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.
The Native Americans were the first people to make maple syrup, which can be expected, since they were the first inhabitants of North America, and this is the only part of the world in which maple syrup can be made. If you think about everything that is needed to make maple syrup, the proper season, the proper tree, all the boiling, it makes you wonder how anyone ever thought to try it.
One day in early spring, an Indian chief came home from a long day of hunting and stuck his tomahawk in one of the trees outside his longhouse, as he did every night. Now being that maple trees are very abundant in his area, this happened to be a maple.
The next morning the chief woke and left for another hunt, taking his tomahawk from the tree. It just happened that there was a bowl sitting at the base of this tree, directly under the gash made by the chief's tomahawk. As the warm spring sun shone on the maple tree, the sap began to run out of the gash, down the trunk, and dripped into the bowl. As evening approached, the chief's daughter began to prepare dinner. She needed a pail of water to boil dinner in though. As she walked past the tree on her way down to the creek, she noticed the bowl full of "water" sitting by the tree. Rather than walk all the way to the creek, the chief's daughter decided to use this "water." As the dinner boiled, the "water" boiled away, and by the time dinner was done, the "water", which was actually maple sap, had boiled down to the first maple syrup. With a little experimenting, the chief and his daughter discovered how and when to make this new all natural sweetener. From that point on, maple syrup became an important part of the Native American's diet.
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