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.)