USE MAPLE SUGAR to Hisoricaly Sweeten Your Fur Trade Food !

[Puffer]

USE MAPLE SUGAR to  Hisoricaly Sweeten Your  Trade  Food !

Indigenous peoples living in northeastern North America were the first groups known to have produced maple sugar. According to aboriginal oral traditions, as well as archaeological evidence, maple tree sap was being processed into syrup long before Europeans arrived in the region.
The beginning of spring sent Indian men in search of muskrat pelts.  They separated from their women and children, who moved their camps into the sugar bush. These camps labored to create enormous stores of maple sugar, which would sustain the community for the rest of the year. In good years, they were able to make enough for their own consumption and extra to trade. Women could exchange maple sugar for the manufactured goods that had transformed their lives in the early nineteenth century.
 At the beginning of the spring thaw, they used stone tools to make V-shaped incisions in tree trunks; they then inserted reeds or concave pieces of bark to run the sap into buckets, which were often made from birch bark. The maple sap was concentrated either by dropping hot cooking stones into the bucket or by leaving them exposed to the cold temperatures overnight and disposing of the layer of ice that formed on top.Most critical for women were the kind of metal kettles they traded for. Normally used for routine cooking, these pots were filled with sap in March. The sap boiled for days until it was reduced to sugar, which could be packed into birch bark containers.
 During the 17th and 18th centuries, processed maple sap was used primarily as a source of concentrated sugar, in both liquid and crystallized-solid form, as cane sugar had to be imported from the West Indies.& was $$$,so Maple Sugar was a great trade item.
Also the local Indigenous peoples showed the arriving colonists how to tap the trunks of certain types of maples during the spring thaw to harvest the sap &  By 1680, European settlers and fur traders were involved in harvesting maple products.
Indian women normally  made the maple sugar that was such an important part of the traders' diet & what they often traded for items they needed (Pots,awls,needles,blankets ETC.

[Puffer]

BTW - If you are making a "trad." thanksgiving meal - things like the Cranberry Sauce ( use only 1/3rd the amount of Maple Sugar as white). Also if having "acorn squash" - sweeten with a sm. amount of Maple Sugar instead of "brown sugar"

[Oldetexian]

Another great post...what can you tell us about the use of honey. Being in Virginia Maple Sugar wasn't as readily available as Maple Sugar was further North. Wouldn't cane sugar and honey be more common?

[Puffer]

Another great post...what can you tell us about the use of honey. Being in Virginia Maple Sugar wasn't as readily available as Maple Sugar was further North. Wouldn't cane sugar and honey be more common?

I am not really knowledgeable about your ? - "Wouldn't cane sugar and honey be more common?" but is something may cause us to investigate.
Honey -
Native Bees of North America --- 
There were no "honey bees" in America until the white settlers brought hives from Europe. {starting - 1639s}  BUT there were bees that produced Honey & collected for consumption.(from "native bees") Native bees, had been doing all the pollination in this continent before the arrival of that importation from the Old World. As time went on More & more "Honey Bees" were imported &
The resourceful "European imports" promptly managed to escape domestication, forming swarms and setting up housekeeping in hollow trees, other cavities or even exposed to the elements just as they had been doing in their native lands & over time populated N. America {Note they did not reach West of the Rockeys until the 1850s when they were imported to OR.} Now we have the
Indigenous bees, the feral bees  (avail.to find & reap the bounty) & the  domesticated bees. With this "Homey" became a factor in our diets.  

Sugar from "Sugar Cane"

 Once an indulgence only of the rich, the consumption of sugar became increasingly common among the poor as well. (over time.) But the dynamics of how & why is VERY complicated ! {The more I try to understand the more confused I am, so for the time being I will pass.

[Oldetexian]

  Thanks! I guess Maple sugar would have been a regular trade item, and therefore fairly easily available. Do you have a good source of maple sugar blocks or cones?

[Puffer]

Thanks! I guess Maple sugar would have been a regular trade item, and therefore fairly easily available. Do you have a good source of maple sugar blocks or cones?

I use "granular". Amazon usually but my Walmart some times.

[doggoner]

Ray

https://www.losangelescountybeekeepers.com/history-of-honey-bees-in-ameri . Try this for a history of honey bee introduction into the US.  1622 is the year and the Indians called them "the white mans fly". As the bees moved west so did the white man.

doggoner

[Oldetexian]

  Thanks Doggoner. I like it: "White Man's Fly"...

[Uncle Russ]

Ray

https://www.losangelescountybeekeepers.com/history-of-honey-bees-in-ameri . Try this for a history of honey bee introduction into the US.  1622 is the year and the Indians called them "the white mans fly". As the bees moved west so did the white man.

doggoner

Doggoner, that was one dog gone good read.....pun intrnded.
A very interesting fact I noted was the value of the exported Bees Wax shipped from Virginia.
There simply had to be a lot of Bees and Bee Hives back in that day to produce that much Bees Wax.

Good reading, Thanks

Russ...