1 Chapter 1 Native Women and the Meaning of Maple Sugar from 1850 to 1855 Seth Eastman Created a Series of Illustrations For

Chapter 1 Native Women and the Meaning of Maple Sugar

From 1850 to 1855 Seth Eastman created a series of illustrations for the Federal

Government’s six-volume study entitled Information Respecting the History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, overseen and edited by Henry

Rowe Schoolcraft. Eastman’s picture of an American Indian maple sugar camp from the mid nineteenth century illustrates the maple camp as a women-centered place: a place defined, managed and occupied by women. Just as written documents by Euro-

Americans have ethnocentric biases so too do paintings, illustrations, sketches, and photographs by Euro-Americans. For example, Eastman’s aim in much of his artwork was an attempt to record images of the “vanishing” Indian. However, if Eastman’s

“Indian Sugar Camp” (See figure 1, page 2.) is analyzed along with other sources such as ethnographic, and oral histories, this illustration can reveal information concerning the

Ojibwe maple sugar camps in the first half of the nineteenth century.1 In Eastman’s rendering, the camp is dominated by women. Women collect sap, chop wood, and tend the kettles of syrup over the fire. In fact men are entirely absent. The material culture of the camp is also captured in this watercolor, including wooden spiles, birch bark buckets collecting sap, and trade-metal boiling kettles placed along a wooden frame. In addition,

Eastman also included the wigwams constructed of saplings, birch bark and woven mats also made by women. Oral histories and ethnographic accounts from contemporary as well as late nineteenth century sources closely resemble Eastman’s image of women producing maple sugar using the material culture highlighted in the sketch. A study of maple sugar production within the ethnographic record reveals that Indian women managed these camps and had claim to the maple products they produced and reveals 1 maple sugar products were more than food in Native culture of the upper Midwest: these products were medicinally, economically, and ritually significant and socially important for gifting. Gifting was vital for social and political interaction. Gifts were given to establish fictive kin relationships necessary for trade, and remunerated members of a village for resources used by an outsider. Gifts were also important in maintaining a leadership role within a Native village. It was the community that bestowed power upon a chief and his distribution of gifts demonstrated his generous nature and concern for the well being of the entire tribe.2

Figure 1: Seth Eastman, Indian Sugar Camp. Original from Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the History Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, Vol. I-VI, (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co., 1851-1857), Vol. 2, p. 58.

In cultures that have oral traditions, origin stories are an important device that allows the storyteller to impart meaning and pass on knowledge to the next generation.3

The following story reveals not only the Ojibwe belief in the origin of maple sugar but

2 also reveals that this foodstuff was not to be taken for granted and was to be respected with gifts, food, and offerings of tobacco:

One day Wenebojo was standing under a maple tree, and all of a sudden it began to rain maple syrup – not sap – right on top of him. So Wenebojo got a birchbark tray and held it out until it was full. Then he said to himself, “This is too easy for the Indians.” So he threw the syrup away. He decided that first the Indians would have to give a feast, offer tobacco, and put out some of the birch bark baskets, as many as they wanted filled, and someone would speak to God. The Indians would have to tap the trees and get sap and boil it before they could have syrup.4

Wenebojo also didn’t want the people to take maple syrup for granted, resulting in a more complicated process than simply catching it as it rained from the sky. It was a labor-intensive activity that reinforced interpersonal connections and strengthened social ties.5 Because maple sugar production was labor-intensive and involved a variety of steps, it was necessary to organize the tasks for maple sugar manufacturing. In Ojibwe culture activities that required killing, such as hunting, were considered male tasks. Items that came from the earth such as fruit, birch bark, and lead were within the female realm.

Female activities included, harvesting agricultural crops such as corn, wild rice, berries, and maple sap. Women therefore organized labor, and gathered and produced these resources in the Indigenous seasonal round in the upper Midwest.6

American Indian women in the Old Northwest produced and collected the plant food consumed by members of their communities and practiced seasonal subsistence strategies whereby foods that were in abundance during particular times of the year were hunted, fished, harvested, collected, and processed. Along with maple sugar harvested in the Spring, Indian women from this region raised and harvested agricultural crops such as corn and beans through Spring, and Summer, and they collected, winnowed and parched wild rice in the Autumn. Indian women also collected berries and herbs, fished and

3 trapped some small game throughout the year as these foods came onto season. Each season women cooked some for immediate consumption, but also processed, dried, and stored these foods in containers, placed underground in cache pits for use throughout the year, when the need arose. Native women produced vast quantities of maple products for family consumption in season and throughout the year as well as surplus amounts for gifting and trade.7 Producing maple sugar through successive generations resulted in a body of experience and knowledge women learned and passed down to the younger women of their kin group.

Native people used two methods of creating maple syrup before the use of iron and copper kettles became common. The first method involved dropping very hot stones into birch bark vessels or large clay pots. The second method involved continually or repeatedly freezing sap and then removing the frozen water formed on top. This eventually created thick syrup because the sugar within the sap does not freeze, only the water portion. As each successive freeze removed more water content, syrup formed in the container.8 Once traders introduced metal pots, Native women developed different boiling techniques that required men to construct an arbor of heavy support beams over the fire pit to hold the different pots needed to create maple sugar products. Women placed a series of kettles along the beam, sometimes called an arch. Women then kept a continual fire underneath the kettles in order that the water content of the sap would slowly boil away. Eventually, women placed this reduction in a large kettle at the center of a crossbar late in the day and slowly overnight thick syrup would form. Those in charge of monitoring the thickening syrup occasionally stirred the syrup with spruce or fir branches, thereby preventing the syrup boiling over the sides of the kettles.9

4 In spring, the manufacture of maple sugar began the annual seasonal subsistence for Eastern Woodlands Indians. Seasonal subsistence occurred as a village moves to different areas within their defined territory to maximize harvesting and procurement of foodstuffs. This seasonal round altered group dynamics as large summer villages split into smaller kin groups to move into winter hunting camps and eventually to spring maple sugar camps. Territory was determined by a village chief who took into consideration availability of foodstuffs and the needs of individual families.10 Michel

Curot, a fur trader who worked for the XY Company, recalled in February 1803 when he was stationed on the Jaune River (now Yellow River in northeast Wisconsin): “Two

Bands have United to go and make sugar together, and also for the Spring hunt.”11

Anishnabeg women and their families left their winter camps in late February, or early

March, to take up residence in permanently maintained, seasonally inhabited spring camps near sugar bushes. In addition, variations in climate and vegetation in the upper

Midwest resulted in different groups relying on different food staples for their subsistence economy. Native groups within different regions had various food economies based on the predominant resources found in that environment. Some groups relied primarily on fish as a major food supply while others relied on wild rice or corn. Along with corn, wild rice, and sturgeon, maple sugar was a staple food resource and therefore, played an important part in the seasonal round. If the previous year was not conducive to producing and preserving large quantities of foodstuff, maple sugar was even more important as a high calorie food, and much needed energy in the lean months.12 As Alexander Henry discussed in his journal when he wrote, “Though as I have said, we hunted and fished, yet sugar was our principal food during the whole month of April. I have known Indians to live wholly upon the same and become fat.”13 Regardless of the specific foods consumed

5 it was necessary to relocate to different resources with a change in season. During spring extended kin groups reunited at the sugar camps after the long winter.14

Native women held usage rights to the sugar groves of their village where they annually harvested sap and created a variety of maple products. Usage rights were passed down from mother to daughter. A Menomonee woman made this claim “through her mother’s family and dodem” or clan, which in the Menomonee culture is passed down through matrilineal descent. Within the Ojibwe culture, the dodem is passed down through patrilineal descent. However, Ojibwe women also had annual usage rights to their stand of maple trees within the sugar bush confirmed by village council. The matriarch of an extended family managed labor and production at her maple stand, assigning specific tasks to women, children, and occasionally men. In addition, the matriarch taught younger girls the steps involved in processing sap into sugar.15 Many families could end up working different sections of a very large stand of sugar maple trees as communities developed procedures to recognize annual use of trees. Small kin groups would return each year to its own sugar bush and in much in the same way that women bound stalks of wild rice together to mark a specific area their kin intended to harvest, families marked particular patterns on the maples within a sugar bush.16 The size of these sugaring territories varied not only within the size of each family but also because, it was not the number of trees per acre that determined the size of the sugar bush but rather the amount of taps that could be supported by the trees. The number of taps ultimately determined how much sugar each kin group could produce.17

The layout of a camp usually consisted of two structures essential to maple sugar production that remained standing throughout the year: a large boiling lodge that for some tribes, also served as a living area, and a smaller lodge for storing equipment and

6 extra supplies such as birch bark sheets, birch bark containers, large collection barrels, large kettles and basswood troughs. (See figure 2, page 8.) The boiling lodge had to be re-roofed and sometimes re-sided each season with rolls of birch bark the women brought with them when they arrived in early pre-production spring. At the same time, women prepared platforms along the sides of the lodge and placed mats or cedar boughs on top of the platform frames and blankets placed on top of the mats or boughs. Used mainly for sleeping, people also sat on these platforms to eat and during sugar production.18

Besides controlling the production of maple sugar, Ojibwe women also maintained control over the tasks of cleaning and repairing birch bark equipment. After preparing the sleeping lodge, the women opened the storage lodge and assessed the utensils, equipment, and birch bark containers and made repairs or replacements if needed. Balsam gum or pitch easily repaired holes in birch bark utensils and containers and also made them waterproof. Utensils could last several seasons if they were well maintained by properly washing, mending, and storing the items. If more utensils were needed, sheets of bark were available in the storage lodge. Once the sugar camp was ready the women returned to the winter camp to prepare the family members for the journey to their sugar camp.19

Harvesting of birch bark from the paper birch tree was an important component in maple sugar production. Not only did bark cover the lodges, much of the equipment and utensils women used to create and store maple products were also made with birch bark, from the containers that collected the sap tapped from the tree, to the cones that held the hard maple syrup, and the mococks of various size used to store and transport sugar.

Figure 2: Storage lodge and sugar making supplies at sugar camp circa 1920. Original from Francis Densmore, Bureau of American Ethnology, Forty-Fourth Annual Report Plate 32. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Mococks were transportation and storage containers vital to the seasonal round of food procurement and storage and vital for trade. Women harvested different thicknesses from the paper birch. Woodlands Indians used thicker sheets for constructing canoes, and the thinner sheets of less than six layers of bark for making vessels and utensils. Birch bark has a slow rate of decay and its preservative qualities made it useful for storage of foodstuff including maple sugar.20

Just like maple sugar production, harvesting birch bark took place when the sap was running, which occurred in spring and to a lesser degree in fall. Most harvesting took

8 place in May or early June when the sap runs high up the trunk and the different thicknesses of birch bark are easier to remove from the tree trunk. When birch bark is taken at the wrong time of year, the sap layer will be dark and reddish. Sometimes this was done purposely for a decorative appearance as the various layers are then incised to form patterns of light and dark. Up to 1500 containers could be used in a sugaring season, so women needed plenty of birch bark to repair and create new vessels and utensils.21

Thin birch bark could also be harvested during maple sugar production if bark was needed to repair or create mococks. These containers were of various sizes and could be plain or decorated with porcupine quills or as mentioned above incised with images and patterns.22 Mococks used for maple sugar storage and transportation could contain as much as 75 pounds of sugar. Figure 3 illustrates the larger sizes of mococks as these ones contain 60 pounds of maple sugar. (See figure 3, page 10.) Sometimes mococks were cached with excess food from seasonal harvest. Surplus foodstuffs could then be used later in the year on long journeys, at maple sugar camps, and at the larger summer villages.23

Caching food was an important component of the seasonal round and maple sugar, as with other foods gathered in specific seasons, was harvested in abundance for use throughout the year. Women buried mococks and other containers in the cool earth further enhancing the preservation of foodstuff during warm summer months. This also

Figure 3: Ojibwe women with birch bark mococks, each containing 60 pounds of maples sugar. Photograph taken near Mille Lac circa 1910. Minnesota Historical Society MSH 19571, Original Photographer Otis Smith.

protected these foods from bears and other animals. Several layers of bark, hay, and mats lined the cache pits. Then earth and boughs or branches sealed in and concealed the contents. Maple sugar stored underground in lower temperatures and within the birch bark containers did not spoil and could be eaten throughout the year. Separate pits contained different types of food and several families shared caching pits.24 In 1803,

Michel Curot, a fur trader working in the Lake Superior region for the XY Company, mentioned many times throughout his journal than the Indian groups he encountered cached wild rice in the fall and had a supply when needed in the winter. Curot and his men also cached their food, furs, and trade goods.25 George Nelson who also worked for the XY Company during the same time recalls his men being “obliged” to take some rice from a cache because his men were starving.26

10 Woodlands Indian women became experts in maintaining a healthy sugar bush and maximizing production after generations of careful observation of the sugar maple and practical application in the manufacture of maple products. In order to maintain a healthy sugar bush, to understand sap collection, and to maximize production, it is important to understand the biology of the sugar maple tree. The Acer saccharum (sugar maple tree) flourishes the region of North America that included the St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes watershed. In northern climes conditions eventually become too cold, in southern climates conditions are too warm and there is not enough precipitation in the west. Therefore, both the soil and climate limit the growing region and distribution of the sugar maple.27 Climate and geographic conditions have changed to some degree over the last two hundred years but the range of sugar maple distribution has shifted only slightly.

While today the range of maple distribution is similar to the nineteenth century distribution, the number of sugar maples has declined. (See figure 4, page 1228.) This decline is the result of selling these trees for lumber and clearing land for agriculture and habitation development.29

During the early nineteenth century the sugar groves in the upper Midwest had not yet suffered the ax of the lumber industry or intensive agricultural settlement. While there were abundant maple trees, not all were healthy. To produce the greatest amount of sap, a sugar maple should be at least forty years old, and should have a large and healthy root system that could take in water and the “crude” sap that is formed in the root system over the cold winter months. The tree should also have a wide canopy of top branches with ample leaves exposed to the sunlight and receive carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. A large, long trunk will store the sap in cells of the sapwood layer. Within

Figure 4: Natural Growing Range of the Sugar Maple Tree. Source: Elbert L. Little, Jr., et al of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service. http://esp.cr.usgs.gov/data/atlas/little/ the physical structure of the tree, there are complex chemical reactions and enzymes that create the amount of sugar that is produced and released in each tree annually due to temperature fluctuations. Temperature helps with sucrose development and its release into the cells of the maple tree. As the temperatures rise in spring the sucrose is released.

If the sapwood is kept at 40 degrees Fahrenheit or colder then starch remains in the sapwood cells; however, if the temperature rises above 40 degrees Fahrenheit, the starch is turned into sugar and flows through the sapwood. When the temperature rises above 45 degrees Fahrenheit, according to Forestry Specialist Bud Blumstock, “the enzymes stop functioning and sugar is no longer produced.” It is only during this small window, when the temperature is between 40 and 45 degrees Farhenheit, that maple sugar production

12 can take place.30 The amount of snowfall throughout the winter also affects the quality and quantity of maple sugar produced. If the ground has had a chance to freeze to a greater depth because of minimal snow in the beginning of the winter and then if snow accumulates later in the winter, conditions exist for maple trees to produce sweeter sap in larger quantities than in years when these environmental factors are absent.31

Sap begins to flow once temperatures reach that critical stage in late February or early March, with above freezing in the day and below freezing at night. When the maple tree is cut or pierced, a wound is created in the wood membrane. This piercing is called a tap. The opening in the bark and sapwood allows the sap to flow from the “severed vessels bordering a tap hole,” to the outside. The wood shavings from the tap hole help indicate whether the sapwood is healthy or not. The lighter the color the healthier the sapwood. The height of a tap should be approximately four feet or more above the root system. The angle of the hole should be slightly upward allowing gravity to help the sap to flow. The number of tap holes each tree can support depends on the size of the tree trunk. A sugar maple that is less than ten inches in diameter should not be tapped. It takes on average forty years for a tree to reach the size of ten inches in diameter and as the tree continues to grow a tap is added for every five additional inches. For example, a tree that is between fifteen and twenty inches in diameter can support two taps, a tree that is between twenty and twenty-five inches in diameter can support three and so on.32 A mature tree may be tapped each spring for the rest of its life.

After a tree is tapped a spile is placed into the tap hole to direct the flow of the sap into collection containers. In the early nineteenth century, in the upper Midwest, a spile was a spout made of birch bark or sumach or various small branches of hollow wood.

Ethnographer Francis Densmore discussed the Ojibwe use of elm for spiles: “The

13 wooden spiles were commonly made of slippery elm and were about six inches long, two inches wide, and curved on the under surface.” J. Edward Foster, living in Wisconsin in the 1840s, discussed how pipe stems were made. He described how hollow tubes were created when people placed small stems into anthills and the pith was subsequently eaten.33 Perhaps this was the same method used to make spiles.34

The average sugar bush supported a variety of taps on trees of forty years and older. According to Densmore, an average sugar bush yielded up to 900 taps. Assuming an average of three taps per tree, each sugar bush had approximately 300 viable trees for tapping. Tappers gained experience by learning from older tappers, how many taps to place on one tree based on the size of the tree, and the correct angle to place the tap so that the sap would flow down into the collection container. Women experienced at tapping could put in, on average, 300 taps a day. Placing one spile every two minutes for ten hours resulted in the insertion of about 300 taps. Therefore, for an average sugar bush of 900 taps only three to four days were needed to complete the tapping if done by one person. As women tapped, other women in camp constructed and placed the collection containers below the spiles. In the early nineteenth century women made these collection containers with birch bark.35

Once collected, the sap is boiled until the water content is reduced creating a thickened syrup. To produce granulated sugar further boiling is required until “sugaring off,” occurs, the point of granulation. During the early nineteenth century Woodlands

Indian women, before sugaring off, strained the thick syrup of impurities such as leaves, and used a variety of materials including basswood, woven mats or white blankets. Indian women placed thick syrup in a clean kettle and allowed the syrup to boil slowly until sugar grains started to form. Once this stage was reached Native women poured the

14 mixture into a basswood trough and stirred until the substance was completely granulated. Women also used some of the thick syrup to make other sugar products such as taffy and gum.36 J.B. Spencer, from the Canadian Department of Agriculture, described the details of different stages of sugaring off. If maple syrup is boiled to between 240 and 242 degrees Fahrenheit it can be poured directly into a mold to make a medium hard “cake” or loaf sugar. If at this stage, however, the syrup is poured and then stirred in a vessel, a “stirred” sugar is formed. This stirred sugar can be either left in hard cakes or pulverized. Once pulverized the sugar could become “almost as fine as flour and if of good quality almost as white.”37

Maple sugar production was a family activity with gender-defined labor. Work parties comprised of women and children completed these labor-intensive activities. The ethnographic record from the early nineteenth century, concerning maple sugar production reflects the continued gendered division of labor seen in upper Midwest

Indian cultures. While much of the activity surrounding the manufacture of maple products revolved around women, a few aspects involved men. These were heavier more strenuous activities, such as building the beam or arch that supported the boiling pots of syrup and repairing or carving basswood log troughs used in the creation of maple sugar.

The men also on occasion stirred the maple sugar during the last stages of granulation.

The amount of work that men preformed in the maple sugar camps depended on the group needs, and the amount of sugar produced, and the timing of fish runs during spring thaw. In any event, women continued to control the produce and managed the trees within the sugar bush.38 As well as the gendered division of labor within the camp there was also a gendered division in this time of the seasonal round, as men would fish and hunt for further food supplies during this season.

15 The men and boys would leave the sugar camps to hunt and fish, and fur traders’ accounts describe men and boys arriving to trade or offer assistance to fur traders in need of food. Michel Curot, a fur trader with the XY company working from the Lake

Superior region wrote in his journal on February 14, 1804, “The Two Bands have United to go and make sugar together, and also for the Spring hunt.” Curot also discussed trading meat, and bear, otter, and muskrat skins.39 Francois Malhiot, a trader with the North West

Company and a contemporary of Curot’s, was stationed at a post near southern Lake

Superior. On April 16th 1805, Malhiot wrote in his journal regarding the trade of meat and furs: “L’Outard” arrived here with two loads of meat that he gave me as a present. I gave him six pots of rum. A moment afterward his brother-in-law arrived thinner than I have ever seen any man and so weakened by starvation that he could hardly put one foot before the other.”40 Men of varying skills as hunters, procured for meat for their families and to trade for rum and supplies.

The ABCFM missionaries in the upper Midwest region also described life within

Ojibwe families and the division of labor. The ABCFM sent many missionaries to the upper Midwest during the first half of the nineteenth century. Two such missionaries were Sherman Hall and William Boutwell, who reported in 1833: “The business of the men is chiefly hunting and fishing. Almost all other kinds of labor are performed by the women, such as cultivating their gardens, building lodges, making sugar, cutting and collecting fuel.”41 While these missionaries concluded that the work of women was drudgery, this account nonetheless provides a description of how Indian people defined gendered labor. Leonard Wheeler, when describing the sugar camp mentioned that during a good sugar run everyone is employed to work and recalled “If the season be favorable every man woman and child is set to work, and the departments of labor are so various

16 that every able bodied person can find something to do.” Further on in the journal

Wheeler highlighted the role of the senior women in the camp: “Every once in a little while the matron of the lodge may be seen with her little torch in hand walking around the fire taking a survey of her kettles.”42 Production of maple sugar was an important item for survival for Ojibwe and trader alike and the matriarch of the kin group oversaw production and quality control.

Women were in charge of maple sugar camps, and the female environment of the sugar camp fostered skills such as social leadership and created an environment for young girls to develop the ability to produce food and clothing.43 Throughout the season girls would learn to make these items. When girls were at the isolation lodge during menses they would practice and perfect many female activities; one of these was learning to create and repair maple sugar equipment. Catholic missionary Inez Hilger, in

Chippewa Child Life: and Its Cultural Background, explained that for Indian women, enforced isolation was an important time to learn and perfect skills during which idleness was not allowed. “One informant under the direction of her mother mended birch bark cups used in gathering maple sugar by plugging cracks in the bark with pitch heated in a small pan over a fire in her wigwam.”44

Ethnologist Francis Densmore remarked that young girls were taught throughout their childhood “what might be called the accomplishments of feminine life.”45

Grandmothers taught young girls women’s tasks and it was the grandmother, an elder, who was responsible for passing on these traditions to girls in the next generations.

Elders are respected in upper Midwest Indian culture as women and men who have attained an age of maturity, have lived a productive life, have knowledge of cultural traditions, and their longevity is an example that they are favored by the spirits. Elders

17 instructed younger generations through oral traditions, and through applied training in upper Midwest Indian customs. “By living through all the stages and living out the visions, men and women know something of human nature and living and life. What they have come to know and abide by is wisdom.”46 Elders were essential in cultural continuity.

In these multigenerational sugar camps young girls would help in the boiling process and ensuring that the sap did not boil over by learning from older women when the sap was about to burn. Girls also learned the stages of boiling, when to strain the syrup, and learned about the different maple products made. It was important to know how the sugar looked at different stages. Sometimes descriptions defined how to know when to sugar-off. When it “made eyes”47 it was time to take the syrup out of the pot to make maple taffy or gum, or to make granular sugar by working the maple mixture with a paddle or by hand in a basswood trough.48 Girls also helped with the washing of utensils and equipment so that the next batch of sugar would then be free of impurities and a particular color and the desired consistency would be achieved.49 Ojibwe writer Maude

Kegg remembered her experiences learning the art of maple sugar making from the women in her family in the early twentieth century. Kegg, her grandmother, and three other women from Kegg’s family arrived at their sugar bush to prepare the camp. Later an aunt, uncle, and cousin joined them. As a young girl one of Kegg’s tasks was to stir the sap with a fir bough in case the sap boiled over. By performing this task, she began to learn the skills of maple production. Kegg also helped her grandmother as the syrup was

“sugared off” and Kegg would dip “in that little carved paddle called the neyakokwaanens to help stir the thickened syrup so it would granulate. Kegg had a smaller version of the paddles women utilized to create granulated maple sugar.

18 Sisibâkwatâbo is the Ojibwe word for sugar water or sweet water. Kegg used her own kind of sugar water when she recounted being allowed to create some “maple sugar” of her own “by using the sweet water left from washing the kettles.“ 50 In this way young girls could practice their skills in sugar production.

Kegg discussed the instruction she received from her grandmother at the family’s sugar bush. As a young girl Kegg arrived with her grandmother, and aunts, to prepare and work the sugar bush. While she was there she was instructed on the craft of sugar making as well as the rituals and taboos associated with sugar production. Kegg was also taught the importance of fasting and recounted a fast time in spring: “When I get up in the morning, she says to me: “Naawakamigook, get some charcoal. Rub it on your face,” so I rubbed the Charcoal on my face.” The grandmother told Kegg not to taste anything for two days, that the sun would be watching her. However, Kegg had a taste of maple twig and tobacco the first day. At the end of the day her grandmother gave her a drink of water from a small cup made of birch bark that the grandmother had made. The grandmother made a single mark with charcoal on the cup, hung it up, and reminded Kegg that she had one more day to fast. Kegg talked of how a lot of preparations for the sugar camp were going on but she was glad she had to fast because the adults told her to fast. When she thought of the twig and tobacco she tasted she was scared. The second day Kegg refrained from eating anything. “I fasted for two days,” she said, “and then when it got dark, the old lady again fed me rice.”51 In the course of making maple sugar products, young women were exposed to cultural norms.52 Densmore and her informant Nodinens discussed the passing on of female skills and cultural knowledge thorough storytelling.

Maude Kegg also emphasized the importance of her grandmother in teaching her the skills and traditions of her culture.53

19 The importance of women as teachers in both Native and Euro-American culture is illustrated by the correspondences of Leonard and Harriet Wheeler, missionaries with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM). Rev. Wheeler petitioned to have domestic help as a means for the wives of missionaries to have a more direct influence on the Native women. Wheeler wrote, “The mother, who must be the principal teacher and patern (sic) of and industry in a family, needs herself to be taught.

Thus the female missionary is really the only proper teacher.”54 The missionary’s wife could lead by example and teach the domestic, civilizing arts. These wives also knew the importance of women in upper Midwest Indian cultures. In order to reach the Native women they were missionizing, many wives like Harriet Wheeler asked for help rearing children and doing housework so they could visit with and influence Native women.

Leonard Wheeler remarked that Native women “Having much time to visit herself, she cannot see why the female missionary cannot visit as well as she.”55 The Wheelers understood the importance of women-centered groups to the Ojibwe and the importance of visiting and Mrs. Wheeler realized that in order to have a forum for her preaching the gospel and teaching the traits that denote American civilization she must have the time to visit.

Women in Indigenous communities created several types of maple sugar products during each season. First-run syrup, or syrup from the beginning of the season was considered the best because it had the sweetest flavor. Last-run syrup, sometimes called

“buddy sap”, was never as tasty as the first run because, as the trees begin to bud and rejuvenate, nitrogen increased in the sap, changing its chemical make-up. Women also created other maple products, including maple gum, hard maple sugar, and granular sugar. Each of these different maple products had specific uses. Maple gum was usually

20 reserved as treats for children. Pouring maple syrup onto snow or ice just before the syrup reached the graining stage formed maple gum, also called maple wax or maple taffy.

Women also poured hard maple syrup into molds or small containers just before the syrup started to grain, to create cake sugar. Hard maple sugar could be made into medicines or given as gifts. Women made granular maple sugar in greater quantity than any other product. The creation of sugar began when thickened maple syrup was poured into wooden troughs as it started to grain. This syrup was then vigorously and continuously stirred by hand with a wooden paddle until a grainy mixture formed. Native cultures from the upper Midwest used granular sugar in cooking, as a medicine and as a valuable trade item.56

Another culinary use for maple sap included a maple vinegar created when sap was left to sour. Women collected the last sap of the season or “buddy sap” to manufacture maple vinegar. In addition, women also created vinegar by collecting the water used to rinse off the containers and utensils used to make maple sugar before these items are then washed and stored for the next spring. The production of maple vinegar occured when the sap or rinse water was first boiled then allowed to cool. Next the mixture was placed in an open container to allow natural yeast spores to ferment the liquid. The vinegar was then stored in a cool place, such as the cache pits would provide.57 This vinegar, called cîwa’bo by the Ojibwe, was then used in cooking meats, such as venison.58 Spencer also described the creation of maple vinegar: “It is estimated by an experienced sugar maker that from the product of 1,000 tapped trees may easily make 25 to 30 gallons of very fine vinegar from materials that are usually thrown away.”

From the average American Indian managed sugar camp of 300 trees, therefore, between seven and a half to nine gallons of vinegar could have been produced.59

21 Native people used granular sugar to season all kinds of dishes including meats, fish, fruits, and vegetables. Small children sometimes ate a soft food of boiled rice and maple sugar. Also, pounding dried corn, adding maple sugar and then stirring this mixture in water created a ‘soup’ that served as a convenient food for travel. One cup of this mixture could sustain the traveler for the day. Diluting maple sugar in water created a popular summertime drink. Women sometimes added maple sugar as a top layer to dried food, such as fish or berries, when they preserved these items in caches.60

Native women gave gifts of maple sugar products to family and visitors. In most cultures mothers create miniatures from the adult world for their children; it is one of the ways mothers and children bond. Ojibwe mothers lovingly created small mococks, sometimes with decorations and filled these little containers with the first-run, or best, sap of the season in the form of hard maple or cake sugar. Native American women also filled bark cones and duck bills with cake sugar that would then harden and set into these containers. It was reserved for later in the year, and was sometimes a treat for children or used for gifting.61 In the early 1840’s J. Edward Foster, while working in the lead mines in Wisconsin, wrote a letter describing a feast to which he was invited by Chief Waukon

Decorah, a Ho-Chunk leader, at which “Domestic sugar was handed round enclosed in the skin of a ducks foot extended to the size of a goose egg.”62 Foster might have been describing maple sugar stored in duck feet, similar to wild rice stored in duck feet, or

Foster might have been describing the hard sugar poured into duckbills to set and given as gifts.63

The Ojibwe valued maple sugar not only as nourishment, but also for its curative properties. Women used maple sugar to flavor medicines and herbal teas. Ojibwe women learned the healing properties of herbs, roots and bark. Native women created decoctions

22 with these items and combined these decoctions with maple sugar to form cakes. Native women stored these medicinal cakes until needed and gave medicine to family members to ease or cure various ailments. In addition, maple sap and syrup have their own medicinal properties: Sap by itself is used as a diuretic; syrup is used to treat intestinal disorders.64

Ojibwe wives and mothers used maple in their medicines, and spiritual healers in

Ojibwe culture also used maple products for healing. According to ethnologist Walter

James Hoffman, a Wabeno, or spiritual healer, might use boiling maple sugar to illustrate his authority and power of magical knowledge. “By the use of plants he is alleged to be enabled to take up and handle with impunity red-hot stones and burning brands, and without evincing the slightest discomfort it is said that he will bathe his hands in boiling water, or even boiling maple sirup.” Members of the Midewiwin, a religious group in

Ojibwe culture, studied the healing properties of plants and used maple sugar in their medicines and also used a decoction of the inner bark of the maple tree as medicine.65 In

Ojibwe culture maple sugar is given to women after childbirth.66 Ojibwe women who were Midewid held ceremonies after childbirth. The ceremonies were held immediately after a difficult birth and the next day after a normal birth. During these ceremonies only maple sugar was consumed.67 Certain plants were not only thought to have qualities that alleviate the symptoms of diseases but also act as a deterrent to “the demons who are present in the system and to whom the disease is attributed.” These are the magical properties of a plant.68 As Thomas Vennom discussed in Wild Rice and the Ojibwe

People, the relationship between American Indian cultures of the upper Midwest and maple sugar was deeply spiritual. Just as with wild rice, maple sugar was used in rituals and ceremonies, and found in stories. The story at the beginning of this chapter is one of

23 the stories told about Wenebojo’s gift of maple sugar and its yearly return. Wenebojo is a cultural hero of the Ojibwe and it is believed he instilled the importance of maple sugar by making the process of creating syrup and sugar so labor intensive.69

Indigenous cultures in the upper Midwest considered maple sugar as more than food, more than medicine, maple sugar was sacred and found not only in everyday meals and feasts, but also in rituals, and ceremonies. For example, a hunter offered a bear, after it had been killed maple sugar and wild rice. Furthermore, Ojibwe communities celebrated feasts of thanksgiving with the first foodstuff of the season. The Ojibwe honored the first rice harvested, the first fish caught, the first of each animal killed, the first fruits collected, and the first maple sap collected and then the group began the task of harvesting the bounty of the season. During First Harvest Feasts, or Offering of First

Fruits, members of the tribe prepared a feast honoring the first food procured that season and offered Kitchi Manido, their Creator, the first game or fruit. Everyone, except members of the community who were under taboo laws, partook of the feast.70 Women who were menstruating and individuals who were grieving were under these taboo laws.

A family member fed them some of the first harvest. Afterward they could participate in harvesting the crop and during the year of mourning each seasonal food had to be fed to the mourner, before they could gather that particular foodstuff. In Chippewa Child Life,

Inez Hilgar related three types of taboos regarding menstruation and eating first foods.

Sometimes women who were menstruating could not be fed the first harvest as it was a time of isolation. However one informant recalled, “After the people had eaten, some of the food in season was handed to the girl. After eating it, she was permitted to participate in whatever seasonal occupation the people were then engaged in.” Another informant

24 from Red Lake described her first menses during sugar making time and before she could eat sugar she was to eat some charcoal the size of a pea.71

After the death of a loved one, family members held a ceremonial feast known as the Feast of the Dead or Jibakwe in Anishenabeg. When a member of the tribe died, community members aided the family of the deceased with preparing the body and performed specific rituals. These rituals helped the deceased reach the Land of Souls, and also helped family members cope with the loss of the loved one. After family prepared the corpse for burial, a member of the Midewewin, one who had reached the Fourth

Degree, conducted the burial ceremony. During the first part of burial ceremony, or first instruction, the officiator addresses the spirit of the deceased. This address informed and instructed the spirit of its four-day journey along the path of souls to the Land of Souls.

The second part, or second instruction of the burial ceremony, occurred in the evening after the men in the community had prepared the gravesite and lit a fire beside it. The body was then interred and a birch bark shelter constructed over the burial mound.

Women in the community placed food, such as maple sugar, berries, and rice, as well as water, in this lodge. This food was then available for the spirit during its four-day journey to the Land of Souls. Additional food was placed in the grave lodge periodically to feed the spirit, however, it was also acceptable for travelers who were in need of sustenance to consume this food. 72

George Nelson discussed the use of maple sugar and other foods left at gravesites.

Nelson and his men were traveling to Grand Portage on May 22, 1804, and started off with little food. The men fished and hunted along the way. By June 1st the party had made it to Portage La Coquille. After they made camp, the men began to look for food.

Nelson knew of the Ojibwe tradition of leaving food at gravesites as an offering and

25 explained, “after much trouble & searching we found a bark box containing about 40pds of Sugar that one of the Deceased’s women had hid for him lately as a sacrifice we took it.” Those who were in need and hungry could eat food offerings. Finally, Edmund F. Ely an ABCFM missionary at the Lake Superior missions in Minnesota in the mid nineteenth century recalled “The grave is always kept clean if snow falls the relatives sweep it away.”73

Sugar was not only ritually important but also economically and politically valuable. In February of 1831, the United States Senate concluded a treaty with the

Menominee at Washington to create a reservation for Oneidas wishing to immigrate to

Wisconsin from New York State. During the ratification of the treaty Grizzley Bear, one of several speakers for his tribe, explained:

We have one exception to make -: Augustin Grignon has Sugar Camps at which he makes Sugar - we do not know exactly where they are, so as to describe them to you - They are back from the River, on this land, which we agree to give up. He must have the privilege to make Sugar as heretofore at his Camps And there are some other of our Friends, the Traders, who have Sugar Camps back here, and it is our wish that they may not be interfered with either. You must also tell the N.Y. Indians that they must not spoil these Sugar Camps.74

This exception was written into the treaty and designated sugar groves and the use of these maple trees by Augustin Grignon, a métis, and other fur traders and their families who were “accustomed to make sugar may not be interfered with.” The proviso in the

Treaty of 1831 might highlight a shift in the gendered labor and in some cases ownership of sugar trees within métis communities. August Grignon, a métis, and other fur traders, were named as owners of sugar bushes contained within Menominee land. However, U.S. property Law of the early nineteenth century dictated that only men could own property and while Grignon was named as an owner, it does not necessarily mean he was. Native communities in the upper Midwest gave Native women rights over the sugar bush and 26 items produced from it and women from métis fur trade families often produced maple sugar on Indigenous land as part of an extended kin network.75

Upper class Euro-Americans developed a social desire for white sugar, and as they settled the upper Midwest region, métis families began to alter some aspects of sugar production to meet this demand. According to Elizabeth Baird, the granddaughter of a prominent métis fur trade family from Michilimackinac, the methods of métis sugar production were similar to Indian methods. Albert Ellis, a Euro-American who settled in the region in the 1820s, visited a métis sugar camp and described the use of egg whites to further purify the sugar, producing a lighter, almost white product, "The whites of which were broken in the boiling syrup, when all impurities immediately came to the surface and were removed.”76 Much of the descriptions and advice Spencer explained in “The

Maple Sugar Industry in Canada” were similar to the descriptions in Francis Densmore’s ethnographies of the Ojibwe and of Elizabeth Baird and Albert Ellis recollections of life in the upper Midwest in the nineteenth century. All four described the use of felt strainers and egg whites to clarify sugar, and the importance of keeping utensils clean. Baird, while living on Michilimackinac Island at the confluence of Lakes Michigan and Huron, recalled the maple sugar production in the region during 1823. Baird’s grandmother, matriarch of the family’s sugar bush, hired men to work the sugar. “A thousand or more trees claimed our care, and three men and two women were employed to do the work.”77

Native communities sanctioned métis access to these camps as family and kin.

Leonard Wheeler, an ABCFM missionary stationed at La Pointe, Wisconsin, in his missionary journal dated January 1844, described a métis family and their production of white maple sugar. In Wheeler’s description it is the Wheeler’s hired man, Robert, doing all of the collection and production of maple sugar even though Robert was at

27 camp with his family and extended kin of 20. This métis production of maple sugar, although described by Wheeler as a one-man operation, would have required the participation of all individuals present. Whether it was gathering wood, collecting sap, tending boiling kettles, one individual could not have collected the amount Robert is purported to have produced. Wheeler described Robert’s camp as having “two rows of kettles 16 in number” “several barrels” of reserved sap, and kettles that “are kept boiling night and day.”78 If Robert was in charge of the maple sugar production in this camp, he probably learned the production from his mother or wife.

Maple sugar was a necessary element in Native culture in the upper Midwest. It nourished body and soul as this product was consumed in everyday dishes, as medicine, and during ceremonies. It was a conduit for teaching traditions within sugar camps and established and maintained relationships when given as a gift between mother and child or used in gifting to create trading ties. The meaning of maple sugar in Native culture remained even as external forces began reshaping the upper Midwest environment. Euro-

Americans entering this region in the first half of the nineteenth century came with their own cultural ideas about the meaning regarding the color of sugar. Maple sugar if it was whiter was desired by Euro-Americas and allowed upper class members of frontier communities to maintain class distinctions. Native women began shifting production methods and creating this pale sugar to broaden the market for this commodity.

28 Endnotes

26. Mark S. Parker Miller, “Obtaining Information via Defective Documents: A search for the Mandan in George Catlin’s Paintings,” in Interpretations of Native North American Life: Material Contributions to Ethnohistory, eds.,Michael S. Nassaney and Eric S. Johnson (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000), 296-318; Lila M. Johnson, “Found (and Purchased): Seth Eastman Water Colors,” Minnesota History Magazine, Vol. 42, No. 7 (Fall 1971): 260; Rebecca Kugel and Lucy Eldersveld Murphy, eds., Native Women’s History in Eastern North American Before 1900: A Guide to Research and Writing (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), xix.

27. Cary Miller, Ogimaag: Anishinaabeg Leadership, 1760-1845 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010), 32-33, 69-70, 110, 126-127.

28. Johnston, Ojibway Heritage, 7, 8.

29. Victor Barnouw, Wisconsin Chippewa Myths & Tales: and Their Relation to Chippewa Life, collected by Robert Ritzenthaler at Court Oreilles I, 1942, Narrator: John Mink, Interpreter: Prosper Guibord (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977), 90-91.

30. Frances Densmore, How Indians Use Wild Plants for Food, Medicine and Crafts (New York: Dover Publications, 1974), 313; Inez Hilger, Chippewa Child Life and Its Cultural Background (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1992), 52-53; Walter James Hoffman, The Menomini Indians (1896; repr., New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1970), 290. Google Books: http://books.google.com/ (accessed February 2010); Keller, “America’s Native Sweet,” 122-123.

31. Densmore, How Indians Use Wild Plants; Frances Densmore,“Chippewa Customs,” in Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology. Bulletin 86 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1929); Maude Kegg, Gabekanaansing/At the end of the Trail: Memories of Chippewa Childhood in Minnesota with Texts in Ojibwe and English, edited and transcribed by John Nichols, (Thunder Bay, Ontario: 1978. Edition: Authorized reprint number 4 Linguistics Series, Occasional Publications in Anthropology, Museum of Anthropology, University of Northern Colorado); Hilger, Chippewa Child; Smith, “Ethnobotony of the Ojibwe,” 327-525; Thomas J. Vennum, Wild Rice and the Ojibway People (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1988).

32. Densmore, How Indians Use Wild Plants; Densmore, “Chippewa Customs”; Kegg, Gabekanaansing; Hilger, Chippewa Child Life; Smith, “Ethnobotony of the Ojibwe”; Vennum, Wild Rice.

33. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the History Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, Vol.I-VI. I (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co., 1851), 81; Helen Nearing and Scott Nearing, The Maple Sugar Book: Together With Remarks on Pioneering as a Way of Living in the Twentieth Century (New York: Schocken Books,1971), 29.

34. Densmore, How Indians Use Wild Plants, 311; Kegg, Gabekanaansing,10-12; Smith, Ethnobotony of the Ojibwe, 395-396; Hoffman, The Menomini, 289-290. To date this researcher has found nothing in the literature explaining why spruce or fir was used specifically. One explanation may be that while the act of stirring is what prevented the syrup from boiling over, branches from particular species of trees were used to either impart a particular flavor or medicinal property conversely tree branches that had undesirable flavors or harmful properties were not used. (Dr. Eve Emshwiller, Department of Botany, UW-Madison, personal communication, January 18, 2011.)

35. Densmore, How Indians Use Wild Plants, 308-309; Smith, “Ethnobotony of the Ojibwe,” 395; Kegg, Gabekanaansing, 5-7.

36. Curot, “A Wisconsin Fur-Trader’s Journal 1803-1804,” 442. 37. Helen Hornbeck Tanner, ed., Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), 19-23; Quimby, Indian Culture and European Trade Goods, 173-175; David R. M. Beck, 29

“Return to Namä’ o Uskíwämît: The Importance of Sturgeon in Menominee Indian History,” Wisconsin Magazine of History, Vol 79, No 1 (Autumn 1995): 32-48; Curot, “A Wisconsin Fur-Trader’s Journal 1803-1804,” 442.

38. Henry, Travels and Adventures, 70.

39. Tanner, Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History, 19-23; Quimby, Indian Culture and European Trade Goods, 173-175; Beck, “Return to Namä’ o Uskíwämît,” 32-48; Curot, “A Wisconsin Fur-Trader’s Journal 1803-1804,” 442.

40. Hoffman, The Menomini, 288; Ruth Landis, Ojibwa Woman (New York: Colombia University Press, 1938), 127; Kegg, Gabekanaansing.

41. Densmore, How Indians Use Wild Plants, 308; Vennum, Wild Rice, 82-83, 265; Hoffman, The Menomini Indians, 288; Densmore, “Chippewa Customs,”123; Miller, Ogimaag, 49.

42. Hilger, Chippewa Child Life,146; Vennom, Wild Rice, 82-83, 265, N4 p. 312; Densmore, Chippewa Customs, 128.

43. Densmore, How Indians Use Wild Plants, 308-309; Smith, “Ethnobotony of the Ojibwe,” 395; Kegg, Gabekanaansing, 5-7.

44. Densmore, How Indians Use Wild Plants, 309-310; Smith, “Ethnobotony of the Ojibwe,” 395, 416; Densmore, “Chippewa Culture”, 122; Kegg, Gabekanaansing, 9; Hoffman, The Menomini, 288-290; Albert G. Ellis, “Fifty-Four Years’ Recollections of Men and Events in Wisconsin, by Albert G. Ellis.” in Collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Vol. VII, edited by Lyman Copeland Draper (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1908), 221.

45. Selwyn Dewdney, The Sacred Scrolls of the Southern Ojibway (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975), 11; Smith, “Ethnobotony of the Ojibwe,” 416; Hilger, Chippewa Childs Life, 149-150.

46. Smith, “Ethnobotony of the Ojibwe,” 416; Densmore, “Chippewa Customs,” 122; Densmore, How Indians Use Wild Plants, 386-388, 396; Hoffman, The Menomini, 288-289; Cary Miller, personal communication, May, 2010.

47. Schoolcraft, Information, Vol. II, 55; Smith, “Ethnobotony of the Ojibwe,” 396.

48. Hilgar, Chippewa Childs Life, 51-54; Kegg, Gabekanaansing, 3-23; Densmore, “Chippewa Customs,” 122; Smith, “Ethnobotony of the Ojibwe,” 396; Schoolcraft, Information, Vol. II, 55.

49. Densmore, How Indians Use Wild Plants, 312-313, 386-387; Densmore, “Chippewa Customs,” 40; Hilger, Chippewa Childs Life, 149-150, 171; Sean B. Dunham, “Cache Pits: Ethnohistory, Archeology, and the Continuity of Tradition,” in Interpretations of Native North American Life: Material Contributions to Ethnohistory, edited by Michael S. Nassaney and Eric S. Johnson, 225-260 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000); Tanner, Atlas, 22.

50. Curot, “A Wisconsin Fur-Trader’s Journal 1803-1804,” 411, 437, 457.

51. Nelson, My First Years in the Fur Trade, The Journal of 1802-1804, Laura Peers, and Theresa Schenck, eds. (St. Paul, Minnesota: Minnesota Historical Society, 2002), 153; Tanner, Atlas, 19-23; Quimby, Indian Culture and European Trade Goods,173-175; Beck, “Return to Namä’ o Uskíwämît,” 32- 48.

52. Ralph D. Nyland, “Sugar Maple: Its Characteristics and Potentials,” in “Sugar Maple Ecology and Health: Proceedings of an International Symposium, June 2-4, 1998, United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service Northeastern Research Station,” edited by Stephen B. Horsley and Robert P. 30

Lang, General Technical Report NE-261, June 1999, (Radnor, Pennsylvania: U.S.D.A. Forest Service, 1999), 2.

53. Nyland, “Sugar Maple,” 1, 2.

54. J. B. Spencer, “The Maple Sugar Industry in Canada,” Bulletin No. 2B (Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau, 1913), 15-16; Robert A. Gregory, “Release of Sap Sugar and Control of Sap Pressure,” in “Sugar Maple Research: Sap Production, Processing, and Marketing of Maple Syrup,” General Technical Report NE-72, United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service Northeastern Forest Experiment Station. 1982; Bud Blumstock, “ How to Tap Maple Trees and Make Maple Syrup,” Bulletin #7036, (The University of Maine Cooperative Extension, 1991), 2001 edition revised by Kathy Hopkins, 1 www.umext.maine.edu/onlinepubs/pdfpubs/7036.pdf (accessed March 20, 2011).

55. Gregory, “Release of Sap Sugar,” 1, 2, 4; Russel S. Walters and Harry W. Yawney, “Sugar Maple Tapholes” in “Sugar Maple Research: Sap Production, Processing, and Marketing of Maple Syrup,” General Technical Report NE-72, United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service Northeastern Forest Experiment Station (1982), 8-9; Cornell Sugar Maple Research and Extension Program. http://maple.dnr.cornell.edu/FAQ.htm (accessed March 20, 2011).

56. Gregory, “Release of Sap Sugar,” 1, 2, 4; Walters and Yawney, “Sugar Maple Tapholes,” 8-9; Anni L. Davenport and Lewis J. Staats, “Maple Syrup Production for the Beginner,” Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences Cooperative Extension (1998), 2 maplesyrup.cas.psu.edu/pdfs/maple_syrup_production.pdf (accessed March 20, 2011).

57. Densmore, How Indians Use Wild Plants, 309-311; Smith, “Ethnobotony of the Ojibwe Indians,” 327-525; J. Edwards Foster. Papers. 1835-1841. Edward E. Ayer Manuscript Collection, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL; Gregory, “Release of Sap Sugar,” 1, 2, 4; Walters and Yawney, “Sugar Maple Tapholes,” 8-9.

58. Densmore, How Indians Use Wild Plants, 309, 311; Smith, “Ethnobotony of the Ojibwe,” 395; Hoffman, The Menomini, 289.; Nearing and Nearing, The Maple Sugar Book, 148-149; J. Edward Foster, 1835-1841, Ayer Manuscript Collection, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL.

59. Densmore, How Indians Use Wild Plants, 309, 311; Smith, “Ethnobotony of the Ojibwe,” 395; Hoffman, The Menomini, 288-289; Nearing and Nearing, The Maple Sugar Book, 148-149.

60. Densmore, How Indians Use Wild Plants, 311- 312; Kegg, Gabekanaansing,10-12; Hoffman, The Menomini, 289-290; Smith, “Ethnobotony of the Ojibwe,” 395-396; Johann Georg Kohl, Kitchi-Gami: Life Among the Lake Superior Ojibway, Trans. Lascelles Wraxall (1860; repr., St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1985), 323-324.

61. Spencer, The Maple Sugar Industry, 41.

62. Elizabeth Baird, “Reminiscences of Early Days on Mackinac Island by Elizabeth Thèrése Baird,” in Collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Vol. XIV, edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites (Madison, Wisconsin: Democrat Printing Company, State Printer, 1898), 28; Densmore, “Chippewa Customs,” 119-123; Densmore, How Indians Use Wild Plants, 309-311; Schoolcraft, Information.

63. Curot, “A Wisconsin Fur-Trader’s Journal 1803-1804,” 442.

64. Francois Victor Malhiot, “A Wisconsin Fur-Trader’s Journal, 1804-1805,” in Collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Vol. XIX, edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites (Madison, Wisconsin: Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1910), 209.

65. Communication from Messrs. Hall and Boutwell, dated at La Pointe, Feb. 7th, 1833, “Character and 31

Mode of Life of the Ojibwas,” in The Missionary Herald, Containing The Proceedings at Large of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions; with a general view of Other Benevolent Operations for the Year 1833. Vol. XXIX (Published at the expense of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and all the profits devoted to the promotion of the missionary cause. Printed by Crocker and Brewester), 316, Boston Missionary Herald, Vol. XXIX (1833) University BV2350.M5 v. 25 1833.

66. L.H. Wheeler, Missionary Journal, Jan 1, 1844, Wheeler Family Papers, Northland Miss 14, Box 3, Folder 4, Diaries, Leonard H. Wheeler, 1835-1844, WHS.

67. For further discussions on women and organized work see Patricia Buffalohead, "Farmers, Warriors, Traders: A Fresh Look at Ojibway Women," in The American Indian, 3rd ed. Ed. Roger L. Nichols (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986), 28-38; Kugel, “Leadership within the Women’s Community,” 166-200.

68. Hilger, Chippewa Child Life, 52.

69. Hilgar, Chippewa Childs Life, 51-56 (page 56, Hilger quoting Densmore, 1929, 62; Kegg, Gabekanaansing, 3-23; Densmore, “Chippewa Customs,” 122; Smith, “Ethnobotony of the Ojibwe,” 396; Schoolcraft, Information, Vol. II, 55.

70. Basil Johnson, Ojibway Heritage, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1976), 118.

71. Hilger, Chippewa Child Life, Regarding “making eyes”, an informant from White Earth described this stage of maple sugar production, p. 146. To make eyes, means the syrup is boiling at a desired rate and the syrup is at a particular consistency that an experienced sugar maker by sound and sight that the proper temperature had been reached. To make granulated sugar, the temperature of the syrup should reach between 252 degrees Fahrenheit and 257 degrees Fahrenheit, for maple wax the temperature is between 230 degrees Fahrenheit and 252 degrees Fahrenheit, see Randall B. Heiligmann, “Maple Candy and Other Confections,” F-46-02, Ohio State University http://ohioline.osu.edu/for-fact/0046.html (accessed March 20, 2011).

72. Densmore, How Indians Use Wild Plants, 311; Kegg, Gabekanaansing,10-12; Hilger, Chippewa Child Life, 146.

73. Kegg, Gabekanaansing, 23. Kegg reminisces about being allowed to sugar off.

74. Kegg, Gabekanaansing, 3-23.

75. Kegg, Gabeganenseg, 25-28

76. Kegg, Gabekanaansing.

77. Densmore, Chippewa Customs, 29, 120; Kegg, Gabekanaansing, 5-7, 18-32.

78. Rev. Leonard Wheeler to Rev. David Green, Jan. 23, 1843, Wheeler Family Papers, Transcriptions, missing originals, 1829-1864, n.d. Box 3, Folder 2, Wheeler Family Papers, Northland Mss 14, WHS.

79. Harriet Wheeler Letter, Wheeler Family Papers, Northland Mss 14, Box1, WHS; Harriet Wheeler to Mrs. Hosmer, 1842, Box 2, File 6, Correspondence, Professional 1833-1847, Wheeler Family Papers, Northland Mss 14, WHS; Leonard Wheeler to Rev. David Green, La Pointe Lake Superior January 23, 1843, Wheeler Family Papers, Transcriptions, Missing Originals, 1829-1864 n.d., Box 3, File 2, Northland Mss, WHS.

80. Densmore, How Indians Use Wild Plants, 312-313; K.C. Holgate, “Changes in the Composition of Maple Sap During the Tapping Season,” New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, 742, June 1950,

(Geneva, New York, 1950), 5, 13; Densmore, “Chippewa Customs,” 123; Hoffman, The Menomini, 290; Kohl, Kitchi-Gami, 323-324; Smith, Ethnobotony of the Ojibwe, 395.

81. Catherine Parr Traill, The Canadian Settlers Guide (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1969),149; J. B. Spencer, “The Maple Sugar Industry in Canada,” 49.

82. Smith, Ethnobotony of the Ojibwe, 395; Densmore, How Indians Use Wild Plants, 313. Maple buddy syrup and wash water used to clean utensils and equipment are also describe in Maude Kegg’s Gabekanaansing.

83. Spencer, The Maple Sugar Industry, 49, Smith, “Ethnobotony of the Ojibwe,” 395; Densmore, How Indians Use Wild, 309-311; Kegg, Gabekanaansing.

84. Schoolcraft, Information, Vol. I, 80; H. A. Schuette and Sybil C. Schuette, “Maple Sugar: A Bibliography of Early Records, I,” in Transaction of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, 29 (1935), document 36, 223.

85. Densmore, How Indians Use Wild Plants, 312-313; Densmore, “Chippewa Customs,” 122-132; Hilger, Chippewa Childs Life, 58; Schoolcraft, Information, Vol. II, 55; Hoffman, The Menomini, 290.

86. J. Edward Foster, 1835-1941, Ayer Manuscript Collection, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL.

87. Vennom, Wild Rice, See sketch of rice in ducks feet, 139; Densmore, How Indians Use Wild Plants, 312-313, 386-387; Densmore, “Chippewa Customs,” 40; Hilger, Chippewa Childs Life, 149-150,171; Dunham, “Cache Pits, 229-230; Tanner, Atlas, 19-23; Curot, “A Wisconsin Fur-Trader’s Journal 1803- 1804,” 411, 437 ; George Nelson, My First Years in the Fur Trade, The Journal of 1802-1804, edited by Laura Peers, and Theresa Schenck (St. Paul, Minnesota: Minnesota Historical Society, 2002), 153; Quimby, Indian Culture and European Trade Goods, 170-175; Beck, “Return to Namä’ o Uskíwämît,” 32- 48.

88. Hilger, Chippewa Childs Life, 31; Densmore, How Indians Use Wild Plants, 313, 328; J.W. Hoffman, “The Midē’wiwin or “Grand Medicine Society” of the Ojibwa,” in The Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution 1885-1886 (Washington: Government Printing Office 1891), Google Books: http://books.google.com/ (accessed February 2010), 198.

89. W. J. Hoffman, “The Mide’wiwin,” 156-157,

90. Miller, Ogimaag, 160 (see note 36 on page 264, William T. Boutwell, November 9, 1833, Journal Kept While at Leach Lake, 142, Boutwell Papers).

91. Vicki Dowd, personal communication, February 10, 2010; Cary Miller, Ogimaag; Hoffman, “The Midē’wiwin,” 157, 197-198.

92. Hoffman, “The Midē’wiwin,” 157, 197-198.

93. Thomas J. Vennum, Wild Rice and the Ojibway People (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1988), 58. This section relies heavily on Vennum’s analysis on food and spirituality in “Chapter 3: In Legend and Ceremony”.

94. Densmore, Chippewa Customs, 124; Vennom, Wild Rice, 70; Miller, Ogimaag, 49, 50.

95. Densmore, Chippewa Customs, 124; Hilger, Chippewa Childs Life, 51-54; Vennom, Wild Rice, 70,171.

96. Basil Johnston, Ojibway Ceremonies (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press: 1982), 131-154; Vennom, Wild Rice, 75-80; Densmore, Chippewa Customs, 73-78.

97. Jibakwe, Feast for the Dead, also, Jiibenaakewin. Vennum, Wild Rice, 58, 70-71; Nelson, My First Years in the Fur Trade, 159-160 see also note 59 editors comments regarding food at grave sights, from Densmore [1929] 1979:75; Roy Hoover, “To Stand Alone in the Wilderness: Edmund F. Ely, Missionary,” Minnesota History, Fall 1985, 267, http://www.collections.mnhs.org/MNHistoryMagazine/articles/49/v49i07p265-280.pdf (accessed March 23, 2011); Edmund F. Ely Correspondence and Misc. Papers, Vol. 1, 1835-1845, MHS, 39-40.

98. Porter, George B. “Journal of George B. Porter Governor of the Territory of Michigan and Superintendent of Indian Affairs, on his visit to Green Bay, in pursuance of the following Letter of Instructions from the Honorable Lewis Cass, Secretary of War.” Selections from the Joshua Boyer Papers Diary of Geo. B. Porter. Oct. 10-Dec. 10, 1832, kept by his secretary. U.S. MSS BM 5U.S. War Dept Transfer from WHS.

99. Baird, “Reminiscences,” 28; Ellis, Fifty-four Years’,” 221; Diary of Geo. B. Porter, Oct. 10-Dec. 10, 1832, 31,37, 39-49.

100. Baird, “Reminiscences,” 28-34; Ellis, “Fifty-Four Years’,” 220-222.

101. Spencer, “The Maple Sugar Industry in Canada,” 21, 35-37; Baird,“Reminiscences,” 17-64; Ellis, “Fifty-Four Years’,” 207-268; J. Edwards Foster Papers, 1835-1841, Edward E. Ayer Manuscript Collection, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL.

102. Wheeler, L.H. Missionary Journal. Jan 1 1844. Wheeler Family Papers. Diaries, Leonard H. Wheeler, 1835-1844. Box 3, Folder 4. Northland Miss 14. WHS.