Maple syrup --

Recipe for spring

By KURT NESBITT

Journal Staff Writer

MORTON -- A pot of boiling maple sap once spelled spring for the settlers and the Dakota Indians who lived around the Lower Sioux Agency.

These days, it still means spring when the staff at the Lower Sioux historical interpretive center gather together to tap the hard maples in the valley for sap, which they spend hours boiling down to syrup that eventually turns into maple sugar.

"This is kind of pre-season opener," said site manager Tim Talbott, resplendent in 1860s-style clothes. "This is just part of what we do."

In order to make syrup, one has to have sap. And in order to get sap, you have to tap a maple tree in spring.

The next step is boiling the sap down to syrup, which can take hours. The Dakota originally collected the sap in wooden troughs and heated it using hot rocks. The settlers brought copper pots with them and the Dakota started using them to make syrup soon after.

The pots are hung over an open fire and the sap is stirred with a ladle tied to a long stick. The people stirring the pots knew the syrup was ready by its color and by the foam it made while boiling. If it was syrup the makers wanted, they could pour it into another bucket and wait for it to cool. For sugar, they would wait for it to boil down even further and then keep it in birch baskets.

It takes 40 gallons of maple tree sap to make one gallon of syrup, and it takes in between eight and 10 gallons of syrup to make one gallon of sugar, said Talbott. Settlers produced about 370,000 pounds of maple sugar and about 23,000 gallons of syrup in 1860, he said. By the 1880s, farmers began concentrating more on primary crops and livestock.

The Dakota and the settlers usually made maple syrup and sugar in the spring. Site technician Barb Kiergaard said trees were tapped in spring because the sap would rise during the day and fall at night. The hard maple trees must be at least 6 inches in diameter before they're tapped. Larger trees can hold more spigots, she said.

"This was kind of a rite of spring," she said.

Maple sugar was used in the 1860s like white sugar is used today. It served as a topping for deserts. The Dakota used it to cure fresh meat and children ate maple candy as a treat. Maple sugar was more popular because it was less expensive than white sugar and was made locally.

While white settlers saw it as way to supplement income, the Dakota used both products as bargaining tools when dealing with settlers. Kiergaard talked of a missionary who once traded the rest of her cloth for some maple sugar.

"It was a nicety for settlers but it was a necessity for the Dakota," said Talbott.

The maple sugaring managed to attract nearly 100 people over the course of its two days. Site technicians at the Lower Sioux said they were surprised, since many of the agency's more popular attractions don't start until summer.