Maple Sugar Moon

Sugar-making -- ishkwaamizige in Anishinaabemowin -- happened for several weeks in Zhwigun (Spring) during the Iskigamizige Giizis (Sugarbush Moon). The Ojibwe headed north by canoe to their early Nou kawmi (Spring camps) as this was the time of maple syrup tapping and spear fishing. Their main building material, wiigwaas (birch bark), could be transported anywhere by canoe or dog sled to make a wigwam (lodge shelter).

Si-si-bakwat (maple sugar) meant more to the Ojibwe than simple sustenance. It symbolized harmony with each other and with the natural and supernatural worlds. Maple sugar-making began any time from late March to early April with the arrival of the first crow. Seeing this bird or hearing its call signaled the arrival of Spring and the end of the long, hard Winter.

Small bands would break up into smaller groups of families, usually around early Springtime, and move into temporary "mapleing" camps. These camps, located in preselected areas for each family, would then become home for a few weeks to a few months while the family tapped, collected, processed and stored maple syrup and maple sugar. The sugar was then used for trade and augmented the Ojibwe diet of wild rice, corn, squash, berries fish, venison, bear and moose meat. As the Woodland Ojibwe had no salt, they used maple syrup to season all of their food.

Nodinens (Little Wind), a 74 year old elder of the Mille Lacs Band Ojibwe from central Minnesota, told Frances Densmore about sugaring in the old days. She described building the Winter hunting camp for six families. The women insulated the wigwams with evergreen boughs, dirt and snow shoveled onto a framework of logs covered with birch bark and woven mats. The men left for deep woods hunting and trapping, and all Winter long, the women dried the meat the men brought back. Then...

Toward the last of winter, my father would say, "One month after another has gone by. Spring is near. We must get back to our other work." So the women wrapped the dried meat tightly in tanned deerskins and the men packed their furs on sleds or toboggans. Once there was a fearful snowstorm when we were starting. My father quickly made snowshoes from branches for all the older people.

From the latter part of March until May, the Ojibwe moved entire villages to the sugar bush. They called the time of our 2004 Ancient Worlds Springfest Iskigamizige Giizis, which encompasses the entire process of maple sugar time: tapping the trees, boiling the sap down, separating it into syrup, sugar and cakes, and storing the sugar in specially made birch bark containers.

When we got to the sugar bush we took the birch-bark dishes out of storage and the women began tapping the trees*. We had queer-shaped axes made of iron.

Meanwhile, the men went ice fishing.

There were plenty of big fish in those days; the men speared them. My father had some wire, and he made fishhooks and tied them on basswood cord. He got lots of pickerel that way.

A food cache was always near the sugar camp. We opened that, then had all kinds of nice food that we had stored in the fall. There were cedar-bark bags of rice, there were cranberries sewed in birch-bark makuks, and long strings of dried potatoes and apples. Grandmother had charge of all this. She made us young girls do the work. As soon as the little creeks opened, the boys caught lots of small fish. My sister and I carried them to the camp and dried them on a frame over the fire in the center of our camp.

My mother had two or three big brass kettles (akik) she had bought from an English trader and a few tin pails from an American trader. She used these in making the sugar. We had plenty of birch-bark dishes (biskitenagun, from biskite), she bends it, and onagun (a dish), but we children ate mostly from the large shells we got along the lake shore. We had sauce from the dried berries sweetened with the new maple sugar. The women gathered the inside bark from the cedar. This can only be scraped free in the spring. We got plenty of it for making mats and bags later.

Toward the end of the sugar season there was a great deal of thick sap called izhwaga zinzibakwud (the last run). We also had lots of food we had dried. This provided us with food while we were making our gardens at our summer home.

It takes 30 - 40 gallons of average maple sap (zinzibakwudabo, liquid sugar) to boil down to one gallon of syrup. No wonder the birch-bark sap-collection pails were called nadoban, making the word nadobe "she goes and gets" into an object for going and getting with! On the sunny side of a free-flowing tree, the small sap buckets might fill in an hour. Since there would be several taps in each of at least 900 trees (more like 2,000 trees for the 6 families Nodinens describes) everyone was kept busy running pails of sap to the boilers all day whenever it was sunny and the sap ran.

40 gallons of sap reduces to about 3 quarts of sugar when further heated in a smaller kettle or pail (ombigamizigan). Sugar was made in 2 forms. Thick syrup for hard sugar (zhiiwaagamizigan was scooped before it granulated from the final boiling kettle, and poured onto ice or snow to solidify. Then it was packed tightly into shells or birch bark cones (zhiishiigwaansag) whose tops were sewn shut with basswood fiber for storage, These were licked and eaten like candy. Sugar cakes were also made in shapes of men and animals, moons, stars, flowers, poured into greased wooden molds.

Small pieces of deer tallow were put into the syrup as it boiled down. When the boiled sugar was about to granulate in its final boil-down, it was poured into a wooden sugaring trough, made from a smoothed-out log. It was stirred there to granulate it, and rubbed with sugar ladles and hands into sugar grains (ziinzibaakwad). Warm sugar was poured from the trough into makuks of birch bark. This was the basic seasoning and an important year-round food, eaten with grains, fish, fruits and vegetables, and with dried berries all year round. In summer, it was dissolved in water as a cooling drink. In winter it was stirred into with various root, leaf and bark teas. The fancy cakes were used as gifts, showing off the maker's originality of design.

Maple sugar

Only satisfies me

In the spring!

~ Anishnaabe song

After the sap stopped running at the end of May, the Ojibwe would begin cultivating native potatoes, beans, pumpkin, squash and corn. Domesticated crops provided an important element to their hunting-gathering-fishing economy and contributed significantly to their Winter stores. Gathering foods comprised a major economic activity throughout the Summer and Fall. They collected many types of berries, including wild strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, chokecherries and cranberries and dried and preserved them for use throughout the year.

Many people still follow the traditional ways of maple sugaring, harvesting wild rice, picking berries and hunting.

How the Indians Got Maple Sugar

One day Wenebojo was standing under a maple tree. Suddenly it began to rain maple syrup-not sap-right on top of him. Wenebojo got a birchbark tray and held it out to catch the syrup.

He said to himself: "This is too easy for the Indians to have the syrup just rain down like this."

So he threw the syrup away and decided that before they could have the syrup, the Indians would have to give a feast, offer tobacco, speak to the manido, and put out some birchbark trays.

Nokomis, the grandmother of Wenebojo, showed him how to insert a small piece of wood into each maple tree so the sap could run down into the vessels beneath. When Manabush tested it, it was thick and sweet.

He told his grandmother it would never do to give the Indians the syrup without making them work for it. He climbed to the top of one of the maples, scattered rain over all the trees, dissolving the sugar as it flowed into the birchbark vessels.

Now the Indians have to cut wood, make vessels, collect the sap and boil it for a long time. If they want the maple syrup, they have to work hard for it.

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