One Iroquois Legend Shrouded in the gray mists of history, some early man in North America discovered – long, long ago – that sweet sap runs in the spring time from the sugar maple tree.

Perhaps this same man, or some of his clansmen, or perhaps someone more distant, found that boiling this sap over a fire soon reduced it to a brown syrup; and this syrup, when cooked longer, soon hardened into brownish sugars of various types.

All the books known to us are silent on how this discovery and cookery actually first came about. One Iroquois legend tells of Woksis, an Indian chief, pulling his tomahawk from a maple tree and going off on a hunt. The weather was warm and the gash dripped sap into a bark vessel under the tree. The chief’s squaw, toward evening needed water to cook their meal and used the water from the tree to save a trip to the spring. When the chief neared home, he smelled the odor of the sweet syrup and when he ate his meal he found the meat very tasty. And the legend ended with the Indians tapping maple trees to secure this tasty and concentrated source of sweetening.
This however, is a legend, and legends never need truth to be interesting. As a rule of thumb, the more interesting the legend, the less likelihood of its truth. And this legend stands among the most interesting.

Still, all accounts indicate that the Indians of the Lake States, southeastern Canada, New England, the Appalachian Mountains knew and used maple syrup a long time before the first explorers and colonists came to America.