=Sugar Maple= (_Acer saccharum_ Marsh.), “înenaˈ tîg” [Indian tree]
and “adjagobiˈ mîn”. Both names came from the Pillager Ojibwe,[127]
and although the trees were scarce on the Flambeau Reservation, they
also call it “înenaˈ tîg”, and gather quantities of the sap somewhere
south of the reservation. Maple sugar is one of their most important
foods and is used in almost every kind of cookery. Maple sap is saved
to drink as it comes from the tree, sometimes with the added sap of
the Box Elder or Yellow Birch. Again it is allowed to become sour to
make a vinegar “cîwaˈbo” used in their cookery of venison, which,
when afterwards sweetened with maple sugar, corresponds to the German
fashion of sweet-sour meat. Before they had the salt of the white
man, maple sugar took its place and still does when they can get it.
All kinds of meats were seasoned with it. There are many interesting
legends about the tree, its discovery and sugar making, as related in
Mr. Alanson Skinner’s “Material Culture of the Menomini”.[128] The
Ojibwe garner their sugar crop much the same way as they did years
ago, except that they have used large iron kettles since the coming of
the white man. The sugar camps are rather permanent affairs, and the
framework of the boiling house with its upright poles around the fire
place to hold the kettles is left intact. A bark-covered wigwam is used
to store the tools of sugar sap gathering, and granulation. Most of
the sap vessels and storage vessels are made of birch bark, sewed with
boiled basswood fiber or the core of the Jack Pine root. The vessels
are rendered waterproof by the application of pitch secured by boiling
Jack Pine cones.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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