Click on this helpful site on http://coolmountain.com/ In the early days prior to the 1800's, pharmacists were busy trying to copy and make better the medicines of the Native Americans. They prepared a drink that was sweet and bitter at the same time and used it for medicinal purposes. Eventually, the pharmacists were successful in creating a medicine using those ingredients and a new cure-all was discovered. One legend has it that rootbeer was used for many years prior to being introduced to the American public, by Native Americans for medicinal purposes. No one really knows when root beer, as we know it, was invented or by whom, but the accolades go to a pharmacist by the name of Charles Hires who invented it while on his honeymoon somewhere on a farm. His root beer was brought to the public, here in the United States in 1876, not as a medicine but as a social drink.