56 [8S] TRA.NS. ST. LOUIS ACAD. SCIENCE. 



special notice of it can do justice to its peculiar influence on the 

 life of the aborigines. 



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 37th degree of latitude. The 

 white people of the Carolinas prepare from it a sort of tea. The 

 botanic name formerly given to the plant was Cassine yaupon, 

 yaupon being a derivative from the Kataba term yap or } op plants 

 tree^ shrub. The name cassine was first applied, as Prof. Lester 

 F. Ward informs me, as a generic name to a South African plant 

 by Linne, and as a species name for an Ilex by Thomas Walter.* 

 The plant and the decoction are called by the Shetimasha nuait ; 

 by the Creeks, assi luputski, small leaves., which is generally ab- 

 breviated to assi, leaves. The term black drink originated among 

 the British traders. In Ch. C.Jones, Tomochichi, p. 118, it is 

 called foskey. 



Ch. Pickering, "History of Plants," p. 777, has the following: 



West of the mouths of the Mississippi, Cabeqa de Vaca found the Cutal- 

 chiches drinking a tea from the leaves of a tree like an oak; in West Flo- 

 rida "a decoction of it, called liquor of valor., was drank by the natives." 

 The Shetimasha and Timucua conjurers used it to produce stupor and nar. 

 cotic effects upon themselves; the Naktche warriors took it before starting 

 on war-expeditions. 



The Creeks made use of the assi, as we do of fermented liquors, 

 to promote conviviality ; but it entered also into their ceremonies 

 of i-eligion and warfare, and at the Creek and Yuchi busk-festivals 

 in the Indian Territory it is drank in the ''great square" at the 

 present time. But the black-drink potion was not always pre- 

 pared 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, and boiled in a copious infusion of 

 water, produced a liquor acting as an exhilarant and gentle diu- 



* Linneei Genera, Ed. nov. No. 371 (1753); Systema naturop, Ed. 13th (Lips. 1791). P- 

 497. Thos. Walter, Flora Caroliniana, Lond. 1778, p. 241. Dahoon is the name of another 

 Ilex ; Waller spells it Duhooti, others houx d'Ahon. 



