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Alexander W. Cotnoir. Photo courtesy: Rene Cotnoir
As spring temperatures begin to climb across Vermont’s forested landscape, the annual arrival of “sugaring season” will soon be underway - that time of year when families, farmers, and maple producers gather to tap sugar maple trees and boil down the resulting sap into maple syrup and maple sugar. Today maple sugaring seems to be everywhere you look in Vermont; in fact it’s nearly inescapable. As Steve Wheeler, owner of Jed’s Maple Products in Newport, VT recently noted over the phone “It’s almost as if maple sap flows through Vermonter’s veins like it does through the branches of the trees in our woods… it’s a part of us.” Indeed, maple syrup has deep roots in both Vermont’s cultural heritage and economy, and the state’s maple industry has continuously grown since the 1970s. In 2020, Vermont recorded it’s highest maple production yet - producing over 2.2 million gallons of the so-called “liquid gold” - representing over half the official crop of the United States and by far the most of any state. Part of Vermont’s increased production was due in part to a record number of taps across the state - over 6,150,000 in total - as sugaring has grown in popularity among hobbyists and commercial operations alike.
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This article was originally published in Audubon Vermont March 2021. Alexander W. Cotnoir is the sole author of the article.
Sap drips from a metal spigot at a sugarbush in Derby, VT
When you ask anyone who doesn’t live in Vermont what they know about the state, chances are maple syrup is one of the main images that comes to their mind, alongside dairy farming and our iconic Green Mountains. The process of tapping, collecting, and boiling sap from wild-growing stands of sugar maple trees into sweet treats has become an annual ritual for families, providing a time to gather, celebrate the arrival of spring, and gain sustenance from the land in the process. In fact, quality maple syrup seems to have become synonymous with the “Vermonter” identity today. Don’t love eating maple syrup on pancakes or a good maple balsamic dressing over your salads? Well, your tastes might cause others to doubt whether you are a Vermonter to the core. All jokes aside, quality maple syrup and romanticized images of maple production have become ingrained in the minds of those who think of Vermont, largely thanks to a combination of the prevalence of sugaring across the state, storytelling and maple advertising. Whether we’ve visited sugarhouses during elementary school field trips, our neighbors or family members make syrup, or we’ve purchased maple products at the store - many of us are familiar, or think we are familiar with the history of this beloved agricultural practice and what a traditional “sugar maker” looks like. Unfortunately, most of us don’t know the history of Vermont maple prior to the 1800-1900s, which means we’re leaving out a potentially large portion of maple's history.
Image of Vermont maple syrup container depicting horse-drawn sleigh collecting maple sap
Now, I encourage you to stop reading this article for a moment and imagine the depictions of maple sugaring you’ve encountered - perhaps you can visualize log cabins painted across the walls of Vermont gift shops, or those adorning maple syrup jugs at your local grocery store. Depictions of Vermont maple sugaring usually follow the same central colonial narrative - a pastoral woodland scene with (usually) white, male farmers wearing red plaid jackets collecting sap from tin buckets, often with a horse and sled in tow. These images have become synonymous with the “brand” that has become Vermont maple syrup that even if you are a diehard maple fanatic, you’ve likely never noticed what these “traditional” sugaring scenes are lacking - Vermont’s Indigenous Abenaki peoples who first perfected, and then passed their maple sugaring knowledge on to European colonists. On this note, I’d like to spend some time today highlighting the Abenaki history of maple syrup; a story which I believe is both misunderstood and under-told, yet crucial to painting a more realistic narrative of the origins of maple production in the region. The Abenaki (also called the Abnaki, Abinaki, or Alnôbak depending on where you are located) are a group of Native American Algonquian-speaking peoples that lived- and continue to reside - in a region called Wabanahkik (pronounced “wah-bah-NAH-keek” - this translates to "the land of the dawn"), a territory now encompassing parts of Quebec and the Maritimes of Canada as well as northern sections of New England including Vermont, New Hampshire, and upstate New York. Although the history of Abenaki peoples is a complex one (I don’t have sufficient space to go into detail here) - like many Indigenous communities, Abenaki communities faced many challenges following the arrival of French missionaries and later English colonists in the Northeast, including entanglements in geopolitical disputes between the French and English colonists, introduced diseases, land dispossession, and even eugenics projects implemented in Vermont targeting disabled and Indigenous people through coerced sterilization, a practice which plateaued around World War II and lasted until as recently as the 1970s according to historian Nancy Gallagher, author of Breeding Better Vermonters: The Eugenics Project in the Green Mountain State. Despite relocation and widespread violence perpetrated against Abenaki peoples, today four state-recognized tribes exist, including the Elnu Abenaki Tribe, the Koasek Abenaki Tribe, the Missisquoi Abenaki Tribe, and the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation (my family belongs to the latter). Maple sugaring had been practiced by many Indigenous communities across North America before the arrival of Europeans, including the Abenaki people of Vermont, who have resided in the northeast since the glaciers receded an estimated 11,000 - 10,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age. Long before the arrival of European explorers and French missionaries, Abenaki peoples followed a multi-step process for collecting and condensing sugar maple sap into sweeteners; a process refined and passed down orally from one generation to the next. One of the first written accounts of the Abenaki sugar-making process comes from Jesuit Sebastien Rasle, who wrote on October 15, 1722 while living among the Kennebec Abenaki “... There is no lack of sugar in these forests. In the spring the maple-trees contain a fluid resembling that which the canes of the islands contain. The women busy themselves in receiving it in vessels of bark, which it trickles from these trees; they boil it, and obtain from it a fairly good sugar” (Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France. 1610- 1791., pg. 95). As this quote indicates - Abenaki women, more often than men - were heavily involved in the sugaring process, as they were with many food gathering practices. According to anthropologist Matthew M. Thomas, author of over a dozen books and peer-reviewed articles about the history of maple sugaring, including: The Archaeology of Great Lakes Native American Maple Sugar Production in the Reservation Era (2001) and A 1952 Visit to an Indian Sugarbush (2003) one of the main ways Indigenous sugar making differed from European systems was that “traditionally, Native American women were the leaders of the operation… they ran the sugarbushes, made and repaired the baskets, and boiled the sap. Women were the primary sugar-makers.” Unlike traditional European sugaring operations where men were delegated most - if not all - of the tree-tapping and sap-gathering tasks, Native women were front and center during the sugaring season in Indigenous communities.
Photo: Vermont Historical Society
Repairing birch baskets
Repairing birch baskets
Repairing birch baskets
A Menominee woman in Wisconsin, photographed in 1908 by Reed Roland, repairs birch bark baskets used to collect maple sap, similar to those employed by Abenaki peoples. Photo: Library of Congress
Birch bark sap basket
Repairing birch baskets
Repairing birch baskets
According to the donor, this 19th century birch bark sap bucket, or “quick basket,” was used to collect maple sap for sugaring in northern Vermont. Image: Wiseman, Frederick M., courtesy Vermont Historical Society
Indian sugar camp
“Indian sugar camp / Capt. S. Eastman, U.S. Army”; John C. McRae.; 1853
Image courtesy of the Library of Congress
From all accounts, it is clear that Europeans observed when and how to tap maple trees during interactions with First Nations peoples - including the Abenaki - who had been sugaring for generations. As French missionary Father Sebastian Rasles wrote in 1689, “It is curious to know that the method of extracting… and making maple sugar, articles of considerable importance to us, has been learned of the aborigines” (Lettres édifiantes et curieuses, Paris 1726). Within the greater context of his writings, Rasles’ comments are steeped in racist views of Indigenous people that were prevalent at the time. He, along with many other missionaries, was incredulous to think that “unsaved and brutish peoples” could perfect such a complex process and share their knowledge with Europeans. Father Rasles’ reaction to Indigenous maple sugar-makers was shared by other colonists, who saw Indigenous sugaring methods as inferior to using metal buckets and eventually taps and other tools. Europeans applauded the “greater efficiency” with which syrup could be produced after adapting methods they learned from Indigenous communities. Given the dismissive attitudes Europeans held toward Indigenous peoples, it is perhaps ironic that the sugaring process wasn’t always easy for Europeans to learn, as recounted by Stephen Williams, who lived with an Abenaki - Pennacook family in Northeast Vermont following the 1704 Raid of Deerfield during Queen Anne’s War. Of his captivity, Williams wrote about the large quantities of sugar they made that year, as well as how he was reprimanded for spoiling the maple sugar after he neglected to stir it properly: "Whilst I lived here, I made about fourscore weight of sugar with the sap of maple trees…. because there was a barrel of sap to boil [my mistress] sent me to the sugar place over night to boil it, so that we might go in the morning. I went and kept a good fire under the kettle, little thinking of its coming to sugar, till it was spoiled for want of stirring" (What Befell Stephen Williams in his Captivity, from The Redeemed Captive Returning to Zion. Northampton, MA: Hopkins, Bridgman and Company, 1853, pg. 7.) By the mid 1800s, maple production spread among European settlers - particularly among farmers - who replaced birch-bark baskets, wooden spiles, and clay pots with tin buckets, spigots, and eventually metal evaporator pans. Although the sugaring process has evolved by leaps and bounds in the 300 years since Europeans settled on the Eastern Seaboard, the core aspects of the process - from the tapping to the boiling - reflect steps Indigenous sugar makers had been refining over generations.
Photo: Tom Olson Collection, courtesy of Matthew M. Thomas
Vermont farmer Albert Leland gathering sap with a yoke. Photo: Tom Olson Collection
Abenaki Nation bottles maple syrup with Abenaki citizens
Today, the Nulhegan Abenaki of Vermont (as well as many other Native American and First Nations communities across the U.S. and Canada) keep our sugaring traditions alive by continuing to produce and share maple sugar. At the Nulhegan Abenaki Tribal Forest located in Barton, VT, we produce and bottle maple syrup each spring utilizing modern technologies including an evaporator pan and glass containers for storage. Although the methods have changed, sugaring still functions as a time for our community members to gather and connect with the woods and one another. Through sugaring, we continue to cultivate a working relationship with the land, while practicing our language - Western Abenaki. Through sugaring, we are reminded to give thanks to the woods that have sustained our communities for generations, despite the hardships our ancestors faced.
In summation, it is my hope that more Vermonters will come to recognize the ways in which sugar maples, maple foods, and the forests that comprise our sugarbushes are culturally important to Indigenous communities, as well as how the modern practice of maple sugaring was first built from age-old Indigenous traditions. Like a growing number of world-class food products that are finally being recognized as having long cultural histories in the Americas, including maize, potatoes, beans, peppers, tomatoes, pineapples, papayas, chocolate, and vanilla, to name just a few, my hope is that the Abenaki history of maple will be celebrated and shared as a part of the sugaring story in Vermont.
Wliwni (thank you) to Brian Chenevert for sharing your knowledge and extensive research about Abenaki history and the history of maple sugaring with me. I would not have been able to complete this article without your expertise and primary sources you pointed me towards. I would also like to say wliwni to my grandfather - who has shared so many stories and has inspired me to continue exploring my Abenaki heritage. Also, I am grateful for my parents who have taught me how to make maple syrup and have shared their love of the land and food generously with those around them. Finally, I would like to thank Dr. Matthew M. Thomas for sharing his archaeological expertise and passion for maple sugaring history with me.
If you are interested in learning more about the Abenaki relationship to the land and how the maple story is alive today in Abenaki-owned sugaring operations, please consider joining a virtual conversation between Chief Don and Vermont Land Trust forester and sugarmaker Caitlin Cusack titled “Traditional Abenaki Sugaring and Stories” which will take place on March, 25th from 7-8pm EST. Chief Don Stevens of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk – Abenaki Nation will share the maple syrup story and ancient Abenaki sugaring traditions. You can learn more and register for the event here.
Peer-reviewed books and articles for further reading:
Bruchac, Margaret. "Malian’s Song–Abenaki Language Glossary." Vermont Folklife Center (2006).
Calloway, Colin G. The Western Abenakis of Vermont, 1600-1800: War, Migration, and the Survival of an Indian People. Vol. 197. University of Oklahoma Press, 1994.
Day, Gordon M. "Western Abenaki Dictionary. Volume 1: Abenaki-English. Mercury Series, Canadian Ethnology Service, Paper 128." (1994).
Keller, Robert H. "America's Native Sweet: Chippewa Treaties and the Right to Harvest Maple Sugar." American Indian Quarterly(1989): 117-135.
Manore, Jean L. "The historical erasure of an indigenous identity in the borderlands: The western Abenaki of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Quebec." Journal of Borderlands Studies26.2 (2011): 179-196.
Nancy L. Gallagher. Breeding Better Vermonters: The Eugenics Project in the Green Mountain State.Revisiting New England: The New Regionalism. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England (1999)
Park, Sunmin, Nobuko Hongu, and James W. Daily III. "Native American foods: History, culture, and influence on modern diets." Journal of Ethnic Foods3.3 (2016): 171-177.
Snow, Dean R. “The Ethnohistoric Baseline of the Eastern Abenaki.” Ethnohistory, vol. 23, no. 3, 1976, pp. 291–306. JSTOR,
Turner, Nancy J., and P. von Aderkas. "Sustained by First Nations: European newcomers use of Indigenous plant foods in temperate North America." Acta Societatis Botanicorum Poloniae81.4 (2012).
Walter, Rosly. "The Wabanakis of Maine and the Maritimes: A Resource Book about Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, Micmac and Abenaki Indians with Extensive with Extensive Lesson Plans for Grades 4 Through 8” (1898)
Wiseman, Frederick Matthew. The voice of the dawn: An autohistory of the Abenaki nation. UPNE (2001).
Resources for Educators: Elnu Abenaki Tribe
Jamaica, VT Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation
Barton, VT Vermont Abenaki Artists Association Ndakinna Education Center
Greenfield Center, NY Decolonizing the History that is Taught in Schools Across the Abenaki Homeland by Vera Longtoe Sheehan
Mt. Kearsarge Indian Museum What Is The Status Of The Abenaki Native Americans In Vermont Today?
Vermont Public Radio, November 4, 2016 Abenaki Indian Fact Sheet
Native American Facts for Kids Native Americans/ Native Vermonters (PDF)
The Vermont Movie Western Abenaki Dictionary & Online Language Lessons Weternabenaki.com The Western Abenaki Language : Youtube Channel By: Jesse Bruchac