Sugar Maple

OH`WÁHDAˀ

Sugar Maple

Acer saccharum

Family: Sapindaceae

Native tree

From our oral histories we remember times when drought years gave bad crops and our ancestors needed to eat a lot of red meat to survive the winter. While this sustained them, the diet lacked proper nutrition and invited parasitic infections. They saw deer drinking the sap from broken branches when sap started flowing in late winter. To Gayogohó:nǫˀ, we see wisdom in nature and take its lessons from it for our people. When our ancestors saw the deer drinking the sap, they felt the deer had knowledge to share and they began drinking sap too. The sap cleared their systems of parasites and made them strong again.