Root Beer’s Indigenous Roots (2024)

Root beer is now a ubiquitous soft drink in America, but it’s modern form is nothing like the original teas brewed by Indigenous peoples on the American continent. It’s loaded with sugar. It’s made with artificial flavoring. It’s much less of a medicine than it originally was made to be.

Back in 1871, Charles E. Hires was involved in the wholesale drug business. He came up with a mix of herbs to sell for people to make into a “root beer” at home. Then in 1876, he started promoting a bottled extract to make it even easier for people to enjoy the benefits of this brew. Hire’s Root Beer was born and the push to dominate the market ensued. A few years later, the fermentation process was abandoned and carbonated water was used. This was the start of the industrialization of root beer and the progression from naturally derived ingredients to artificial flavoring.

The advertising in 1876 pointed back to to what the “forefathers used in ‘ye olden time’”. This is likely pointing back to the American Revolution. After the Boston Tea Party, wintergreen was the tea of choice while the boycott of tea from Europe was in place. Prior to then, it was popularized by Native Americans and local herbalists alike.

The original root beer recipe called for a combination of 25 roots, barks, berries, and flowers. However, the main flavor profile of the drink comes from the sassafras and wintergreen. It also had sarsaparilla, dandelion, wild cherry bark, prickly ash, cinchona, and juniper berry. These are all native medicines.

Sassafras was the name given to a tree which grows all over the eastern united states. The Spaniard Ponce De Leon was first shown it back in 1512 during his exploration of what is now known as Florida. The Indigenous peoples of the eastern coast through to the Missouri River used various parts of sassafras for different purposes. It was called winauk through the region now known as Delaware and Virginia. The Timuca tribe call it pauane. The Choctaw call it kombu. In the east, the Algonquin languages call it weyanoke. The Cherokee call it kan’statchi. It shouldn’t be taken continually — as it can be hard on the liver. It does help with…