CHAPTER IX 



The Roosevelt Sugar Maple The Sugar Maple and the Indians 

 Early Mention of the Sugar Maple The Sugar Maple and the 

 Abolitionists. 



THE ROOSEVELT SUGAR MAPLE 



A splendid sugar maple, in the Glenview Forest Reserve, five 

 miles due west of Evanston, Illinois, was during the year 1820 chris- 

 tened in honor of Theodore Roosevelt. 



It stands in a region of "virgin timber," forest land on which 

 no living tree has ever been felled, and is the senior, by several hundred 

 years, of its comrades, though all around it stand maples and oaks 

 that are in the neighborhood of five hundred years old. According 

 to prominent botanists, the age of the Roosevelt Tree may be safely 

 estimated at one thousand years. Other tree experts say that it is at 

 least not younger than seven hundred years. Its trunk measures nine 

 feet, at breast height, and shows a clean bole up to fifty feet above 

 the ground. Growing in dense timber, it is, of course, slim for its 

 height. This tree, which will doubtless live to acquire fame, both on 

 account of its title and its great age, is a worthy representative of the 

 sugar maples of America, trees that are distinctively characteristic 

 of this country, and that have played an important part in the every- 

 day life of its early settlements. 



THE SUGAR MAPLE AND THE INDIANS 



It has been said that "If trees had human characteristics, the 

 sugar maple would be the banker of the forest community because of 

 its store of wealth. It is a conservative, dignified, well-dressed tree, 

 conscientious, hardworking and dependable." The Indians appre- 

 ciated its usefulness, and taught the earliest white pioneers on the 

 shores of the Hudson, and in New England and the Middle States, 

 to extract the sugar. They probably relied upon it for their entire 

 supply of sweetening. It was also found possible to produce the flow 

 by applying heat, and so procure sugar needed in case of sickness. 



According to Baron de la Hontan, who traveled in America from 

 1684 to 1695, the "liquor is drawn by cutting the tree two inches deep 

 in the wood, the cut being run sloping to the length of ten or twelve 

 inches .... a knif e is run into the tree slopingly, so that the water 

 running along the cut or gash as through a gutter, and falling upon 

 the knife that lies across the channel, runs out upon the knife which 

 has vessels plac'd underneath to receive it. The gash do's no harm 

 to the tree. Of this sap they make sugar and syrup which is so 

 valuable that there can't be a better remedy for fortifying the 



52 



