A great new, handsomely illustrated book has been published documenting maple syrup and sugar making as was carried out in Québec in years past. Titled, La route des sucriers: Quand on faissit les sucres en noir et blanc au Quebec, this paperback book is entirely in French and is the work of noted maple historian and sugarmaker Jean-Roch Morin, who hails from Saint-Zacharie, Québec. At 240 pages in length, La route des sucriers contains around two hundred rarely or never before published black and white photographs of maple sugaring related scenes. The images date from the late 1800s through the 1990s, with the majority dating to the first half of the 20th century.
I cannot emphasize enough my feeling that readers should not be intimidated by the book being in French. With the convenience of translation apps on our mobile devices and computers, it is quite simple to open the door to an entire world of maple history publications from Québec written in French, with this book as a wonderful place to start.
Sample pages from “La route des sucriers.”
The format of the book is one image per page with accompanying descriptive and contextual text. The book is divided into six different chapters by covering the sugarhouse and the syrup maker, preparing for the season, gathering maple sap, making sugar and syrup, maple parties, and the end of the sugaring season. A nice feature of the book is a glossary of words related to syrup and sugar making gathered and defined by the author. Of course, the glossary is in French, but it always helpful to see and document the unique language of maple production.
Sample pages from “La route des sucriers.”
This is the second maple history related book written by Jean-Roch Morin, with his first book being published in 2016 jointly in French and English with the title, Spouts, Patents and Sugar-Making Objects from Yesteryear. This book is published byLes Editions Conifére, a new and energetic publishing company out of Québec City that is interested in expanding their portfolio to include additional titles that share Québec and maple industry history.
Sample pages from “La route des sucriers.”
In researching this book, Jean-Roch Morin spent many years visiting local historical societies, museums, libraries, and private collections across the Beauce region of Québec discovering previously unpublished and unknown photographs of maple sugaring activities in years past. The focus of the locations of the scenes in the images is primarily the Beauce region, but most of the scenes depicted could have been anywhere in the maple syrup producing region of Canada and the United States. Many of the scenes depicted are candid, unposed action scenes, taken in the moment in the sugarbush and at the sugar house. These are especially important in their capturing a moment in time, both from the technological and historical perspective but also in preserving the place and experiences of individuals and community of sugaring.
Sample pages from “La route des sucriers.”
I have three personal favorites from the book: the photos that show the end of the year sap pail washing and drying, the photos showing the important use of horses and even dogs for pulling sap gathering sleds and tanks, and the photos of the sugar on snow gatherings at the sugarhouses.
Sample pages from “La route des sucriers.”
Maple sugar and syrup making was hard forest and farm work to be sure, but it was also a kind of work that was unique in how it was also a part of a larger sense of local identity and cultural connectedness of the community. That truth is well represented in the pictures and text of this book. One can almost hear the laughter in the scenes of revelry and cheer and sugar on snow parties along with the flirtatious tradition of smearing soot from the bottom of the evaporator pan on the clean faces of partiers, especially the ladies. Other photos portray the variety of construction elements in sugarhouse construction, emphasizing the vernacular nature of these structures. The history and evolution of the technology and tools of sugaring are both directly and implicitly displayed and discussed in the photos and text.
The book starts off with a pair of prefaces, one written by maple educators Stéphane Guay and Edith Bonneau, publishers of the website Érable & Chalumeaux; and a second preface by yours truly, Matthew Thomas.
Jean-Roch Morin, the author and connoisseur of maple flavored ice cream.
In all fairness and the spirit of full disclosure, Jean-Roch Morin is not only a professional colleague, but also a personal friend of mine. Therefore, I may be a bit biased, but I deeply enjoyed this book and am impressed with the effort that went into its creation. Jean-Roch Morin provides a short introductory chapter to set the stage for what he has assembled and described. In addition, the book also features a bibliography and lists of references that were important in researching and writing the book and directs readers where to go for more information.
Jean-Roch Morin with copy of “La route de sucieres” and his recently announced Lés Prix du Patrimoine award.
Jean-Roch Morin was recently awarded Lés Prix du Patrimoine by the MRC Etchemins for his efforts at cultural and historical interpretation and dissemination with the publication of this book. The MRC is one of fifteen regional administrative units of government in Québec and each MRC conducts a competition every two years to recognize the efforts and important works of its residents to protect and promote the heritage of the province. As an indication of his tireless and valuable work in preserving history, this was the fourth time in the last ten years that Mr. Morin has been awarded Lés Prix du Patrimoine!
I encourage maple history fans to add this book to their libraries and make the effort to translate the French text. The book is an important record of maple sugaring in the past. At the very least, it is easy to appreciate, study, and learn from the amazing array of photographs assembled in this book.
The book can be ordered online at the Conifére website for shipment to both the Canada and the United States. Go to this link at the Coniféresite to learn more. The cost of the book is listed as CAN$34.95 which equals about US$25.50, plus shipping costs.
Dr. Susan Deborah Wade – Courtesy Susan Deborah Wade.
Dr. Susan Deborah Wade is a historian who recently completed a doctoral dissertation at the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee titled, “Ojibwe Women and Maple Sugar Production in Anishinaabewakiing and the Red River Region, 1670-1873”. Maple Syrup History website creator Matthew Thomas (MT) had the recent pleasure of conducting the following email interview with Dr. Wade (SDW) to learn more about her interesting and important work and share it with interested readers.
—————————–
MT: Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions and share your research with the readers of my website. It is always a pleasure to discover new and interesting scholarship on topics related to maple history. With my own background in ethnohistory and Indigenous studies, I am especially excited to read and share your work with the maple history community. Can you give us a quick summary of what your dissertation is about and what you have learned?
SDW: My dissertation focuses on Indigenous women and an important food product – maple sugar. This foodstuff was used as medicine, food, trade good, and as a gift. The setting for this work is Anishinaabewakiing, a large region that is eventually divided by an international border by the British and Americans in 1783 (editor’s note: the Red River region encompasses portions of today’s Manitoba, Ontario, North Dakota, and Minnesota). Fur trade companies and settlers on both sides of this border used maple sugar as a provision for workers, and as a sweetener in place of hard to get and expensive cane sugar. Maple sugar was traded by Indigenous women for trade goods and in turn collected and auctioned by fur trade companies to increase their profits. As settlers moved into the Great Lakes region, land use changed. For example, treaties reduced the amount of land the Anishinaabeg had to continue producing maple sugar and lumber companies clear cut forests.
Map showing territory of Anishinaabe peoples in United States and Canada. Source – https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/anishinaabe#
MT: The title of your doctoral dissertation contains many interesting clues to what one can expect to encounter in its reading. Can you tell us more about the choices and importance of the different components in the title of your dissertation? Such as your reason for choosing these particular start and end dates, why the Red River region, or the meaning of the word Anishinaabewakiing?
Map showing range of acer negundo, aka Manitoba Maple or Boxelder. Note overlap of range of acer negundo with earlier map of Anishinaabe territory. Their intersection is an area of focus in Dr. Wade’s research. Source – http://dendro.cnre.vt.edu/dendrology/syllabus/factsheet.cfm?ID=3
SDW: I expanded on my master’s thesis which focused on maple sugar production by Indigenous women set in what is now Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan. In my dissertation I wanted to expand the time frame and region but also more important to write about an Indigenous perspective, and the land the Anishinaabeg inhabit. The Anishinaabeg are the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi. Part of learning about an Anishinaabeg perspective is both learning and using Anishinaabemowin (Anishinaabe language). I set the narrative in Anishinaabewakiing and discuss northern and southern Anishinaabewakiing when the international border is drawn on the map in 1783. The Ojibwe migrate west into the Red River region in the mid 18th century and tapped Manitoba Maple.
MT: In 2011 you completed a master’s thesis in history at UW Milwaukee focusing on a similar topic of Indigenous Women and Maple Sugaring the Upper Midwest, albeit covering a slightly smaller time span of 1760 to 1848 and a different geographic space of the Upper Midwest. How did you get interested in this topic and how did your master’s thesis research set the stage for your doctoral research?
SDW: When I began thinking about getting a master’s degree it was to become a better researcher in my job as an historic cook and collections manager at living history sites where I worked. I grew up in Canada and had a passion for fur trade history and maple syrup. The University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee had a course on food history and a fur trade scholar, Dr. Cary Miller in the History Department. I began working with Dr. Miller on fur trade history and Great Lakes Indigenous history. In one of the courses, I read Susan Sleeper-Smith’s Indian Women and French Men. There was a tantalizing reference to maple sugar being shipped east to Detroit. I wanted to know more about who produced it, who collected it and where else it was shipped. Eventually, with the help of Dr. Miller I shaped a master’s thesis that was narrow enough in scope for a master’s theses but with the ability to expand in depth and breadth to a dissertation.
MT: Where would you place your research and interests as far as established schools of research? Do you see your work as ethnohistory, Indigenous studies, gender studies, food history, cultural geography, or a less structured but more inclusive interdisciplinary studies?
SDW: I see it as an interdisciplinary study that includes food history, Indigenous studies, traditional archival analysis, and analysis of language.
MT: Maple sugar in its various roles as a food item, an exchange good, or as a tool of economic power is central to your research. How has your research help us understand the historic role and place of Indigenous peoples in the development and evolution of the modern maple industry?
SDW: Indigenous women in the sugar maple growing region were instrumental in introducing maple sugar to colonists. Maple sugar was also modified in its appearance by Indigenous women to satisfy the need by upper class settlers for white sugar – white cane sugar was an indicator of wealth. Hand in hand with trade was the introduction of alterative equipment like copper kettles for producing maple products, and further changes to production. Great Lakes fur trade companies exported maple sugar east and, in some cases, Indigenous women’s maple sugar made it to Britain’s shores.
MT: Has developing a deeper understanding of the cultural and economic importance of maple products sparked interest in looking at questions of maple use in other historic contexts?
SDW: It has sparked an interest in the use of other maple products such as vinegar. It has also sparked an interest in the use of the sap of other trees in the Great Lakes region such as birch and the sap of trees on other continents.
MT: Your research topic geographically covers portions of what are today the United States and Canada, and likely your source materials were found in both countries, not to mention probably being written in English and French. What kinds of historical source material were you able to examine for your research and were there challenges to working with source material from two separate countries and languages?
SDW: I did not deal with too many French sources. The companies I concentrated on were British, Scottish, or American run companies. The Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) was run out of London, England. I went to the HBC archives in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Example of archival materials used in Dr. Wade’s research. Source – Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Archives of Manitoba, Journal of Occurrences at Henly District 1819/20, B.117/a/4.
That is a wonderful archive and the Hudson’s Bay Company has detailed documentation of its posts. The management in London expected daily accounts of what was happening at the posts as well as detailed records of trade. The North West Company (NWC) was formed by small fur trade companies owned by Scottish merchants living in Montreal. Although they kept the French-Canadian voyageurs on their payroll the men who ran the posts were English speaking. The HBC eventually took over the NWC in 1821 and the men who ran the posts did not keep as detailed records as the HBC. The American Fur Company (AFC), established in 1808 in New York, had ties with some of the merchants in Montreal, but after the War of 1812 had virtual monopoly in the southern Anishinaabewakiing region. For the AFC I primarily used “Grace Lee Nute’s “Calendar of the American Fur Company Papers.” Some records for a small Montreal company, the XY company, that eventually joined with the NWC can be found in the Collections of the Wisconsin State Historical Society.
MT: Your study covers a time span of over two hundred years, during which a lot of things may have changed within the Fur Trade and Indigenous communities. What changes did you find over this span related to the manufacture, trade, or sale of maple sugar?
SDW: There were changes in all these areas. Changes in production happened as Indigenous people encountered European trade goods. The equipment changed as trade items were introduced and adapted and adopted by Indigenous groups for use. There were also changes to both the appearance and amount of sugar produced. Upper class white settlers and upper-class Hudson’s Bay company officers wanted maple sugar to look like white cane sugar and Indigenous women shifted the way they processed and purified some of the sugar for this market. In the spring of 1836, the man who oversaw a Hudson’s Bay Company post in the Lake Superior region sent two men to sugar camps to secure or “reserve the right” to trade for that year’s supply. The HBC did not want to miss out on this valuable commodity by having the rival AFC trade for it first.
MT: Your scholarly interests are not purely in the realm of ethnohistory, gender and Indigenous studies. You recently were part of a team that translated the classic French children’s book, “The Little Prince” into Anishinaabemowin, the Indigenous language of the Anishinaabe or Ojibwe peoples. How did you get involved in this project and how has working with Anishinaabemowin influenced your historical research?
SDW: My thesis advisor and advisor at the beginning of my dissertation, Cary Miller, stressed the importance of learning Anishinaabemowin in order to understand an Ojibwe worldview and to make connections with community members. I was taught the language by Margaret Noodin. I also worked with Dr Noodin on a grant, Ganawendamaw. As part of this grant, I helped with curriculum development for Anishinaabemowin class. One book used by teachers of many different languages is Le Petit Prince, it is translated in to so many languages. She was interested in completing a translation for use by teachers and families interested in learning Anishinaabemowin. I worked with her, Michael Zimmerman, and Angela Mesic to translate the text. It was during Covid lock down and was a wonderful experience to work with these scholars and create a text that could be used to teach and continue to revitalize the Anishinaabe language.
MT: The reservation era, a period immediately following the period of your study, saw great changes and upheaval for Indigenous communities. It would please me greatly to learn that you have plans for carrying this research further to look at the reservation era when forced relocation to reservations limited the seasonal mobility to places like sugaring camps, fur trade economies were replaced by cash-based settler economies, and substantial changes in gendered divisions of labor?
SDW: My master’s thesis did not go into this topic, but my dissertation does discuss the effects of settler colonialism on the Ojibwe and maple sugar production. One of the chapters talks about the ways Great Lakes and Red River nations keep a hold of their culture through treaty negotiations. In the nineteenth century in the United States, Ojibwe ogimaag (leaders) negotiated for the rights to gather resources on ceded land also known as usufructuary rights in the United States. In the case of Ojibwe in Canada, the ogimaag negotiated with the Canadian government in what is called the Numbered Treaties. In these regions the First Nations, including Ojibwe, did not cede land but instead negotiated for sharing the land and working with Euro-Canadians in taking care of natural resources. This, however, was not the intention of the Canadian government or her representatives whose aim was a surrender of lands. In the case of maple sugar, it was not just resources that were taken away, but also women-centered places where political activities, ceremonies, and teaching took place. It was a loss of women’s roles in their environment.
By the late nineteenth century, cane and beet sugar became the dominant form of table and cooking sugar. Maple sugar production waned but maple syrup gained in popularity, as you explain in your dissertation “Where the Forest Meets the Farm.” In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, in matters of maple syrup manufacturing it was not just the decimation of maple groves and appropriation of land but the attack on gendered food procurement. The Allotment Act (1887) promoted the life of the yeoman farmer whereby a man worked his farmland. Reservation land was divided into single farms given to men of households or single men. Although Indigenous women continued to harvest wild rice, collect berries and other resources, and manufacture maple sugar. It was not until after the Great Depression in the 1930s, that Indigenous men began to take on the production of maple sugar and syrup. Today Anishinaabeg maple production is more multi-gendered.
MT: You defended your dissertation in 2021. What is next? Do you plan to publish the doctoral study as a book length monograph, or will you be focusing on publishing the results in the form of a peer-reviewed article?
SDW: I have been working on a manuscript that combines my master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation. It has been a challenge learning to rewrite a dissertation into a book. I hope to send it to a publisher by the end of this summer. I am also working with a fellow scholar to create an exhibit on maple trees and the maple sugar bush.
You can read and download a copy of Dr. Wade’s doctoral dissertation at THIS LINK.
Image of the book “Sugar-Bush Antiques” with original artwork on the dust jacket by East Aurora, NY artist Rix Jennings.
For collectors of maple sugaring antiques, artifacts, and material culture, there is one book that stands out as a kind of beginners’ guide and check list to the many different items one might come across and chose to collect. That guide is the book Sugar-Bush Antiques by Virginia Vidler. The book was published in 1979 by A.S. Barnes and Co. a New York based textbook and encyclopedia publisher at the time.
Sugar-Bush Antiques was Vidler’s second guide book on antiques, following on the 1976 release of American Indian Antiques: Arts and Artifacts of the Northeast, also published by A.S. Barnes. She also later published a book in 1985 on collectibles and souvenirs related to Niagara Falls.
Virginia Vidler in her element searching for sugar-bush antiques at a New York sugarbush.
Although Virginia Vidler’s name is on her books as a sole author, in reality, all of her books were a joint project of Virginia and her husband Edward Vidler. As an amateur photographer, Ed Vidler’s main contribution was in providing the many black and white and color images of artifacts, antiques, sugarhouses, and sugaring accoutrement in this well-illustrated book. Vidler asked local East Aurora and Buffalo artist and illustrator Rixford “Rix” Upham Jennings to do the color painting to provide a unique and original cover design.
Image from the frontispiece of “Sugar-Bush Antiques.”
Virginia Vidler was interested in local New York and new England history and served as the historian for the Town of Aurora. Her interest in maple sugaring and sugar-bush antiques primarily came from her fascination and interest in researching and documenting history. Virginia and Ed Vidler’s son Don Vidler shared that they were not a family of maple sugar makers, although there was a great deal of sugaring in the countryside around them. According to son Don, it was common for the Vidlers to head out on the weekends for sugarhouse and antique hunting expeditions in western New York.
Image showing the well illustrated pages of “Sugar-Bush Antiques.”
More than simply a collection of photographs of old maple sugaring items, this book traces the history of the maple industry from Native Americans to early pioneers, and into the modern era. With a focus on the material remains of maple sugar and syrup making, there is a special emphasis on the changing technology of production and packaging as well as the change of materials from wood to metal as well as ceramic and glass. From the smallest and humblest wood or tin maple sugar mold to the large kettles, evaporators, or gathering tanks and onto the finest cut glass syrup pitchers, there is little that has been overlooked. Photographs, paintings and prints, and other printed ephemera like postcards and industry guidebooks and reports are also examined.
Additional example of pages from “Sugar-Bush Antiques” showing the many maple sugaring artifacts illustrated and described in the book.
According to Don Vidler, Virginia and Ed Vidler’s son, the Vidlers amassed a reasonably big collection of maple related antiques, some of which appeared in the photos in the book. Mrs. Vidler recognized that what is considered common place today, will someday be an antique and of interest to the collector. She was quoted in a 1985 newspaper article where she gave a bit of advice on her collecting strategy, noting “when you go to an auction at a farm in the sugar bush country, be sure to check out the items in the barns and behind the old sheds. That is where you will find the authentic sugar bush antiques that no one else seems to recognize.”
When the Vidlers were not running around the countryside visiting sugarbushes and sugarhouses, collecting antiques, or taking photographs, they spent most of their time running Vidler’s 5 and 10 in East Aurora, New York, a short distance from Buffalo. Vidler’s 5 and 10 was started by Ed Vidler’s father Robert Vidler in 1930 before brothers Ed and Bob Vidler took it over in the 1940s. Today, Vidler’s is known as the world’s largest 5 and 10 store. Virginia passed away in 1986 and Ed Vidler in 2019.
Sugar-Bush Antiques presents a good general overview of the wide range of tangible items that someone might consider collectible or of interest that represent or is related in some way to the business and activities of making, packaging, and selling maple sugar and maple syrup. Most sugar-bush antique collectors end up specializing in a few select areas or types of items like spouts, packaging tins, or sugar molds and develop a detailed knowledge of those items far beyond what one will find in this book; however, it is still enjoyable to sit down with a book like this and have a virtual museum tour at your fingertips. Fortunately, it is still possible to find used copies of the book through various online book sales websites.
In a short, thought-provoking article published in the fall of 2020, Dr. Brigit Ramsingh examined a moment in Canadian history when maple syrup and nationalism intersected and the ideas and promotion of food purity (versus adulteration) were equated with promoting the national spirit of Canada.
Dr. Ramsingh’s article reminds us, that while we may see maple syrup as benign and free from political association today, foods and other iconic images have often been used as symbols of nativist identity and cultural association. We are reminded that in the past, and maybe even today, there may be meaning and power in the images and associations of maple syrup that are not always evident at first glance.
With any specialized activity a certain lingo, slang, or jargon develops over time and space. Terminology may include unique terms and phrases that form a vocabulary clearly understood by those that participate in the activity but which may be confusing or misunderstood by outsiders. The term maple sugaring is a good example of a term that is clearly understood by vast majority of people who make maple syrup to inclusively represent the entirety of the business of converting maple sap to some kind of maple syrup, sugar, candy, or confectionary product; yet, the term maple sugaring is confusing to outsiders and those not in the know.
Maple sugaring is an activity with a vocabulary all its own with terms and meanings that are broadly and universally understood by all maple producers across international borders. There are also regionally unique terms that are only used in different parts of the United States or Canada. In some cases, a term used in one region or state may be entirely foreign to another area. Other terms are now becoming antiquated with changing technology and the development of a more universal and less vernacular English language. Fortunately, a few individuals have taken time to document the terminology of maple sugaring which I have shared here.
First up is an article titled Maple Sugar Language in Vermont by Dr. Margaret M. Bryant, a professor of English at Brooklyn College, who spent time documenting maple sugaring vocabulary one summer in 1947 in Vermont. Dr. Bryant’s obituary described her as “an expert on grammar, linguistics, proverbs and folklore” suggesting she had a well-tuned ear and was sensitive to the importance of recording the cultural heritage of New England maple producers. She was a founding member and president of the American Name Society, a group dedicated to the study of, origin, history, and use of proper names. Dr. Bryant’s study, published by the American Dialect Society, is notable for the time period in which it was gathered and published, namely in the era before the replacement of stock animals by trucks and tractors and before the replacement of metal sap pails by flexible plastic tubing. To read the article, click on the image of the article above or select this link.
I encourage readers to scan through the Bryant article and see how many terms she documented are familiar to them and still used today and reflect on what new or different terms are currently in use. Language evolves and changes; old terms die off and new terms are born. What would we include in an updated version of this vocabulary?
A slightly more humorous take on regional differences in the language of maple producers was A sugaring vocabulary primer, written by John Page, a former University of Vermont Extension Agent March 8, 1978. Published in the Bennington Banner newspaper, Page used the differences in maple jargon in Michigan versus the “correct” terminology of Vermont to shed light on the sometimes quirky or distinctive words adopted by maple producers over time.
On the French language front, there is an even larger collection of maple sugaring terms and phrases documented between 1984 and 1986 by the Quebec Office of the French Language. Organized like an alphabetical dictionary, the document is entirely in French, but with the aid of Google Translate, English speakers can stumble through and discover the many words and phrases unique to French-speaking maple producers and maybe even learn a few terms that will raise an eyebrow in surprise from our maple producing friends across the border. Compiled by Jude Des Chênes and published in 1988, the Vocabulaire de l’acériculturecomprises 645 numbered terms and phrases. The “Vocabulaire” does includes an index in English to the numbered entries, but all the entries are in French, so back to Google Translate for a more careful reading. Surprisingly, this “vocabulaire” is virtually unavailable in libraries in the United States, so hopefully this complete PDF of the dictionary is useful to interested readers.
Here are a few additional links to websites with more contemporary lists of maple syrup lingo:
Over the years as my research into Native American maple sugaring progressed I never ceased to be impressed by one particular scholarly publication. A variety of careful treatments of various topics that touch on the role and place of sugaring in the lives, economy, and culture of Native North America have been written and published and still more are coming out every year. Likewise, important articles and papers presenting research on the maple sugar origins debate and archaeological investigations into Native American maple sugaring have and will continue to be featured in this blog. But in the last thirty years, for me one piece stands out as a unique, well-researched, well-referenced, and thought-provoking article written from a broader ethnohistorical perspective.
The article, available at the links here, is Robert “Bob” H. Keller’s America’s Native Sweet: Chippewa Treaties and the Right to Harvest Maple Sugar.It was published in 1989 in the journal American Indian Quarterly (vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 117-135) and makes a well-argued case for the protection and exercising of the right of Anishinabe people (also known as Chippewa or Ojibwe) to harvest maple sap and make maple sugar and syrup on off-reservation lands in the ceded territories of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.
The context of the timing of the article was that in the 1980s Native Americans from Anishinabe Bands (sometimes called tribes) across the Lake Superior region were fighting the states in court to defend their rights to hunt, gather, and fish on lands outside the boundaries of their reservations, rights that were reserved in exchange for ceding ownership of these lands to the federal government via a number of treaties agreed to in the 1800s. To make a long story short, the Anishinabe were successful in court and their reserved rights were recognized. The regulation of fishing and the sharing of the annual take of fish by sportsman, commercial fishing, and treaty-protected fishing was the overwhelming focus of debate both before and after the conclusion of the cases in court. While the issue of off-reservation maple sugaring as a treaty-right was barely acknowledged.
Nevertheless, Bob Keller dove into the topic and in doing so presented a wonderful overview of the history and cultural significance of maple sugaring for western Great Lakes tribes in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. For anyone interested in a short but accurate introduction to intersection of some of the social and political issues and questions related to the evolution of Native American maple sugaring into the 21st century, that is grounded in historical research, Keller’s article is the place to start.
For those interested in who Bob Keller was, Bob Keller was a professor of history in the Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington. He wrote about a wide range of environmental and historical topics, including Native American history. He retired in the 1990s before passing away in 2017.
Another notable and related work to Keller’s look at maple sugaring as a treaty-right and digs a little deeper into documenting the historic use and importance of maple sugaring to one Anishinabe community in Minnesota is the massive 572 page tome Fish in in the Lakes, Wild Rice, and Game in Abundance: Testimony on Behalf of Mille Lacs Ojibwe Hunting and Fishing Rights by James M. McClurken with contributions by Charles E. Cleland, Thomas Lund, John D. Nichols, Helen Tanner and Bruce White.
Published in 2000 following the Mille Lacs Band’s success in arguing their treaty-reserved rights to off-reservation hunting and fishing were not extinguished in the past by various federal actions, the book presents the detailed research and arguments of a team of ethnohistorians that demonstrated, among many things how, where, and when hunting, fishing and gather activities continued to be a part of the daily lives of the Milles Lacs Anishinabe community, including maple sugaring.
The result of an extensive and very comprehensive examination of publications in the collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin covering travel reports, natural history, and first hand narrative accounts in journals, diaries, and correspondence.
To the uninitiated, the collections of the library and archives of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin are an amazing and extensive treasure trove of information. I would even go so far as to call it the single greatest public library dedicated to history in the United States.
Volume I of the bibliographies contains 72 entries in chronological order spanning a period from 1634 to 1895. Volume II contains 147 entries spanning a period beginning in 1534 and ending in 1933. Each volume of the bibliographies contains an index at the end. The individual entries include a full bibliographic reference and a verbatim quote or excerpt of the notable and relevant text that addresses something related to the presence of maple trees or the use of maple products in the past. The vast majority of entries are focused on accounts of the early use of maple sap or manufacture of maple sugar and maple syrup by Native Americans, fur traders, and early settlers in Canada and New England. In addition, some entries have very brief notes or annotations to help explain some of the context or broader content of the specific publication in reference.
There is nothing especially unique about any of the entries in and of themselves since one will see most of these references repeated in other contexts and publications and one can discover these references through an exhaustive search of one’s own. However, what is handy and useful is having them published and indexed in a precise chronological form for easy use and reference.
Henry A. Schuette in 1940 when President of the American Oil Chemist’s Society.
The primary author of these bibliographies was Henry A. Schuette, a food chemist and professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In addition to his laboratory work, Schuette had a special interest in the history of foods and spent a great deal of his spare time in the historical society library on the campus of the University of Wisconsin. Schuette also encouraged his students to investigate and better understand the history of food as a context for their food chemistry research.
One such doctoral chemistry student who took Professor Schuette’s encouragement to heart was Aaron J. Ihde who later went onto to himself become a notable chemist and food historian and professor at the University of Wisconsin. Ihde collaborated with Schuette on the second volume of the bibliography. The secondary author to the first volume of the bibliography was Sybil C. Schuette, who was a librarian in Wisconsin and presumably a relative of Henry A. Schuette.
For those hoping to learn more about the early accounts and descriptions of maple sugaring by our Euro-American and Native American ancestors, these bibliographies are a great introduction to the literature. And as noted above, for those already interested in the early records and accounts of the use and production of maple sugar and maple syrup, these bibliographies are a useful collection to have in one’s reference library.
This article originally appeared in a 2003 edition of the Wisconsin Maple News.
In the late summer of 1951 while working as a forester for the Northern Highland State Forest in Vilas County, a young Ted Peterson discovered a maple sugaring camp in an old growth forest of sugar maple and yellow birch on what he thought was state forest land. Noting a large flat pan resting on a sturdy stone and earth arch and a very old upside-down copper kettle sitting inside half of a birch bark covered wigwam, Peterson made a note to himself to come back the following spring to find out just whose sugarbush this was.
Returning the following April with his camera in hand, Peterson came upon a nicely cleared path through the snow leading to the evaporator and wigwam he witnessed the summer before. Only this time the sugar camp was in full operation with steam rising from the flat pan, metal pails hanging from every maple, and a middle aged Potawatomi Indian couple tending the fire and gathering the sap. Realizing he was an uninvited guest, Ted Peterson quickly introduced himself to the proprietors, Rose and Pete Johnson.
Pete Johnson tending the fire and watching the boil on his flat pan and stone arch (photo courtesy of Ted Peterson and the Lac du Flambeau Tribal Historic Preservation Office).
Fascinated by what he saw in front of him, Peterson wanted to know more and began to ask one question after another to the Indian man tending the fire under the flat pan. But Pete Johnson was very short with his answers, aw he was not sure who this man really was and why he was there. Johnson also knew that there was a longstanding disagreement between the Escanabas, his wife’s family and landowners, and the state of Wisconsin over the ownership of the woods they were tapping and land on which they lived. Not daunted by the Mr. Johnson’s cool reception, Peterson pressed on, taking pictures and asking questions about the boiling process, tapping the trees, and the layout of their sugarbush. Not seeing any thermometers or hydrometers, Peterson asked Pete Johnson how he knew when the syrup was done, to which Johnson replied that it was finished when it tastes right and when it feels right.
A short distance away from the stone arch and flat pan was the half wigwam where Peterson found Rose Johnson tending a small fire under the old copper kettle. The Johnsons often set as many as 500 taps each spring, and Peterson soon realized that in addition to making syrup, the Johnson’s were making sugar. If fact, the majority of the sap they gathered ultimately went into making maple sugar. It was at the hands and direction of Mrs. Johnson that as much as 160 pounds of sugar was made every spring in the large copper trade kettle, handed down from earlier generations. In observing Mrs. Johnson boil the syrup for sugar, Peterson noted that she would rub the inner rim of the kettle with deer tallow, and each time the bubbling mass of thick syrup foamed up it would touch the grease near the rim and settle back down. Traditional defoamer! When the syrup has thickened to the right consistency and bubbles, the kettle was taken off the fire and the maple molasses was spooned into metal sugar molds to cool into sugar cakes. Not having electricity or an icebox in their cabin, the Johnsons kept most of the more easily stored sugar for home consumption. Much of the 150 gallons of syrup that they made each spring was sold in stores in Eagle River, Star Lake, Rhinelander, and Lac du Flambeau, providing much needed cash to an otherwise subsistence lifestyle.
View of the half wigwam structure for sugar making at the Johnson’s Partridge Lake Sugarbush (photo courtesy of Ted Peterson and the Lac du Flambeau Tribal Historic Preservation Office).
Rose Johnson’s parents, John and Mary Escanaba, settled on the north shore of Partridge Lake in 1904, after a smallpox epidemic broke up their Potawatomi village at nearby Indian Lake. At that time, John Escanaba made a deal with a man from the sawmill in Star Lake to obtain title this 40 acres parcel from the Goodyear logging company in exchange for nine ponies. Unfortunately, John Escanaba passed away the following year and the piece of paper they received in exchange was not actually the deed, being a worthless piece of paper. In spite of that, the Escanabas never left, resisting efforts to move them to the Potawatomi Reservation instead choosing to maintain a traditional lifestyle in which they fed and clothed themselves from the land and their labors. Pete Johnson came to the Partridge Lake settlement in 1914 when he married Rose Escanaba, where along with Rose’s mother Mary, they raised their family. Although they maintained their traditional religious beliefs and a traditional gathering, farming, and hunting lifestyle, the Escanabas and Johnsons did not necessarily shun technological improvements. Sometime before the 1920s, they stopped boiling sap in kettles and began to boil sap in a large iron flat pan. They also abandoned the use of wood taps and birch bark containers, shifting to metal taps and sap cans. Every few years they would move their camp to another location in these woods to allow some of the trees in their sugarbush a rest and they only removed the non-maples and the sick and damaged for firewood.
Rose Johnson spooning warm soft maple sugaring onto metal sugar molds (photo courtesy of Ted Peterson and the Lac du Flambeau Tribal Historic Preservation Office).
Pete Johnson died in the 1960s and Rose in the 1970s, but not before the family obtained title to their home and traditional sugarbush. The family continues to own and occupy the homestead and sugarbush and has made syrup in the woods as recently as the early 1990s.
Ted Peterson later went on to become an extension forester with the late Fred Trenk at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he spent many years as a conduit for new information and technology on syrup making to Wisconsin maple producers. Before his retirement in 1990, Peterson provided important operational support to the Wisconsin Maple Syrup Producers Association working hard with producers, striving to improve production and quality. But it was his 1952 encounter with a Potawatomi family in the woods of Vilas County where he received his one of his first lessons on maple syrup production.
This article originally appeared in a 2003 edition of the Wisconsin Maple News
What’s in a name? The naming of a place is an important ways to differentiate between areas and tell one another in as few words as possible a great deal of information such as what a place looks like, where it is located, and who lives there. There is also nostalgia to place names, telling of people’s use of the landscape in the past. Maple sugaring is one such activity that has not escaped the attention of place-namers and mapmakers. Within the states where maple syrup and sugar are or were made, the naming of places after maple sugaring appear most common in Wisconsin and Minnesota.
In Wisconsin, place names containing the words maple or sugar are found across the landscape. With our tradition of naming high points and low spots, we have landforms such as Maple Hill in Sauk County and Maple Bluff in Dane County; and Maple Dale in Vernon and Sugar Grove Valley in Sauk County. The name Sugarloaf is found on high places in La Crosse, Green Lake, and Jackson Counties, and Maple Ridge is a popular name in the southwestern counties of Crawford, Pepin, Richland and Vernon. Sugar Camp Hill in Douglas County is named for a prominent stand of maples tapped in the past, while Sugarbush Hill near Crandon continues to be tapped by members of the Forest County Potawatomi Indian Band.
Townships and villages with names like Maple Grove, Sugar Island, Maplewood, Maple Heights, and Maple Plain are scattered across the state. Too numerous to name are the roads and lanes containing the title maple or sugar. Every community has a few, and a few more are added every year. Less known, but locally very significant are off the beaten path places, such as the Sugarbush Bar located east of Park Falls in Eisenstein Township, named for the nearby location of a former Ojibwe sugaring site.
Rivers and streams such as Maple Creek, Sugar Creek and Sugar River often refer to maple sugaring that took place on their banks in the past. Sugar Camp Creek in Oneida County and the Sugarbush Creeks in Vilas and Ashland County connect to many of the Sugarbush Lakes. Maple Lake, Sugar Maple Lake and Sugar Lake are found in the northern counties of Vilas, Oneida and Rusk, but it is the lakes with the names Sugar Camp or Sugarbush that tell us the most about the history of maple sugaring on the landscape. Be they the Upper, Middle, or Lower lakes of the Sugarbush chain on the Lac du Flambeau reservation, or the Sugarbush Lakes in Bayfield, Washburn, Polk, and Ashland Counties; their names reflect the importance of the maple history in those places and the historic connection many Native Americans have to the lands of northern Wisconsin. To this day, Ojibwe Indians tap the maple trees around Sugarbush Lake on the Bad River reservation in Ashland County and Upper, Middle and Lowe Sugarbush Lakes on the Lac du Flambeau reservation, just as previous generations have every spring.
When the place name mentions the camp or bush, we can be confident that the origins and meaning behind a that place name really refers to the making of maple sugar and is not only a reference to the species of trees in the area. For example, the village and Township named Sugar Camp in Oneida County received their name from the former Ojibwe village in this area. Early townsfolk from Rhinelander were known to travel to the Indian settlement to purchase maple sugar made nearby by the Ojibwe residents. As a result, the name Sugar Camp stuck. At the turn of the century, newly arrived white residents established a town site named Robbins in the same location, but the long held traditional name of Sugar Camp hung on, even though by the 1930s all of the Ojibwe residents had moved to the reservation at Lac du Flambeau.
Sometimes, the place names come from the words for maple sugaring in Native American languages. Such is the case in Minnesota with the community of Chanhassen, a suburb of the Twin Cities. Chanhassen comes from the Sioux Indian word of “canhasanpaha”, meaning hard maple hill. The Ojibwe Indian word for maple sugar “ziinsibaakwad” a name found on two lakes in Minnesota on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation.
While the state’s Indian population has played a prominent role in the naming of sugaring locations in Wisconsin, not all maple related place names are named for Native American maple sugaring activity. In particular, the village of Sugar Bush in Brown County was named for the maple sugaring activities of local Belgian settlers.
Not surprisingly, the places with names that are clearly identified as former (and in some cases current) maple sugaring locations are most commonly in the northern half of the state. Likewise, most of these places are within or very near to the state’s present Native American communities, attesting to their continuous use of the same sugarbushes and long-standing tradition as practitioners and originators of the art of maple sugaring. Perhaps, in the future many of the sugarbushes of today’s non-Indian maple producers will be remembered by their own place names on the landscape?
In August 2017 an important and interesting new book by the titleMeanings of Maple: An Ethnography of Sugaring was released for purchase by the University of Arkansas Press. Written by Professor Michael A. Lange of Burlington, Vermont’s Champlain College, this book takes a sweeping look at the many ways maple is made meaningful in people’s lives. When using the term maple, the author is referring to the broader world of maple sugaring or all things that go into and come out of the making of maple syrup in a modern context.
As an anthropologist, Lange’s ethnographic approach is based on many years of speaking with, observing, and interacting with a broad cross section of the maple producing world. His research and analysis is written from the perspective of Vermont as the center of the maple universe, some might say for obvious reasons, and the book is as much an exploration of how maple has meaning or is made meaningful to Vermont and Vermonters as it is about the meanings of maple in general.
This is an incredibly thoughtful book, in the truest sense of the word. This book is full of thought and ideas and shows that Lange has taken the time to really think about how and what makes maple meaningful to people both in and out of the maple producing environment. It is a book that will force any reader to think a little deeper and a little differently about some aspect of maple than they probably had in the past. It is one of those gems that forces one to admit that they hadn’t really thought about something that way before and to be glad that you were brought to see the maple world a little differently.
It is not a details book that is heavy with facts and figures or case studies and, at times, is somewhat lacking in a broader geographic and historical context especially regarding the modern role of Quebec in consideration of some of the categories of meaning. But that really doesn’t matter and frankly it would be great to see someone tackle a similar project from the point of view and grounding of the Quebecois traditions and meanings. This is not to say that the book is lacking in accuracy, far from it, rather it is to emphasize and applaud that its focus is more philosophical and its strength is in its narrative.
I strongly encourage anyone with an interest in the maple world, regardless of the connection to Vermont, but especially if they are connected to Vermont to pick up this book. It is not a book that you will necessarily “learn” something new from but it is a book that will even strengthen maple’s meaning that much more and help you better appreciate and understand what you think you already knew.
The book can be purchased from the University of Arkansas Press in paperback for $27.95 or hardbound for $69.95.
Published in 2000 following the Mille Lacs Band’s success in arguing their treaty-reserved rights to off-reservation hunting and fishing were not extinguished in the past by various federal actions, the book presents the detailed research and arguments of a team of ethnohistorians that demonstrated, among many things how, where, and when hunting, fishing and gather activities continued to be a part of the daily lives of the Milles Lacs Anishinabe community, including maple sugaring.
