The role of Native Americans is a popular topic to those interested in the broader history of maple sugaring. Since one of the themes of this website is examining and sharing new evidence and studies of maple history, looking at early lines of Native American maple sugaring is always on my radar, in particular, accurate images and representations from the sugarbush.
While there are a number of engravings from the mid-19th century showing what the artist imagined or was told a Native American sugarbush looked like, these images were not created from real-life experiences or in the field and are often woefully inaccurate. Artist Seth Eastman brought real-world experience to his water color paintings of Native American activities in Minnesota and created a much more realistic scene with a 1853 image of what are probably Dakota people at a sugarbush near Fort Snelling, Minnesota. Unfortunately, we do not know if this image was painted “en plein air” on site, in the moment, or was a facsimile of what Eastman saw and remembered after visiting a sugarbush.
In most cases, the best way to preserve an image of Native American sugaring was through photography. Interestingly, photographs taken in Native American sugarbushes in the 19th century are surprisingly rare. Estimated dates, that are probably decades off, sometimes get assigned to an old looking image that lacks a verifiable date. Because the Western Great Lakes are the area where Native American maple sugaring was most actively being pursued during the time when photographers began to capture Native Americans at work, the best and earliest examples of sugarbush photos come from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
After examining hundreds of photos, the earliest reliably dated photograph of a Native American maple sugaring scene I have come across is an image from Crawford County, Michigan that was published in the First Report of the Directors of the State Forestry Commission of Michigan for the Years 1887 and 1888, published in 1888.
The caption in the report reads “Indians making sugar in Crawford County. Three young bear are playing in the foreground.” and lacks any attribution to a photographer or studio. The photo appears as a plate between pages 16 and 17 and is not directly connected to any article or text in the Forestry Commission report. We do not known when the Forestry Commission report photo was taken, only that it was published in 1888.
In this image we see three girls, one middle-aged woman standing in front of a rough plank lodge, and one older woman sitting nearby. A pile of folded birch bark sap collection pails is visible to the left of the image along with a large iron boiling kettle suspended on a pole over a fire. In the front center of the image a tapped maple tree is evidence, with a diagonal hatchet cut above a wooden slat tap protruding from the bark and a folded birch bark sap container slightly askew below it. Two of the females stand next to wooden barrels possibly used for the storage of maple sap. A stack of cut poles, possibly for firewood, is in the foreground of the right side of the image. Patches of snow in the woods in the background attest to the spring- time nature of the photo.
Further investigations have discovered that another photograph of this same camp and sugarbush hangs on the wall in a hallway of the International Maple Museum and Centre in Croghan, New York. Fortunately this image has a great deal more information to share about the subject matter and the source of the photo.
Donated to the Maple Museum by Michigan State Professor of Forestry Putnam Robbins in 1983, the caption on the label of this image reads:
Like the image described from the 1888 Forestry report, this photo shows the same wood lodge and forest, but from a slightly different angle. This image includes two girls, the daughters Nancy and Mary, one middle age women, Shoppenagon’s wife Irene stirring an iron kettle, and an older women, his mother. Unlike the first image, David Shoppenagon appears seated in the left of the image working on a pole with with a draw knife.
It is an interesting challenge to see what different items, like the kettle, and snow shoes, and wood barrels, that one can recognize in both photos.
David Shoppenagon was a well known Native American figure in the lower peninsula of Michigan in the latter part of the 19th century. Of Ojibwe descent, Shoppenagon was born in the Saginaw Valley in 1809 or 1818 and lived a very long life passing away in 1911. Often referred to as Chief Shoppenagon by the white community, Shoppenagon supposedly never referred to himself as such nor was he known to be a representative of any particular Ojibwe community in Michigan.
A historical marker for Shoppogen in Grayling, Michigan, in Crawford County, not far from Frederic Township notes that he settled in the Grayling Michigan area in the 1870s where he trapped, hunted, and served as a well-respected and knowledgeable sportsmen’s guide on the Ausable River and across the lower Peninsula of Michigan.
In later years Shoppenagon appears to have embraced and monetized his local persona even going so far as lending his name and image in full Indian regalia to a local timber company and mill, receiving compensation for his work in promoting their wood products.
The caption attributes the photograph to a glass plate negative originally taken in the late 1860s by Dr. W. Beal, Head of the Botany Department, Michigan Agricultural College. Dr. William J. Beal was one of the earliest botanists at Michigan State University and was the founder of what is now named the Beal Botanical Gardens at MSU, the oldest of its kind in the United States.
I believe the date on the caption stating the image was taken in the late 1860s is incorrect since Beal was away from Michigan at Harvard University for graduate school in the 1860s and didn’t begin working as a professor at Michigan State until 1871. Moreover, Shoppenagon and his family didn’t move from the Saginaw Bay area to Crawford County until 1876.
It is possible, maybe even probable, that the photos of the Shoppenagon sugar camp were taken in the late 1870s or early 1880s, but for now, the oldest we can confidently say those images are is 1888.
Another early photograph of a Native American maple sugar camp was taken by John Munro Longyear, a well-known land surveyor that worked in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the later half of the 19th century. On one visit to the Lac Vieux Desert Ojibwe community he snapped a photograph of the contents of a maple sugaring cache and later preserved the photograph in an album that was dated October 26, 1888.
The Longyear image is an excellent snapshot of the items that were in use and stored from season to season at a Great Lakes Ojibwe sugarbush. One can recognize many iron kettles and pots, snow shoes, birch bark sap pails, reed mats, sheets of rolled-up and reinforced birch bark, and heavier duty sewn birch bark containers.
There are other images in collections and museums that may very well predate the images described here, but a careful investigation and documentation of their source and dating is needed before we should accept any estimate or approximation of the their antiquity. If anyone has a well dated photo of a native American maple sugaring scene as old or older than the images discussed here, please let me know. I would be very happy to share that information on this site.
References
Robert M. Hendershot, “The Legacy of an Ojibwe ‘Lumber Chief’ ” Michigan Historical Review vol. 29 no. 2 (fall 2003) 40-68.