Maple sugar was an important part of the
native Americans’ diet, worked into bear fat,
or mixed with corn meal to make a light,
compact provision for journeys. For the
colonists, maple sugar was cheaper and more
available than the heavily taxed cane sugar
from the West Indies. Even after the
Revolution, many Americans found a moral
reason for preferring maple sugar to cane;
cane sugar was produced largely with slave
labor. Toward the end of the nineteenth
century, cane and beet sugar became so cheap
that the demand for maple sugar declined
steeply. Today the production of maple syrup
is a cottage industry concentrated in the
eastern Canadian provinces, especially
Quebec, and in the American Northeast.
The Sap Run The maple family originated in
China or Japan and numbers some 100 species
throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Of the
four North American species good for