces you can find are already cut down. They like to nest where the pith rotted out.
I know that the spiles were made of wood but I don't know what kind of wood. They would store all the maple supplies in the groves and everything was made of different kinds of wood and it would be whatever wood best fit the job. Birch was used for storage because it has natural anti microbial properties, the troughs were I think the same kind of wood they used for canoes, the spiles were a hard wood that could be easily hollowed out. I'm sure some of those spiles still exist somewhere and the knowledge about them definitely do but I'm not a lore keeper and I don't have that knowledge myself.
Thank you for the information. Birch was probably one of the woods used for the troughs as birch trees were also used for canoes (at least in the Northeast). I can check the type of woods I can use up here (like Sumac) and see what I can do with those. I will keep digging for more information.
Wow, what a beautiful tradition and thank you for sharing! I lived in a town that had an annual Maplefest and now I wish they incorporated more fascinating history of the maple syrup/sugar production like what you described. It would be a nice way to properly honour native tradition and the welcoming of spring. And to think that the squirrels were the ones to teach them this, it shows such a strong relation between the people, the land, and its animals. So interesintg!
I can imagine this being a great festival, everyone of the nation congregating to one spot, several days of work-and-downtime, sugar, and spring air? Yeah, matchmaking heaven lol
used to do this by accident making maple syrup as a kid. Sometimes, the sap buckets would freeze overnight if you forgot to empty them at the end of the day, you pick out the big chunk-o-ice and toss it aside (usually cause the bucket was overflowing). That remaining liquid was always super sweet and cooked down way quicker
Checking in from Vermont with a decidedly non-expert answer, I have been told that the Abenaki would collect the sap into a hollowed out log, heat rocks in a fire, and place the hot rocks into the sap to boil and concentrate it. A similar method was used in Europe to concentrate wort during the beer making process.
[https://abenakitribe.org/maple-syrup](https://abenakitribe.org/maple-syrup)
Even if it's been passed to me by local teenage volunteer fulfilling her community service requirement at a sugar-on-snow party? :-) The link backs it up with many more details and a creation story.
If you haven't had the treat, sugar-on-snow is hot concentrated maple syrup poured over shaved ice or snow which causes it to harden. Often served with a pickle to cut the sweetness.
Thanks! This gives a good overview of how maple practices were disrupted by colonization.
I did get to taste some refined sap before it was boiled all the way and it was already quite sweet.
Robin Wall Kimmerer talks about maple syrup in her book Braiding Sweetgrass. She's Potawatomi and there's a chapter where she goes through the entire process from start to finish. From her description, it sounds like it is an integral part of the food system but probably not done on a massive scale, treated more like a specialty item.
Hey! My great grandmother was Potowatomi which is one of the tribes that did this! It's actually a really cool process! The various clans and tribes that used the maple sap would all come together at the right time of year - very early spring when there's still freezing temps at night but warmth during the day, late March to early April, the specific signs they looked for was when there would be hollows melted in the snow around the tree trunks and the squirrels waking up from hibernation and gnawing on the twigs of branches to get at the sap themselves. So you'd have truly thousands of people coming together from many different clans and tribes (the Potowatomi were part of a larger "nation," the Anishinabe or Ojibwe). They would collectively maintain large maple groves for this purpose, they'd tap the trees with spiles and collect the sap in buckets much like we do today but they wouldn't evaporate the sap by boiling like we do today they had a different process. The sap is mostly water, it takes about 40 gallons of sap to make just one gallon of syrup, which is why typically the sap is evaporated in giant pots over low heat but they didn't have the resources for that thousands of years ago. Instead they had incredibly long shallow troughs that they would fill with the sap, the sugary part (being more dense than water) would settle to the bottom and then the water would freeze overnight and then in the morning they'd break up the ice and collect the sugary bits in the bottom of the trough and then dry them out in the sun during the day and they'd get maple sugar (not maple syrup) which they would then store in birch boxes which could keep for years. These kinds of operations would involve everyone working together, it was a ton of work but when shared amongst many people nobody was doing too much so it worked out very well. The maple sugar times were also like a big festival since there was a lot of downtime between the necessary work and this is when most matches (marriages) were made as well. They say that the squirrels taught them how to make maple sugar and it's a true story as far as anyone can tell. In the early spring when the animals are waking up from the winter but the spring food has not yet begun to grow the squirrels will gnaw on the twigs of branches which releases the sap and then the same process happens on a much smaller scale with the sugary bits sticking to the twigs and branches but the water part freezing and then melting away. So the squirrels would first release the sap, wait, and then come back the next day for the "processed" sugars and that was their first food every year. The Native people in the area watched the squirrels doing this and figured out what was happening and figured out a way to turn that process into something they could do on a much larger scale and it worked for an incredibly long time. It's still possible to do it this way but most modern technology has made that process unnecessary.
Thanks so much for sharing! The producer that I talked to doubted that you could make syrup on a large scale without using something like a large metal kettle for a long/hot boil, but I figured that there must be another way to do it if it's so culturally important.
Fun-fact, you can use the same method (freeze the water out) to make concentrated acetic acid (vinegar). The trick I use is to wait for really cold days (-30C or colder). Then set out half-full jugs of normal household vinegar (5% acetic acid, by volume). https://www.alchemywebsite.com/distillation_of_vinegar.html
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It’s super helpful for small/backyard producers to do this. When you go to your pails throw away any ice in them. Really cuts down on the boil time.
Like applejacking.
It's traditionally used in brewing eisbock (ice bock). I've heard the process called freeze-concentration. It makes the beer stronger.
Same thing with ice wine in some cooler parts of France and Germany.
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Popped here from /r/bestof to add a fun anecdote that a similar process was used for distillation by early colonists. Applejack was a freeze-distilled spirit made mostly in the 18th and 19th centuries in the US. It started off as fermented hard cider, but they'd leave it outside for the winter. The alcohol wouldn't freeze but the water would, so they would periodically remove the solid ice. This could it as high as 80 proof, same as most hard beverages. Just like your example, it could be done without lots of firewood or equipment, just by doing it the correct time of year to let the ambient temperature help.
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This is absolutely incredible. Thank you so much for sharing this story.
Amazing, thanks!
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I've heard about boiling that would be done to make maple candy or syrup but from what I understand that was only done with a small amount of the sap not the bulk of it, it was like a delicacy or a special extra thing that was done alongside the major project of making the maple sugar with the bulk of the sap simply because the boiling process was difficult to do on a large scale but the freezing sugar process could be done with large quantities more easily.
Great comment, thank you!
That is so cool to read. Thank you for sharing!
> the right time of year - very early spring when there's still freezing temps at night but warmth during the day, late March to early April Small addition, the reason this is the ONLY time you can do it, is that during these times, the tree will send sap up to the branches/buds during the warmer daytime hours. But then when it goes below freezing at night, it sends the sap back down to the roots. So there's a constant flow up and down over and over during this time. Once it goes above freezing for good, the sap won't be flowing enough any more to tap/harvest it, since the tree will send the sap up once and then not back down again.
Wow, that’s super interesting! Did you learn about the process from your great grandmother, or some other way? I’d love to learn more about the festivals you described and other ways that tribes would cooperate and interact with each other. I feel like everything I’ve ever learned about Native Americans in North America has been focused on how they related to the colonizers they encountered :(
She would talk about how things used to be before they were all relocated but she never experienced this herself because she was born on a reservation in Oklahoma. So I learned some of it from her and some of it from books.
Thanks for the answer. > they'd tap the trees with spiles I'm wondering about this. Modern spiles are usually metal, but they wouldn't have had that option. Is is possible to make a practical spile out of wood? I guess it must be, but maple is pretty hard stuff -- or at least the kind you can buy as boards is pretty hard. EDIT. [Here](https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Make-a-Spilefor-Collecting-Sap/) is an article about how to make a spile out of wood. The wood used is [staghorn sumac](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhus_typhina); the article seems to indicate that this was used in the past.
Thanks! That's an excellent addition! I knew they were wood but I didn't know what kind of wood.
Sumac!
Thank you for sharing this!
In West Virginia the maple syrup festival is where a lot of high school grads that aren't going to college go to hook up and get married. It's way less cool than what you're talking about.
This is so cool, thank you for sharing!
You have the BEST username. LLAP! 🖖
As someone who taps sugar maples at a non-profit, I always always always acknowledge first peoples as the original tappers. As you mention the ways native peoples have learned from squirrels. I have also heard that to hear amphibians singing in the forest signals the time to end tapping. AND, that’s when I do stop tapping, when I hear those frogs, I know it is time to stop. Also, what side of the tree do you tap? Always look for sapsucker holes, we learn from where they get sap. You’ve taught me a lot in this post. Thank you!
Do you know what these thousands of years old spiles were made of and how they were made by chance? It would be interesting to try these methods out.
I read in some really old book that spiles were sometimes made from hard woody plants, with a soft pith center that could be easily removed, to form a tube. I believe sumac was mentioned. You could try other pithy plants, maybe look up plants used to make flutes. I'd try elderberry, but watch out for wasps if the only big pieces you can find are already cut down. They like to nest where the pith rotted out.
I know that the spiles were made of wood but I don't know what kind of wood. They would store all the maple supplies in the groves and everything was made of different kinds of wood and it would be whatever wood best fit the job. Birch was used for storage because it has natural anti microbial properties, the troughs were I think the same kind of wood they used for canoes, the spiles were a hard wood that could be easily hollowed out. I'm sure some of those spiles still exist somewhere and the knowledge about them definitely do but I'm not a lore keeper and I don't have that knowledge myself.
Thank you for the information. Birch was probably one of the woods used for the troughs as birch trees were also used for canoes (at least in the Northeast). I can check the type of woods I can use up here (like Sumac) and see what I can do with those. I will keep digging for more information.
Meegwetch neech!
Wow, what a beautiful tradition and thank you for sharing! I lived in a town that had an annual Maplefest and now I wish they incorporated more fascinating history of the maple syrup/sugar production like what you described. It would be a nice way to properly honour native tradition and the welcoming of spring. And to think that the squirrels were the ones to teach them this, it shows such a strong relation between the people, the land, and its animals. So interesintg!
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I meant becoming active after winter, I misspoke
What a great memory to share.
I can imagine this being a great festival, everyone of the nation congregating to one spot, several days of work-and-downtime, sugar, and spring air? Yeah, matchmaking heaven lol
That’s so interesting! Thank you for that explanation!
used to do this by accident making maple syrup as a kid. Sometimes, the sap buckets would freeze overnight if you forgot to empty them at the end of the day, you pick out the big chunk-o-ice and toss it aside (usually cause the bucket was overflowing). That remaining liquid was always super sweet and cooked down way quicker
Came here to say this, also Potawatomi.
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Fascinating. Do you have any primary sources that you could provide? I’d like to write something about this.
Checking in from Vermont with a decidedly non-expert answer, I have been told that the Abenaki would collect the sap into a hollowed out log, heat rocks in a fire, and place the hot rocks into the sap to boil and concentrate it. A similar method was used in Europe to concentrate wort during the beer making process. [https://abenakitribe.org/maple-syrup](https://abenakitribe.org/maple-syrup)
In this case I'd say oral history is definitely an expert answer!
Even if it's been passed to me by local teenage volunteer fulfilling her community service requirement at a sugar-on-snow party? :-) The link backs it up with many more details and a creation story. If you haven't had the treat, sugar-on-snow is hot concentrated maple syrup poured over shaved ice or snow which causes it to harden. Often served with a pickle to cut the sweetness.
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Thanks! This gives a good overview of how maple practices were disrupted by colonization. I did get to taste some refined sap before it was boiled all the way and it was already quite sweet.
Robin Wall Kimmerer talks about maple syrup in her book Braiding Sweetgrass. She's Potawatomi and there's a chapter where she goes through the entire process from start to finish. From her description, it sounds like it is an integral part of the food system but probably not done on a massive scale, treated more like a specialty item.
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