CHAPTER XVIII 

 MAPLE SYRUP AND SUGAR 



HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT 



THE making of syrup and sugar from the sap of the maple trees was 

 discovered and developed in a very crude way by the Indians long before 

 the first white settlers came to this country. Interesting passages from 

 the journals of early explorers refer to the tapping of the maple trees in 

 the early spring throughout the St. Lawrence Valley and the northeastern 

 part of this country. The earliest extant written record seems to be in 

 1673. Many legends have been handed down to the white settlers 

 concerning the first discovery of the use of the maple sap by the Indians. 



They tapped the tree by making a sharp incision in the bark or in one 

 of the larger roots and collected the sap by conveying it by means of a 

 reed or a curved piece of bark into a receptacle made of clay or bark. 

 The journal of a white settler captured by the Indians in 1755 tells of a 

 large trough of 100 gal. capacity made of elm bark which was used for 

 the collection and the storage of maple sap. 



The early settlers quickly took up the process and made many 

 improvements in the way of receptacles and utensils. The Indians 

 had boiled down the sap by repeatedly dropping hot stones into it. They 

 had also learned to convert the sap into sugar by allowing it to freeze in 

 shallow vessels, the ice being skimmed off and thrown away and this 

 process continued until the sap was sufficiently refined to crystallize. 

 Although the same general method was followed, little marked improve- 

 ments were made by the early colonists. The axe was used to cut a 

 diagonal notch in the tree and later a circular hole was cut, followed by 

 the use of the spile or spout to convey the sap into a bucket. Iron or 

 copper vessels were substituted for the crude bark or wooden troughs or 

 hollowed logs. 



Still later the trees were tapped by the use of an auger, holes being 

 bored an inch or more in diameter in which were inserted hollow or half 

 round spiles of sumach or alder. The sap was collected in wooden 

 buckets, and more recently galvanized iron and tin buckets came into 

 common use. 



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