Dr. Albert S. Gatschet, of the Bureau of Ethnology, at Washington, D. C., one of the best authorities, writes me as follows:
According to Lawson there are two or three sorts of youpon. The Indians of South Carolina call it “cassina.” It grows on sand banks and islands near the sea. (Used by the North Carolina Indians for tea.) It is written cassena. From Mutter it would appear that the cassine are chiefly African plants, nor do I think that the name is Indian. I find no word in Katawba corresponding to the word “dahoon.” I saw here in the Botanical Garden a shrub from North Carolina called Ilex vomitoria, undoubtedly the Assi shrub. “Assi” is only an abbreviation of Assi lupub’ski (Creek), “small leaves.” The Shetimasha term was no’ut (Ch. C. Jones). Tomochichi calls it “foskey,” probably Yamassi, a dialect of the Creek.
W. R. Gerard, of New York, an eminent philologist, writes me:
The word cassine belongs to the language of the now extinct Timucua Indians of Florida. Little is known of the language of those people. It has seemed to me that they borrowed the word from the Creeks, who call Ilex cassine ussie, leaf tea. Cassine (c-assi-ne) would seem to be this word with a guttural prefix and a suffix ne of unknown meaning. I can not refer the word dahoon to any Indian language. I believe it to be of French origin, “houx d’Ahon.” Youpon is Indian, and seems to belong to the language of the long-extinct Waccoons of North Carolina. The word is Catawba, for in Catawba yáp, also pronounced “yop,” means wood, stick, and tree.
Prof. Lester F. Ward, botanist of the U. S. National Museum, writes:
Linné first used “cassine” as a generic name, and applied it to a South African plant (Gen. Ed. Nova: No. 371, 1753, and his Systema Naturæ, ed. 13th, Lipsiæ, 1791). Thomas Walter used it first as a specific name for Ilex (Flor.-Carolina, Loud., 1778). None of these two refer to the origin of the word. Thomas Walter used dahoon as a specific name; Linné copied from him and spells it “duhoon.”
Probably Gerard’s explanation of the etymology of those three words is correct, for at the time Walter and Linné wrote the Indian names of plants had been carried abroad by botanists and travelers in this country.
CHEMISTRY OF CASSINE.
ANALYSIS OF THE LEAVES OF ILEX CASSINE.
I quote the following from a paper by F. P. Venable, PH.D., University of North Carolina: