Early Ojibwe By: Lydia Keefe
Spring/Ziigwan
Maple Sugar
Maple Sugar is a sweet substance made by boiling sap from a maple tree. During the spring the Ojibwe went to maple sugar camps. Everyone helps make the maple sugar. Children run back and forth bringing buckets of sap to the sugarhouse where they boiled the sap into maple sugar. The sugar house was made out of poles covered in birchbark. They stored the sugar for later in the season. They used it like we use salt and pepper.
Birchbark Canoes
The Ojibwe made canoes out of birchbark. The canoes ranged in length between 10 and 24 feet. They harvested birchbark to make the canoes. The canoes were stored either in the bottom of the lake or in the shade upside down.