Lucie Monk Carter
For a long time, I have hated dealing with a particular bush that tends to grow along the edges of roads and food plots. It’s about ten feet tall, has dark green leaves and produces bright red berries in the winter.
The bush’s limbs are tough and flexible and very difficult to cut with a machete, which I have to do every deer season to clear shooting lanes and the edges of food plots and woods roads. The limbs whip around everywhere and I usually end up looking like I’ve been in a cat fight.
The scientific name of the bush is Ilex vomitoria, but it is more commonly known as the yaupon holly (yaupon is a Creek Indian word meaning “small tree”). Found in the southeastern United States, it is the only plant native to North America that contains caffeine.
Archaeological evidence shows that Native Americans were using the yaupon holly to make a drink as early as 1,000 A.D. By the time the Europeans made contact, the Indians were using it to make a strong concoction known as the Black Drink that was an important part of ceremonies.
Women prepared the Black Drink by toasting the leaves and then boiling them and allowing the liquid to cool. Afterwards, the liquid was stirred vigorously until it frothed.
During such important events as religious ceremonies, debates, or going to war, men (and sometimes high-ranking women) would drink copious amounts of the Black Drink until they ceremoniously purified themselves by vomiting. The Black Drink ceremony could be quite elaborate with the drink being made in special pots and sacred songs being sung during the process.
One man who witnessed a Black Drink ceremony wrote, “Their bellies became like kettle drums and as they drank their bellies grew and swelled up; they continued thus for a while . . . we saw each one of them opening his mouth with much calmness, throw out a great stream of water as clear as when he had drunk it, and others on their knees on the ground, scattering the water thus made in every direction; all who do this are leading men; this was the end of that solemn ceremony.”
Some tribes, however, looked upon vomiting the drink as a weakness. If a warrior vomited, he was not allowed to go on the raid and was forced to help make the Black Drink and do other chores with the women until he earned back his good name.
Many Europeans witnessed the Black Drink ceremonies and assumed the yaupon holly was an emetic, thus leading to its scientific name Ilex vomitoria. Surprisingly, however, it is not. Some suspect the Indians added an additive, such as sea water, to the Black Drink to cause vomiting or were forcing themselves to vomit.
The Cherokee held the Black Drink ceremony before all of their important gatherings. The Natchez, who were native to Louisiana and Mississippi, consumed it during ceremonies prior to battle or leaving on a long raid against an enemy. They also carried dried yaupon leaves with them to make a caffeine-loaded tea that made them less susceptible to thirst, hunger, and exhaustion.
Other Louisiana tribes known to have made the Black Drink include the Chitimacha and Alabama. The Attakapas Indians of southwest Louisiana apparently only used the yaupon holly to make a caffeinated drink for casual drinking and did not consume large amounts of Black Drink for ceremonies. Curiously, the Bayou Lacombe Choctaw knew nothing about the Black Drink when questioned by a researcher in 1909.
The Black Drink was so important to the Creek Indians that they must have taken some yaupon holly with them to Indian Territory during the infamous Trail of Tears. The holly is not native to Oklahoma, but an 1845 council agreed to fine people who did not participate in the Black Drink ceremony.
Learning from their Native neighbors, the American colonists also made tea from the yaupon holly leaves that had a similar taste and effect of coffee. It was even traded to England as “Carolina tea.” Yaupon tea was especially popular with Southerners as a coffee substitute during the Civil War when the Yankee blockade cut off coffee supplies.
Over time, however, yaupon tea use declined, perhaps because people became leery of the name vomitoria or because it was seen as something the lower class drank. Nonetheless, during World War II the federal government promoted its use to conserve supplies of coffee and tea.
[Read more about yaupon holly, and how to make its tea, in this story from our July 2019 issue.]
Recipes for making yaupon tea can be found on the internet, but be absolutely certain you are using yaupon holly. There are similar looking plants that are quite poisonous.
For an in-depth study of the Black Drink see James A. Green, Jr., “The Myth of the Effects of Black Drink in North American Indian Populations,” Louisiana Archaeology, 2016, No. 43.
Dr. Terry L. Jones is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. An autographed copy of “Louisiana Pastimes,” a collection of the author’s stories, costs $25. Contact him at tljones505@gmail.com
