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Nature's Pharmacy: Ancient Knowledge, Modern Medicine

Yaupon
Ilex Vomitoria

Name, Habitat and Appearance
Yaupon is member of the holly family (Aquifoliaceae) which includes more than 300 tropical species world-wide. Common names are Yaupon, South-Sea Tea, Ever-green Cassine, American tea plant, Apalachine, Cassina, Christmas-berry tree, Emetic holly, Coon Berry, and Yapon. Some nineteen to twenty-one species of Ilex are native to North America. At times the dahoon holly, Ilex cassine, has been identified with yaupon. Both have evergreen foliage and red fruit, but Yaupons are shrubs with small leaves toothed along the margins; dahoons are trees with large leaves.

History
Some 25 species of Ilex were used for teas by ethnic groups in South America, North America, and the Sino-Tibetan mountains. Three of these, Ilex vomitoria, Illix guayusa, and Illix paraguariensis, are known to contain caffeine and were used as a beverage by native peoples of North and South America. In South America, the leaves of Illix paraguariensis were brewed to make the stimulating beverage the Spanish called yerba mate or yerba. Its harvest and processing became part of an important industry, and in Argentina, the Jesuit missions were granted a monopoly on its production. Mate was drunk through a tube from a small cup. These ranged from simple gourds or coconuts, often engraved, to small metal containers highly ornamented with gold or silver. The drinking of yerba mate among South American peoples continues today.

Most Indian groups who lived where Ilex vomitoria is native apparently used it to prepare the "black drink." The name comes from the color of the hot drink made by boiling the bruised, parched leaves and twigs of the plant. Prepared and dried leaves were also traded to more distant areas. The most complete ethnographic information on the use of the black drink comes from the southeastern United States where Spanish, English, and French explorers, merchants, travelers, priests, and naturalists described its use among groups from southern Virginia to west of the Mississippi. Among these were the Creek Confederacy, Cherokee, Choctaw, Natchez, Chickasaw, Seminole, and Caddo.

Spanish colonists in Florida drank "cassine" as early as the 16th century, referring to it as te del indio or chocolate del indio. It was brought to Europe, and in England made into a beverage called South Sea tea. Black and white settlers along the southern Atlantic coast adopted its use as a beverage. Although it later lost out in competition with coffee, chocolate, and Asian tea as a drink, it was reportedly used medicinally as an emetic or a diuretic, to treat smallpox, diabetes, and gout, and as a cure for alcoholism. During the Civil War consumption increased. It was still in use to a limited extent in the early 20th century as a beverage and medicine among inhabitants on the North Carolina coast and adjacent islands. One source reports the presence of yaupon tea on the menu of a restaurant on Ocracoke Island, North Carolina in the early 1970s, where a small package of the leaves could be purchased.

Ritual Uses
Although early descriptions of aboriginal North American use of the black drink characterized it as an emetic, this effect is believed to have resulted from the consumption of enormous quantities of the beverage and/or the addition of other purgative ingredients such as button snakeroot. The use of the black drink to induce vomiting may have resulted from its association with the concept of ritual purity and the employment of regurgitation as a means of establishing this state. Ritual purity required careful observance of certain rules including avoidance of improper foods, especially contaminated food, including that touched by menstruating women. The use of the black drink primarily by men may have been one way to separate men ritually from women, and in vomiting, to avoid the threat of contamination from impure food.

In smaller amounts the black drink served as a caffeinated beverage sipped primarily by men in informal gatherings, as part of divination and conjuring ceremonies, in association with the "stick and ball" game, in a formal and ritualized manner in council meetings, to establish social relationships and make peace (often in conjunction with tobacco smoking), and as a nonemetic medicinal to prevent or alleviate kidney disorders or to calm the nerves.

The westernmost limits of the use of the black drink appear to have been in interior Texas among Caddoan peoples. According to Jean Louis Berlandier, a French biologist and member of a scientific expedition sent to Texas in 1827, Caddoan groups prepared an infusion of Ilex vomitoria for medicinal purposes for use as an expectorant, and among women to bring on suppressed menses.

Archaeological Evidence
Prehistoric use of the black drink comes largely from indirect evidence. Carbonized seeds or pollen of Ilex vomitoria have not been reported. However, residues thought to be evaporated black drink are documented in shell cups found at ceremonial centers associated with the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex of about C.E. 1200. Three species of shells were made into cups including the lightning whelk, emperor helmet, and horse conch. Shell drinking cups engraved with distinctive cult symbols are common at large prehistoric ceremonial centers associated with the cult. The use of the cups and black drink was an important part of the religion of southeastern Indians up to the arrival of Europeans. Prehistoric use of the drink has been speculated as early as Middle Woodland times (100 B.C.E. to C.E. 300) in those areas where artifacts believed to be associated with ceremonies (shell cups, ceramics) involving the black drink have been found. The strongest argument is made in the case of those items that occur within the geographical range of the plant itself and of later peoples known to have participated in ceremonies involving the black drink.

Iowa is neither within the known native range of Ilex vomitoria nor was Iowa inhabited by peoples known to have prepared the black drink. Non-local artifacts, especially small containers with distinct designs similar to those found in the southeastern United States, and sea shells, like those known to have been used in black drink ceremonies, do occur in archaeological sites in the state. Their presence is certainly thought provoking.