The History of Maple Syrup In America

Michigan Maple Syrup

Native Americans have been given credit as the first to realize that the sap oozing from a maple tree could be processed into maple syrup. It is one of the few discoveries that was not brought to this the United States by European settlers.

While we have are many (fasinating and wonderful stories about the origin and history of maple syrup, there are no authenticated accounts of how the process was discovered.

One of the most popular legends about the history of maple syrup involves a Native American chief who realized the clear liquid sap seeping from a tree he had stuck his kife into. As the day warmed up the sap seeped into a cooking pot on the ground. The chief’s wife, after tasting it and discovering it tasted quite good cooked his meat in it. The chief enjoyed the sweet taste of the maple meat so much that he named it Sinzibudkwud which means “drawn from trees”. Native Americans still quite often use this word when referring to maple syrup.

Soon they discovered that slashing or (wounding) a maple tree in early spring caused it to seep a sweet clear liquid which could be processed into a sweet product they enjoyed very much. Most legends probably were changed over the years, but discovering maple syrup most likely was accidental.

Over the years it was discovered they could gradually reduce the sap to syrup by repeatedly freezing it, throwing away the ice, and repeating the process. They could store up to 30 pounds of this sugar in containers made with birch bark.

Eventually some of the Native American tribes began to process the maple sap over fire. The women would migrate to the maple groves which were called “sugar bushes” during early spring to process the maple syrup. They made troughs in which they collected the sap and brought it to the fire. The sap was heated by adding heated stones. Freshly heated stones would be added while removing older cooler stones to be reheated. Most early Native Americans would rather use sugar over salt and used maple syrup or sugar on their meat and fish.

Early settlers copied the Native American methods to make their maple syrup. They boiled the sap over an open fire until it reduced down to syrup. It requires about 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup, which was a very labor intensive and time consuming operation. Very little changed for the next two hundred years, until during the civil war the tin can was invented. It didn’t take long until syrup makers discovered that a large flat sheet of metal could make a much more efficient pan to boil maple sap than using the older heavy rounded iron kettle.

Most original syrup makers were dairy farmers who only made maple syrup and sugar for their own use, or a little extra income during the off season. They continually looked for a more efficient and faster way to make their syrup. Many ingenious ideas and processes evolved over the years, but for the most part the accepted methods stayed the same for another century. In the 1960’s it was so labor intensive and time consuming it was no longer possible for small farmers to sustain themselves. They could not afford to hire the large number of workers required to tap the trees and carry the small buckets to the evaporator house.

Finally with the energy crunch of the 1970’s another surge of technological breakthroughs occurred. Tubing systems were installed, and vacuum pumps added to draw the sap directly to the evaporator house from the trees. Pre-heaters that “recycle” heat which previously was lost were installed, and reverse-osmosis filters that remove a portion of the water out of the sap before it is boiled were introduced into the process.

New filtering techniques, “supercharged” pre-heaters, better tubing, and improved storage containers are just a few of the new technological developments being used today.

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Ken Asselin in webmaster for the Selections Guide series of websites. You can visit his Michigan Maple Syrup website at: ">www.michigan-maple-syrup.com