An Early Native American Tale About the Discovery of Maple Syrup

A Native American maple sugar camp, 1853. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

An Early Tale!

An Algonquin or Iroquois Indian chief, Woksis, discovered maple syrup in the following manner. One day, at the time the time of the melting snow, as he prepared to go hunting in a meager season of want and little game, he took his ax out of a maple tree where he had struck it a few inches into the bark the night before. His squaw happened…