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Nodinens description of sugar bush

From Nodinens, a Mille Lacs elder who described her childhood in the late 1850s or early 1860s.
When we got to the sugar bush we took the birch-bark dishes out of the storage and the women began tapping trees...Our sugar camp was always near Mille Lac...My mother had two or three big brass kettles that she had bought from an English trader and a few tin pails from the American trader. She used these in making the sugar...Toward the end of the sugar season there was a great deal of thick sirup called the "last run of sap," and we had lots of fish that we had dried. This provided us with food during the time we were making our gardens.
from
Frances Densmore, Chippewa Customs (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1979), 122.

The Ojibwe People's Dictionary is developed and maintained by:
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John D. Nichols, Founder and Linguistic Editor

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