Chippewa Maple Sugar Camp: Spiles Below a Diagonal Cut, Kettles Boiled All Night, Sugar Worked in a Trough (Densmore, 1928)

"The season of sugar making began about the middle of March and lasted about a month." The first run of sap was the best.

About 3 ft (90 cm) up, make a diagonal cut about 3 1/2 in. (9 cm) long with an ax. Below its lower end strip the bark in a straight line down for about 4 in. (10 cm). Below that, cut a slot with the ax and drive in a wooden spile: hers were slippery elm, about 6 in. (15 cm) long and 2 in. (5 cm) wide, curved underneath. How far below depends on the grain and hardness of the wood: too near the cut and the wood may split. Big trees take two or three taps.

In the early morning set a birch-bark dish (about 12 in., 30 cm long) on the ground or snow under each tap. When the sap stops running in the late afternoon, pour the dishes into bark pails or buckets.

Heat sap in smaller kettles at the ends of the fire and empty it into the large kettles, only part-filled at first, where the real boiling is done. Keep the fires going all night, taking turns. If a kettle boils up too fast, brush the froth with a spruce branch on a stick and it settles.

By early morning the syrup is slightly thick. Dip it with large wooden spoons and strain it slowly through burlap into a clean kettle (in old days a mat of narrow basswood-bark strips; sometimes a threadbare clean white blanket). This is the syrup.

Wait for a stormy day or the end of sap boiling. Scour the kettles with bunches of stiff rushes and wash everything. Heat the syrup slowly; when thick add small pieces of deer tallow to keep the sugar soft, not brittle. Stir with a maple paddle, then pour it quickly into the granulating trough, stir again and work it with the back of a ladle (or by hand) until it grains, fast, before it cools. Pour the warm sugar into makuks.

From Frances Densmore, *Uses of Plants by the Chippewa Indians*, **44th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology** (1928), pp. 308-313, Plates 33-35 (checked on the archive.org scan usesofplantsbych00dens). An average bush had 900 taps; a good worker made 300 a day. Thick syrup was also hardened in birch-bark cones, little dishes and greased wooden molds of animals, men, moon and stars; gum sugar was syrup poured on snow just before it grained. Where maples are few, birch sap was boiled the same way. Metric figures are ours.