The article tells the story of well-meaning, but unsuccessful attempt to establish a commercial maple syrup operation on the Grand Portage Ojibwe Reservation in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The ridge running above Lake Superior in northern Minnesota is known for its high quality sugar maples, with some of the most extensive stands found on the Grand Portage Reservation. Looking for economic development opportunities, the State of Minnesota hit upon the idea of helping start a cooperative commercial maple syrup operation with the members of the Grand Portage Ojibwe community. Click on the article for the rest of the story.
I have a new article available on the story of Rex Alwin, an interesting maple syrup maker and early maple researcher in Minnesota. This article appears in the December 2020 edition of Minnesota Maple News, the newsletter for the Minnesota Maple Syrup Producers’ Association.
As a native Minnesotan, I have a particular interest and soft spot for researching and writing about Minnesota maple history and am always happy to share what I can from my home state. You can read a PDF of the newsletter with the article at this link or by clinking on the image of the of the newsletter above.
The spring 2020 edition of the Minnesota Archaeological Society newsletter features an article titled Boiling Arch Archaeology by Nicole Foss. This article, available here, describes recent archaeological investigations that documented the remains of two u-shaped boiling arches in Interstate State Park, near the St. Croix River and Taylors Falls, Minnesota.
One arch was constructed of bermed earth, stone, and brick while the other, probably later arch, was built poured concrete with three walls and a concrete floor. Historical research and archaeological investigations determined that the arches were probably open air boiling sites used by local syrup makers of European-American descent in the late 1800s to mid-1900s.
Archaeologist have been recording the remains of former maple sugaring and syrup making sites in the upper midwest for the last 40 years, although it is only in the last 20 years that there has been an increase in recognizing and documenting boiling arches as important features of many sugaring sites of both Euro-American and Native American sugarmakers. The report of finding these two arches is a valuable contribution to the historic archaeological record in Minnesota.
In addition to providing permission to share the newsletter article here, site investigators Jacob Foss, Nicole Foss, and David Radford were kind enough to share a few additional photographs from the site.
Photograph of earth and stone u-shaped boiling arch at Hobb’s Woods maple sugaring site, Interstate State Park, Minnesota.Photograph of the remains of the concrete U-shaped boiling arch at the Hobb’s Woods maple sugaring site in Interstate State Park, Minnesota.Photograph of a metal maple sugaring spout found at the Hobb’s Woods maple sugaring site at Interstate State Park, Minnesota.
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.
In the broader world of maple syrup making, Minnesota has always been viewed as something of a backwater, with obvious reasons. There are far fewer maple syrup makers in that state than most of the rest of the maple producing region and the size of operation and volume of syrup made is considerably less.
However, being on the periphery and outside of the core of the maple world can have the advantage of not being as conditioned by or concerned with conventional approaches, thus freeing one up to think and act a little differently. One example of that from occurred in Minnesota in the 1940s and 1950s, where one man, Sherman Holbert, took a few risks and decided to try a different model for making maple syrup.
I was able to interview Holbert in 2002 at his Mille Lacs Lake home when he was in his late 80s to learn more about his maple operation and how it came to be, and just as quickly disappeared.
The article I wrote telling this story was recently published in the July 2018 edition of Minnesota History magazine. I am happy to share a PDF version of the article at this link here or by clicking on the image of the article above.
One interesting and important way to understand and tell the story of the history of maple sugaring is through the remains of past sugaring operations. Recording and investigating these sites and artifacts from maple sugaring’s past falls into the realm of what I like to call sugarbush archaeology.
For many folks when the idea of archaeology is brought up they immediately think of studying past human behavior before the time of written records, and that certainly covers a lot of the focus of archaeology. However, archaeology is not solely limited to the pre-writing segment of human history and also includes consideration of our material remains from more recent periods in time.
Just about everyone that has spent any time in or around a sugarbush which has been in use for a few generations or more is probably aware of the location of an old sugarhouse or boiling camp. If it is fairly recently retired or abandoned, it may be a standing ruin or relic, but if it was left many more years ago, chances are it has been reduced to a simple scatter of twisted metal, an irregular foundation or collections of stones, or a mounded patch of ground in the woods. Those remains are now artifacts and features of an archaeological site. The heritage of sugarmakers is certainly preserved in things like the photographs and collections of antiques and ephemera that line the wall of many sugar houses. But there are other artifacts, sometimes very big artifacts, of maple sugaring that we can also preserve and learn from.
While there are some written records describing early maple sugaring activities, the further one goes back in time, the fewer and fewer records there are and what is written is generally lacking in detail or description. For example, in the western Great Lakes region in earlier times when Euro-Americans were still settling the land and access to use of the woods was more open and with fewer limits, it was not uncommon to set up a sugarbush and boiling camp where ever it was deemed best. This may have been private land, it may have been unclaimed public land, it may have been tribal land or even tax forfeiture land.
Photo of nested kettles in abandoned Native American sugaring camp.
Today, archaeologists find a variety of sites in the forest that mark the past location of all sorts and scales of maple sugaring, from the simplest boiling camp that may have been a single kettle used for one season to the former location of a sugarhouse that contained multiple evaporator where thousands of gallons of syrup were made each season.
Most of the work being done that identifies maple sugaring archaeological sites happens on federal, tribal, state, and county lands where there are rules in place directing land managers to look for archaeological and historic sites like these and take those places into account when managing those lands. But maple sugaring sites are all over, and there are undoubtedly many many times more sites on private lands and in current sugarbushes that any of these public lands.
Photo of the unloading ramp and sugarhouse at the Grand Island sugarbush shortly after abandonment.
I’ve worked for many years as a field archaeologist in the woods of northern Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota and have recorded dozens and dozens of maple sugaring sites. Most of these sites were the remains of small short lived boiling camps with simple stone and earthen arches and an associated scatter of metal artifacts. But every now and then there was an opportunity to work with a more substantial site. For example one interesting site was the remains of the Cleveland Cliffs Mining Company’s sugarbush on land now managed by the Hiawatha National Forest on Grand Island in Lake Superior off the shore of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Photograph of the remains of the sugar house on Grand Island from east side of site looking west.Map of archaeological remains of Grand Island sugaring camp.
The company operated a commercial sugaring operation for xx years before they closed shop and abandoned everything in place in 19xx. Unlike a lot of sugarhouses, when they closed they just walked away and essentially left the evaporators and equipment behind. I was able to photograph and map what was left of the decaying sugar house which was presented in a 2003 article in the Michigan Academician.
Other researchers have also looked at maple history from the lens of the archaeological record, with two notable publications being Keener, Gordon and Nye’s 2010 article on the Petticrew-Taylor Farmstead in Ohio and David Babson’s 2011 doctoral dissertation on late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century sugaring sites in Lewis County, New York.
While the study of abandoned commercial sugaring sites is fascinating, a great deal of my attention has been spent working on identifying and understanding the remains of sugaring activities associated with Ojibwe and Potowatomi Native American communities from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Most people who are less familiar with those Indian communities, including sugarmakers from New England, are often a surprised to learn that maple sugaring continues to be an important part of the seasonal activities of Indian people into the twentieth century. This is in part a legacy of the Indian maple production being a subsistence activity for family and community consumption and largely operating outside of the mainstream realities the mainstream market economy. It is also a relic of a government assimilation policy that discouraged Indian people from continuing their traditional gathering activities, often forcing Indian people to quietly carry out their sugaring.
Map of remains of Native American boiling arch at McCord Indian Village in northern Wisconsin.
While working as an archaeologist for the Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe Band in northern Wisconsin we recorded dozens of abandoned sugaring camps both on and off the reservation. A great deal of this research was published in an article in 2001 in the Wisconsin Archeologist which presented an overview of the kinds of sites we were finding and the material remain left behind like metal cans, pails, birch bark containers, and metal and wood taps for sap collection as well as kettles, chains, and hooks for boiling sap.
Map of remains of storage structure and associated artifact scatter at Lac du Flambeau sugar camp LDF-081.
Learning as much as we could at the sites at Lac du Flambeau was a springboard to being asked to help record and interpret many more Native American sugaring sites in northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Much of that work was presented in a 2005 article in the Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology about the remains of tell-tale U-shaped boiling arches at known and suspected Native American communities. Both of these articles were largely aimed at helping the practitioners of professional field archaeology better recognize and appreciate this often overlook and misunderstood cultural resource.
Our limited understanding of the history of Indian sugaring has been an important reasons and motivation for me to focus on recording and interpreting these sites. There are many of non-Indian archaeological remains of sugaring to investigate as well; however, the supporting documentation and historical information related to those sites is a bit more robust. Also because many of the Euro-American sugaring sites were established on lands that continue to be held in private ownership, often as sugarbushes to this day, they may be in a better position to be preserved and protected.
When talking about the early years of maple sugaring in North American, curious and knowledgeable people invariably bring up the question of who made maple sugar first, Native peoples or the Euro-Americans and Euro-Canadians that came to the new world. That’s a very interesting question and one that archaeology should be able to help answer. Wading into the origins debate, as I refer to it, is a curious topic and not unlike opening up a political can of worms. People are very sure of what they have come to believe is the truth, regardless of what evidence they are presented. However, I will save my thoughts on that topic for the moment and dedicate another post to tackling that in the future.
What is important to consider and appreciate in looking at and managing a stand of maple trees, be it a current or past sugarbush and on private or public lands is that the the land has a story to tell. Often times this story is not recorded any where else and may no longer even remain in the minds and memories of those that worked those woods. What looks like trash or ruins does have meaning if you look at it from a certain light. Likewise the old roads, fence lines, scarred trees, and signs of different cutting histories and forest management are part of the unwritten record of sugarbush archaeology. Where we can we should take the time to consider, document, learn from and maybe even preserve what remains of the past years of sugaring.
REFERENCES CITED
Babson, David W., “Sweet Spring: The Development and Meaning of Maple Syrup Production at Fort Drum, New York.” (doctoral dissertation, Syracuse University, 2011).
Keener, Craig S, Stephen C Gordon, and Kevin Nye, “Uncovering a Mid-Nineteenth Century Maple Sugar Camp and Stone Furnace at the Petticrew-Taylor Farmstead in Southwest Ohio.” Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 35, no. 2 (2010) 133-166.
Thomas, Matthew M., “The Archaeology of Great Lakes Native American Maple Sugar Production in the Reservation Era.” The Wisconsin Archeologist 82, no. 1 (2001) 75-102.
Thomas, Matthew M. and Janet Silbernagel, “The Evolution of a Maple Sugaring Landscape on Lake Superior’s Grand Island.” The Michigan Academician 35, no. 2 (2003) 135-158.
Thomas, Matthew M., “Historic American Indian Maple Sugar and Syrup Production Boiling Arches in Michigan and Wisconsin.” Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 30, no. 2(2005) 299-326.
Note: Readers interested in the history of the Log Cabin Syrup company will want to read a more recent blog post and article available at this link.
By Matthew M. Thomas
As one of the most iconic syrup brands in U.S. history, Log Cabin, has the dubious honor today of containing zero maple syrup. But that wasn’t always the case.
In fact, at the turn of the last century, the syrups in the lineup of the Towle Maple Products Company included both a real maple syrup known as Towle’s Log Cabin Selected Maple Syrup as well as their more popular blend of cane and maple syrup referred to then as simply Towle’s Log Cabin Syrup and Towle’s Log Cabin Camp Syrup. From 1904 to 1909 there was also a fourth syrup called Towle’s Log Cabin Penoche Syrup, which was made from cane sugar and marketed for candy making. It is not entirely clear what amount of maple syrup was going into Log Cabin’s cans and bottles in the early years of the company, which was started in 1888 by a St. Paul, Minnesota grocer named Patrick J. Towle. As discussed below the first Log Cabin tins likely contained a significant amount of pure maple syrup with a shift towards a blended syrup in the early 1900s, before transitioning to a fully blended cane and maple syrup.
Reportedly, the earliest blended Towle’s Log Cabin Syrup originally contained about 45 percent maple syrup but it was probably more like 25 percent, which is printed on the label of some cans and bottles from the 19-teens. By 1950, the percentage of maple syrup had been reduced to about 15 percent, and as recently as 2002 the Log Cabin Company confirmed to me that their syrup contained some maple syrup but refused to disclose in what percentage. Today the ingredients list on a bottle of Log Cabin Original Syrup contains absolutely no mention of maple sugar or syrup.
Excerpt from 1905 Towle’s advertisement featuring the paper red label of Log Cabin Maple Syrup and the black label of Log Cabin Penoche Syrup.
The official company history, often repeated in the years after the company was purchased in 1927 by General Foods is that Patrick Towle began marketing a blended syrup from the very beginning. However, the truth is harder to discern. A closer examination of packaging, advertisements, and newspaper accounts from that era question the accuracy of this story. Instead, one might argue that a convenient narrative was developed and promoted later in time around the image and personality of Patrick Towle and his iconic Log Cabin label that supported the uniqueness and originality of the Log Cabin product.
Very early (circa 1888-89) Log Cabin Pure Maple Syrup one quart metal tin with paper label. Notice the company name of Towle & McCormick, St. Paul, Minn, a precursor to the Towle Maple Syrup Company and later the Towle Maple Products Company.
Towle got his start as a grocer in Chicago under the name P.J. Towle & Co., selling coffee, tea, and spices. Unfortunately, lax attention to the books and leniency with delinquent customers left Towle owing creditors about $100,000 in early 1888. After going bankrupt and settling the claims against him with a federal judge in Chicago, he moved to St. Paul where he entered into a partnership with Thomas F. McCormick and in mid-1888 and began selling Log Cabin Pure Maple Syrup. The arrangement with McCormick was short lived and the dissolution of their partnership was announced in the St. Paul Globe in April 1889. The following week the Towle Syrup Company was incorporated for the sale of Towle’s Log Cabin Maple Syrup. Trademark protection for the iconic Log Cabin logo was applied for in November of 1894. By the early 1900s the company was known as the Towle Maple Syrup Company and with the expansion in 1910 beyond St. Paul and into Vermont, as discussed below, the company was renamed the Towle Maple Products Company.
James W. Fuller’s 1897 design patent for the log cabin shaped syrup tin.
The first log cabin shape metal tin used by Towle was patented in 1897 by James W. Fuller, a salesman for Towle, and was covered in paper labeling. Before that, Towle used a tall rectangular metal tin can in quart and half gallon sizes for packaging maple syrup. The early cabin shaped tins with their paper labels claim that the contents were maple syrup and included a claim of purity that offered a $500 reward if someone found evidence of adulteration in their maple syrup, even though they were most surely a blend.
Image of late 1890s Towle’s Log Cabin Maple Syrup metal tin with paper label and certificate of purity on back.
In the years between 1904 and 1909, and especially after greater enforcement of labeling laws with the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906, magazine advertisements by Towle list three distinct syrup products, differentiating between cane syrup (Penoche), blended syrup (Camp), and real maple syrup (plain Log Cabin).
Based on the language in their advertisements and packages, it appears that the packaging of pure maple syrup by the Towle’s Syrup Company ended around 1909, after which the company focused its attention on only selling their cane and maple syrup blend as Towle’s Log Cabin Syrup. This change happened to coincide with a fire in December 1909 that destroyed the top two floors of their St. Paul plant, and in response the company opened a processing and packaging plant in St. Johnsbury, Vermont.
In April 1910, Towle’s Log Cabin Maple Products Company opened a canning and bottling facility in St. Johnsbury in what had been the main facilities of the Cary Maple Sugar Company, adjacent to Ide’s Mill on Bay Street. George Cary, who was purported to be a member of the Board of Directors at Log Cabin sold to Towle the maple syrup bottling portion of his business at the time and focused his energies on buying bulk maple sugar.
Postcard image of the St. Johnsbury Bay Street waterfront circa 1911.Close up of the Towle’s Log Cabin Syrup building adjacent to Ide’s Mill on Bay Street.
Log Cabin soon after updated the Cary facility, adding a new boiler and eight large boiling kettles, and by 1911 was operating year-round from seven in the morning until midnight most evenings. A November 1911 article in the St. Johnsbury Caledonian provided the following description of their modern operation –
The maple syrup which has been purchased from the farmer is placed in two 250 gallon and four 150 gallon copper kettles. This sugar is remelted by steam until it has reached the correct specific gravity and then it is pumped through a filter press which removes any dirt or nitre which may be in the sugar, into four large storage tanks which have a capacity of 550 gallons each. Then, as needed, it is piped downstairs to copper kettles where it is reheated by steam and then passes into the filling machine which fills six receptacles of any kind at the same time. From there the syrup passes to the capping machine which automatically caps the can or bottle with the crown stopper or to another machine which corks the receptacles as the case may be.
By 1912, Log Cabin was doing one million dollars worth of business out of their St. Johnsbury facility. This level of growth and activity necessitated abandoning the old Cary plant in 1913 and moving down the street to a vacant 50 by 150 foot, two-story brick fireproof building, known as the Pillsbury Baldwin Plant. From this new plant Log Cabin could load as many as twelve railroad cars a day.
In spite of the company’s rapid growth, with the death of P.J. Towle in 1912 and a subsequent reorganization of the company by his sons, Log Cabin’s St. Johnsbury operation was shuttered in 1915 and moved back to St. Paul. During the period of Log Cabin’s short but significant residence in St. Johnsbury, nearly all of their national advertisements, syrup cans, and syrup bottles noted that St. Johnsbury, along with St. Paul were the location of its refineries and packing.
Although today the maple industry looks upon Log Cabin Syrup with a reasonable amount of disdain and distate for its promotion of pancake and table syrups with absolutely no maple ingredients, the beginning years of Towle’s Log Cabin were situated within the maple industry as a buyer, packer, blender, and marketer of pure maple syrup. While still a family owned business in early 1900s the company also had a short-lived presence in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, the often cited Maple Capital of the World. Over time, with changes in ownership and emphases on maximum profits over maximum flavor, Log Cabin gradually reduced and ultimately abandoned both its inclusion of maple syrup and its connection to the maple industry.
Originally posted August 31, 2017
Revised February 17, 2020 ad November 4, 2021.
References
“Announcement,” The St. Paul Globe (St. Paul, MN) April 12, 1889.
Hovey Burgess, “The Blended Maple Sirup Industry”, Report of Proceedings of the Conference on Maple Products (Philadelphia, PA, 1950).
Business Activity – Towle Maple Products Company Working Overtime,” St. Johnsbury Caledonian (St. Johnsbury, VT) November 8, 1911.
Edward T. Fairbanks, “Business Notes – Maple Sugar,” The Town of St. Johnsbury, VT; A Review of One Hundred Twenty-Five Years to the Anniversary Pageant 1912 (St. Johnsbury, VT.: The Cowles Press 1929).
“Greater Vermont Notes,” The Burlington Free Press and Times (Burlington, VT) April 17, 1913.
“Heavy Failure: Patrick Towle of Chicago, Goes Under – Anthony Kelly of Minneapolis, the Largest Creditor,” Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN) January 25, 1888.
Clair Dunne Johnson, “I See By the Paper…” An Informal History of St. Johnsbury, VT, (Cowles Press, St. Johnsbury, VT 1987) 224.
Norman Reed, the Log Cabin Syrup Tin—A History, Tin Type Magazine, 1981 (Denver, CO) 1-12.
“P.J. Towle Dead,” The Retail Grocers Advocate, September 20, (1912), 31.
“P.J. Towle Passes Suddenly,” Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN) September 7, 1912.
“P.J. Towle Confesses Judgement,” Chicago Tribune (Chicago, IL) January 25, 1888.
“St. Johnsbury Vermont” Western New England Magazine, June No. 6 (1913): 272.
“To Leave St. Johnsbury – Towle Maple Products Company to Open Factory in Chicago,” St. Johnsbury Caledonian (St. Johnsbury, VT), December 30, 1914; “News of the State,” Essex County Herald (Guildhall, VT), February 12, 1915.
“Towle Maple Products Company Has Leased Pillsbury Baldwin Plant,” St. Johnsbury Caledonian (St. Johnsbury, VT), March 13, 1913.
James Trager, The Food Chronology: A Food Lover’s Compendium of Events and Anecdotes, from Prehistory to Present (New York, Henry Holt and Company, 1995) 326.
The article tells the story of well-meaning, but unsuccessful attempt to establish a commercial maple syrup operation on the Grand Portage Ojibwe Reservation in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
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.
