Part 2

None of the people of Florida appear to have used intoxicating drinks; but they made a hot tea from the leaves of the cassine (_Prinos glaber_), which they poured backwards and forwards until it frothed. This tea may have been slightly stimulant, but it seems to have had no other than a diaphoretic or diuretic effect.

This seems to have been the belief of all the early writers, but I have always doubted it, for if true the North American Indians would stand about alone among races above the lower grade of savagery in their ignorance of alcoholic beverages. The Mexican Indians (Aztecs), the tribes of the Pacific coast and of Central America, all had intoxicating drinks. I admit that there is no proof that the Indians of Canada and of the States north of the Ohio and the Potomac possessed intoxicating beverages, but there is ample proof that the southern Indians brewed from cassine a strong beer.

In my experiments I find that an infusion of cassine leaves with boiling water, after standing till cool, gives a scarcely perceptible taste and slight odor. This infusion, if boiled for half an hour, gives a dark liquid like very strong black tea, of an aromatic odor, _sui generis_, not like coffee, but more like Oolong tea without its pleasant rose odor. The taste is like that of an inferior black tea, quite bitter, but with little delicacy of flavor. It is not an unpleasant beverage, and I can imagine that the palate would become accustomed to it, as to maté, tea, or coffee.

HISTORY.

The early history of the use of _Ilex cassine_ as a beverage is lost in the darkness of prehistoric ages. Probably the same can be said of tea, coffee, maté, and cocoa. But it is a singular fact that while all the latter beverages still continue to be used in the countries where they are indigenous, as well as all over the world, the use of cassine is nearly extinct, as it is now only used occasionally in certain important religious ceremonies by the remnants of the Creek Indians, and will disappear with them unless rescued by chemical research and its use revived for hygienic or economical reasons.

The very earliest mention of cassine was made in the “Migration Legend of the Creek Indians.” This curious legend has been lately published by A. S. Gatschet, of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C., with text, glossaries, etc. In his preface he says: “The migration legend of the Kosihta tribe is one of the most fascinating accounts that has reached us from remote antiquity and is mythical in its first part.” This tribe was a part of the Creek Nation. Its chief, Tchikilli, read the legend before Governor Oglethorpe and many British authorities in 1735. It was written in red and black characters (pictographic signs) on a buffalo skin. This was sent to London, and was lost there; but fortunately a text of the narrative was preserved in a German translation.

It begins by narrating that the tribe started from a region variously supposed to be west of the Mississippi, or in southern Illinois, or southern Ohio. They traveled west, then south, then southeast, until they reached eastern Georgia. Here they met a tribe, called in the legend, the “Palachucolas,” who gave them “black drink” as a sign of friendship, and said to them, “Our hearts are white, and yours must be white, and you must lay down the bloody tomahawk, and show your bodies as a proof that they shall be white.”

This was evidently the first knowledge the Kosihta tribe had of this beverage.

The next mention is by Cabeza de Vaca, who found the Cutalchiches west of the mouth of the Mississippi drinking a tea from the leaves of a tree like an oak. Another narrative says, “Leaves like a plum leaf.” It was drunk by men only.

Jean Ribault, the French explorer of east Florida (1666), mentions his first experience in tasting the beverage: “Leur boisson qu’ils appellent _cassinet_ se fait d’herbes composées, et m’a semblé de telle couleur que la cervoyce de ce pays; j’en ay gousté et ne l’ay point trouvé fort estrange.” (Their drink, which they call _cassinet_, is made of compounded herbs, and seemed to me about the color of French beer. I tasted it and did not find it at all unpleasant.)

Gatschet, in commenting on the mention of cassine in the legend, says:

Black drink was prepared from the small and narrow leaves and the tender shoots of the shrub Ilex cassine, which grows spontaneously as far north as the thirty-seventh degree of latitude. The white people of the Carolinas prepared from it a sort of tea. The botanical name formerly given to the plant was _Cassine yaupon_, yaupon being a derivative from the Katawba term _yáp_ or _yop_ plant, tree, or shrub. The name cassine was first applied, as Prof. Lester F. Ward informs me, as a generic name to a South African plant by Linné, and as a species name for an Ilex by Thomas Walter. (Dahoon is the name of another Ilex; Walter spells it duhoon, others _houx d’ahon_.) The plant and decoction are called by the Sketimasha, _nu’ut_; by the Creeks, Assi luputski, _small leaves_, which is generally abbreviated to Assi leaves. The term black drink originated among the British traders. In Ch. C. Jones’s “Tomochichi,” p. 118, it is called “foskey.”

The Creeks made use of the Assi as we use fermented liquors, to promote conviviality; but it entered also into their ceremonies of religion and warfare. But the black drink potion was not always prepared in the same strength. The ancient Creeks had three modes of preparing it; the three potions resulting from them widely differed in strength according to the uses for which they were intended. Small quantities of the young leaf, parched in a pot until it assumed a brown color, produced a liquor acting as an exhilarant and gentle diuretic; it was drank by the people at the busk, and by the “elders” when assembled in council or when discussing every-day topics. After the potion had been poured from one pan or cooler into another, it begins to ferment and to produce a white froth, from which it is styled also _white drink_, the term “white” alluding simultaneously to its purifying qualities. To make the liquid stronger a larger infusion of the parched leaves is required; it then assumes a dark hue, nearly as black as molasses, and acts as a powerful intoxicating stimulant. A still larger addition of the cassine leaf produces a strong narcotic, which was, as mentioned previously, used by conjurors to evoke prophetic ecstacies accompanied by dreams. The black drink of the weaker sort acts as an emetic,[5] and was used as such at the annual busk and on other occasions extensively; this gave to the liquid its renown as a bodily and moral purificator, for primitive people are prone to regard agencies which act with mysterious force upon the bodily constitution as symbols for abstract spiritual or religious ideas. This drink being served at all games and festivals, councils, and conclusions of treaties, special ministrants, the Hinihalgi, were appointed for its manufacture by the miko of the town. On festive days they prepared it with peculiar ceremonies and served it to all who attended the celebration in the square. The singing of the yahola, or black-drink note, was, and is still, a peculiar rite connected with the drinking of this favorite liquid.

Narvaez writes (1536) of the Indians on the coast of Texas:

They have a sort of drink made of the leaves of a tree like the mulberry tree, which they boil very well and work it up into a froth, and so drink it as hot as ever they can suffer it to come into their mouths. All the while this is over the fire the vessel must be close shut; and if by chance it should be uncovered, and a woman should come by in the meantime, they would drink none of it, but fling it all away. Likewise, while they stand cooling it and pouring it out to drink, a woman must not stir or move, or they would throw it all to the ground, or spew it up again if they had drunk any; she herself would incur the bastinado. All this time they continue bawling out aloud, “Who will drink?” and when the women begin to hear these exclamations, then it is that they settle themselves in their postures, and were they sitting or standing, though it were a tiptoe, or one leg up and the other down, they must continue so till the men have cooled their liquor and made it fit to drink. The reason of this is every whit as foolish and unreasonable as the custom itself, for they say should not the women stand still when they hear their voice some bad thing would be conveyed into the liquor, which they say would make them die; and if such a generation of asses were all poisoned it were no great loss to the world.

In the narrative of René Laudonnière (1564) he says of his expedition from Fort Caroline, at the mouth of the river of May (St. Johns), Florida:

I departed with fifty of my best soldiers in two barks, and arrived in the dominion of Utina, distant from our fort about 40 or 50 leagues (125 miles); and going ashore we drew near his village, situated 6 leagues from the river, where we took him prisoner. They (his tribe) therefore brought me fish in their little boats, and their meal of mast (maize); they also made their drink which they call cassine, which they sent to Utina and me.

The map in Le Moine’s Narrative shows the residence of Utina to be west of the river St. Johns, and in such a position that it is possible that Laudonnière went up the St. Johns to the Ochlawaha River, then up that river to Orange Creek and to Orange Lake, which is of crescent shape, just as it is figured on Le Moine’s map. The cassine which Utina’s men sent to him must have been obtained from the east or west coast, unless it was the leaves of the _Ilex dahoon_, which grows in the interior of Florida.

Le Moine, in his “Narrative,” illustrated with drawings and written in 1504, has the following mention of cassine:

I sent a second expedition, with two shallops, having soldiers and sailors aboard, with a present to be given in my name to the widow of a deceased chief named Hionacara, who lived about 12 miles north of us. She received my men kindly, and loaded both of these shallops, for me, with maize and nuts; and she sent in addition some baskets of cassina leaves, of which they make a drink.

In another place he describes the proceedings of the original Floridians in deliberating on important affairs; this description is illustrated with a spirited drawing:

The chief and his nobles are accustomed during certain days of the year to meet early every morning for this express purpose in a public place, in which a long bench is constructed, having at the middle of it a projecting part laid with nine round trunks of trees, for the chief’s seat. On this he sits by himself for distinction sake; and the rest come to salute him, one at a time, the oldest first, by lifting both hands twice to the height of the head, and saying, “Ha, he, ya, ha, ha.” To this the rest answer, “Ha, ha.” Each as he completes his salutation, takes his seat on the bench. If any question of importance is to be discussed the chief calls upon his lauas (that is, his priests), and upon the elders, one at a time, to deliver their opinions. They decide upon nothing until they have held a number of councils over it, and they deliberate very sagely before deciding. Meanwhile the chief orders the women to boil some cassine; which is a drink prepared from the leaves from a certain root and which they afterwards pass through a strainer.

The chief and his councillors being now seated in their places, one stands before him, and spreading forth his hands wide open, asks a blessing upon the chief and the others who are to drink. Then the cup-bearer brings the hot drink in a capacious shell, first to the chief, and then, as the chief directs, to the rest in their order, in the same shell. They esteem this drink so highly that no one is allowed to drink it in council unless he has proved himself a brave warrior. Moreover, this drink has the quality of at once throwing into a sweat whoever drinks it. On this account those who can not keep it down, but whose stomachs reject it, are not intrusted with any difficult commission, or any military responsibility, being considered unfit, for they often have to go three or four days without food; but one who can drink this liquor can go for 24 hours afterward without eating or drinking. In military expeditions also, the only supplies which they carry consist of gourd bottles or wooden vessels full of this drink. It strengthens and nourishes the body, and yet does not fly to the head, as we have observed on occasion of these feasts of theirs.

In “The Karankawa Indians, the coast people of Texas,” by A. S. Gatschet (Peabody Museum, 1891), Mrs. Oliver, who lived among that tribe, says:

At their principal festival, at the full moon, they assembled in a tent, in the middle of which was a small fire upon which boiled a very strong and black decoction made from the leaves of the youpon tree. From time to time this was stirred with a whisk, till the top was covered thickly with a yellowish froth. This tea, contained in a vessel of clay of their own manufacture, was handed around occasionally and all the Indians drank freely. It was very bitter and said to be intoxicating, but if so, it could only have been when drunk to great excess, as it never seemed to produce any visible effect upon them.

She further mentions a chant, which rose and fell in a melancholy cadence, and occasionally all the Indians joined in the chorus, which was ha-i-yah, ha-i-yah, hai, hai-yah, hai-yah. The first two words were shouted slowly, then a succession of hai-yahs very rapidly uttered in chromatic ascending and descending tones, ending in an abrupt hai! very loud and far reaching. [Compare this with the Creek ceremonies--Adair.]

Gatschet adds a note: “The Texans find it [yopon] in the woods, not on the coast line, and drink a tea or decoction of it with sugar and milk. The white people east of the Mississippi do the same.”

In the narrative of the expedition of Dominique de Gourges (1567) to Florida, to revenge the massacre of the Huguenots at St. Augustine, it is narrated that when he was on a visit to the Chief Satoriona, whose tribe lived in southern Georgia, near the seacoast--

Before leaving there the savages made a beverage, called by them _cassine_, which they are accustomed to take at all times, and when they go to fight in places where there is danger. This beverage, made of a certain plant, and drunk quite hot, keeps them from being hungry or thirsty for 24 hours. They presented it first to Captain Gourges, who pretended to drink it, and swallowed none of it; then Satoriona partook of it, and after him all the others, each one according to his rank.

This assertion that the drink prevents hunger and thirst reminds us of the similar effect of coca leaves used by the Peruvian Indians, and now an officinal medicine used for the same purpose.

James Adair was an Englishman, who lived 40 years among the Southern Indians (from 1735 to 1775), and whose “History of the American Indians” is invaluable to the antiquarian. It was published in London, A. D. 1775, and is a mine of valuable information. He thus describes the cassine:

There is a species of tea that grows spontaneously and in great plenty along the seacoast of the two Carolinas, Georgia, and east and west Florida, which we call _yopon_ or _casseena_. The Indians transplant and are very fond of it. They drink it on certain occasions, and in the most religious ceremonies, with awful invocations; but the women and children and those who have not accompanied their holy ark, _pro aris et focis_, dare not even enter the sacred square when they are on their religious duty.

He says distinctly that the Indians “transplant” the shrub, which means that they cultivated it, and in another place he uses a phrase which implies that they had plantations near to their “temples,” or places of worship. Travelers in Paraguay assert that, though attempts have been made by Jesuits and others to cultivate plantations of maté, or Paraguay tea, it has never succeeded under cultivation. Adair is the only author who mentions this transplanting.

In another place Adair says:

The yopon, or casseena, is very plenty [in northwest Florida] as far as the salt air reaches over the lowlands. It is well tasted and very agreeable to those who accustom themselves to use it. Instead of having any noxious quality, according to what many have experienced of the East India insipid and costly tea, it is friendly to the human system, enters into and contests with the peccant humors, and expels them through the various channels of nature. It perfectly cures a tremor of the nerves.

At the time Adair wrote the above, Chinese tea was a rare and expensive luxury in England, and its use was opposed as intensely as was the use of tobacco when it was first introduced. The power ascribed to cassine of curing “tremors” is significant. Adair, in the same paragraph, mentions another leaf used as a beverage, but his description is so indefinite that I am not able to decide as to its botanical name. It is certainly not the _Ceanothus_ (New Jersey tea). On referring to Rafinesque, I think this “North America tea” may be the _Viburnum cassinoides_, which, he says, is “also named cassine, and so used.” He also says that “_V. levigatum_ and _V. prunifolium_ are used for the tea in the South.”

Adair further says:

The North American tea has a pleasant aromatic taste and the same salubrious property as the casseena. It is an evergreen and grows on hills. The bushes are about a foot high, each of them containing in winter a small, aromatic, red berry in the middle of the stalk. Such I saw it about Christmas, when hunting among the mountains, opposite to the lower Mohawk Castle, in the time of deep snow. There is no visible decay of the leaf, and October seems the proper time to gather it.

He frequently refers to the “sacred uses” of the _black drink_, a decoction of the cassine. I quote his most important allusions:

There is a carved human statue of wood, to which, however, they pay no religious homage. It belongs to the head war town of the upper Muskogee country, and seems to have been originally designed to perpetuate the memory of some distinguished hero who deserved well of his country, for when this _casseena_, or bitter black drink, is about to be drank in the Synedrion they frequently on common occasions will bring it there and honor it with the first conch shell full, by the hand of the chief religious attendant, and then they return it to its former place. It is observable that the same beloved waiter, or holy attendant, and his coadjutant, equally observe the same ceremony to every person of reputed merit of that quadrangular place.

(Adair seems to have written this book for the sole purpose of proving that the Creeks were one of the lost tribes of Israel. He imagines that in one of their religious festivals they invoke the name of Jehovah under the appellation of Y-O-He-Wah.)

When this beloved liquid, or supposed drink offering, is fully prepared and fit to be drank, one of the magi brings two old, consecrated, large conch shells out of a place appropriate for containing the holy things, and delivers them into the hands of two religious attendants, who, after a wild ceremony, fill them with the supposed sanctifying bitter liquid; then they approach near to the two central red and white seats (which the leaders call the war and beloved cabins), stooping with their heads and bodies pretty low. Advancing a few steps in this posture, they carry their shells with both hands, at an instant, to one of the most principal men on those red and white seats, saying in a bass key, Yah, quite short; then in like manner they retreat backwards, facing each other with their heads bowing forward, their arms across rather below their breasts and their eyes half shut. Thus in a very grave, solemn manner they sing on a strong bass key the awful monosyllable O for the space of a minute; then they strike up a majestic He on the treble, with a very intent voice, as long as their breath allows them, and on a bass key, with a bold voice and short accent, they at last utter the strong, mysterious accent Wah, and thus finish the great song, or most solemn invocation of the divine essence. The notes together compose the sacred, mysterious name, Y-O-He-Wah. The favored persons, whom the religious attendants are invoking the divine essence to bless, hold up their shells with both hands to their mouths during the awful sacred invocation, and retain a mouthful of the drink to spurt out upon the ground as a supposed drink offering to the great self-existing giver, which they offer at the end of their draft. If any of the traders who at those times are invited to drink with them were to neglect this religious observance they would reckon us as godless and wild as the wolves of the desert. After the same manner the supposed holy waiters proceed, from the highest to the lowest, in their Synedrion, and when they have ended that awful solemnity they go round the whole square, or quadrangular place, and collect tobacco from the sanctified sinners, according to ancient customs: “For they who serve at the altar must live by the altar.”

In another place (page 106), in describing at great length one of the religious festivals of the Creeks, Adair says: “He” [the Arch Magus, or fire-maker,] “consecrates the button-snake root and casseena by pouring a little of those two strong decoctions into the pretended holy fire. He then purifies the red and white seats with those bitter liquids and sits down.”

This leads me to observe that the sacred “black drink” was not made of the cassine alone, but sometimes of several bitter and aromatic roots and leaves. Mrs. A. E. W. Robertson, in a letter from Okmulgee, Ind. T., writes: “The black drink as now prepared is, I think, made from three plants, the “Passa,” (Pasa) or Button Snakeroot (_Eryngium aquaticum_), and the Mekko Hoyonee v. (_Micco-Hoyonvicha_), a small willow, and the third I do not now recall.” It may be that cassine is not now used at all by the Creeks in Indian Territory, for it does not grow there, and if used would have to be imported from the Atlantic or Gulf coast.

Bossu, who traveled through the country now known as Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, in 1751, makes no mention of the use of cassine by the Indians of the two first-named States (Natchez), nor by the Indians along the Mississippi as far as he traveled, namely, to the country of the Illinois. But in his travels eastward, when he was in the neighborhood of Mobile, he writes: