Maple Tree Art Print

The Native American symbolism of the maple is that of offering, generosity, balance, promise and practicality. 

There is the Legend of the Abenaki (indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands of Canada and the United States) about how maple syrup was created.

The maple was one of the only sources of sugar for the native peoples–as such it was seen as a gift from the creator. While the maple is a gift, the native tales are clear that this gift takes work (in the form of collecting sap and boiling it down to make sugars). 

The Creator had originally had sap flow from maple trees as rich and as thick as honey–one needed only to break off a branch and the sap would flow out at any point of the year. However, Gluskabe, who’s job it is to report back to the Creator, came across a group of people who were lazy, who abandoned their village and instead laid down in a maple grove sipping sap all day. Gluskabe was instructed to fill the maple trees with water each day for a full moon cycle, and now, people would have to work to have the sweetness of the maple and they would only have it for a short time in the spring to learn the error of their ways. At the end of the story, the people worked to turn the sap into sugar by burning cedar and making white birch buckets (using the magic of those two trees as well)