This story was taken from The Maple Syrup Book by Helen
and Scott Nearing
"There is an Iroquois legend about the sap of the maple and how Woksis, the
Indian chief, first tasted it as a sweet syrup because he had an ingenious wife.
Woksis was going hunting one day early in March. He yanked his tomahawk from the
tree where he had hurled it the night before, and went off for the day. The
weather turned warm and the gash in the tree, a maple, dripped sap into a vessel
that happened to stand close to the trunk. Woksis's wife, toward evening, needed
water in which to boil their dinner. She saw the trough full of sap and thought
that would save her a trip to get water. Anyway, she was a careful woman and
didn't like to waste anything. She tasted it and found it good--a little sweet,
but not bad. So she used it for cooking water. Woksis, when he came home from
hunting, scented the inimitable maple aroma, and from far off knew that
something especially good was stewing. The water had boiled down to syrup, which
sweetened their meal with maple. So, says the legend, was the happy practice
inaugurated" (p. 26-7).