Beverages

Making drinks from available plants.

       Water was, of course, the most common Native American drink. To make sure that there would always be enough water for their daily use, the natives built their villages close to rivers, lakes, and streams. Besides ordinary water, the Indians drank tea-like and coffee-like beverages. To make these drinks the Indians used a variety of plants and plant parts.

       The Kentucky coffee tree was used by the natives and the early settlers to make their version of coffee. It is one of the last trees to put forth leaves in the spring and one of the first to shed them in the fall. It was given its Latin name Gymnocladus, which means naked branch because the tree is bare for so much of the year. Native people roasted the seeds and ate them as nuts, or they roasted the seeds until they were, as the natives described it, "too done." Then the scorched seeds were ground up and boiled to make their coffee.

       The Iroquois made a coffee drink from corn. Whole ears of dried corn were carefully roasted over hot coals. The roasted kernels were scraped from the cob and pounded into a coarse meal, which was then boiled. A little maple sugar was added as flavoring. Roasted sunflower-seed shells were also used to make a coffee-like drink. The seeds were ground and sifted after they had been roasted. Only the shells were saved. Covered with boiling water, they made a tasty drink.

       It is said that sometimes the natives even used the wild plum to make a coffee drink. The fruits, which were cut open so that the seeds could be removed, were spread out on trays or on flat baskets and left to dry in the sun. This coffee-like drink was made by pouring boiling water over the dried fruits.

       The woodland natives also drank a tea-like beverage that they made from various plants. One such drink was made from roots of the sassafras tree, which is familiar to us because of its mitten-shaped leaves that turn a beautiful yellow in the fall. The roots were cut into small pieces and boiled to make a delicious tea for the natives, and for the settlers too. Because of its pleasant taste the colonists often served sassafras tea at weddings. During Colonial days sassafras roots were very highly regarded in Europe and were in great demand. It is said that the root of the sassafras was the first plant product to be exported from New England. Tea was also made by boiling the leaves of such plants as Labrador tea, wintergreen, and even strawberry. The rootbark of the raspberry, the small tender twigs of the sweet birch, and the bark of the chokecherry were other common sources of tea.

       Many kinds of berries were used to make drinks that were a regular part of a native meal. These drinks were made of blackberries, huckleberries, strawberries, or raspberries and water sweetened with maple sugar. But often at mealtime the Iroquois drank only the water in which the meat or the corn bread had been boiled.

       A very popular summer drink, very much like our lemonade, was made from the velvety red berries of the staghorn sumac. The staghorn sumac is a shrub that is easily recognized because its young fuzzy twigs branch out like the antlers of a stag. The red berries were sometimes eaten raw by the Potawatomis, but the settlers did not like the berries that way because they were too sour. Some of the berries were dried and stored away to be used in the winter as needed.

       At certain times of the year the Iroquois made a drink from the sap of the sugar maple tree. Sometimes the maple sap fermented to the point where it made a mildly intoxicating beverage. And sometimes this drink turned into a kind of vinegar, which the indigenous people also drank. Svoboda.

Read more about the gifts from Native Americans:

• Gifts From The Native Americans  
• Cultivated Plants 
• Wild Plants
• Nuts and Berries
• Maple Sugar
• Seasoning
• Bark and Bast
• Medicine
• Gourds and Pumpkins and Their Uses