Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 November 1884 — How Mexico’s Popular Beverage Was Discovered. [ARTICLE]

How Mexico’s Popular Beverage Was Discovered.

Somewhere about the year 990—50 the legend runs a Toltoc Indian, whose name was Papantzin, was the first to discover that the juice of the maguey (Agave Americano, better known to us as aloe or “century plant”) might be distilled into a beverage fit for the gods. Desiring to bring this new blessing into royal favor, he called his only daughter—Xochitl, signifying “the flower” and commissioned her as cup-bearer to the King. This ancient Hebe, we are told, was young and beautiful, and the monarch not only drank and praised the pulque, but wedded the maiden; and to this day the beverage of old Papantzin—who was no doubt called “Pap” by his dutiful children —is the universal beverage of the lower classes in Mexico. Maguey is as much of a feature of this country as trees are of the United States. All over the land it flourishes, cultivated with care in many places, growing out of bare rocks on the mountain side, and springing up as a weed in the waterless deserts. It has an infinite variety of uses, and is to the Mexican Indian what the reindeer is to the Esquimau or the rice-plant to the Chinaman. Cor. Pittsburgh Dispatch.