The very earliest mention of cassine was made in the “Migration Legend of the Creek Indians.” This curious legend has been lately published by A. S. Gatschet, of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C., with text, glossaries, etc. In his preface he says: “The migration legend of the Kosihta tribe is one of the most fascinating accounts that has reached us from remote antiquity and is mythical in its first part.” This tribe was a part of the Creek Nation. Its chief, Tchikilli, read the legend before Governor Oglethorpe and many British authorities in 1735. It was written in red and black characters (pictographic signs) on a buffalo skin. This was sent to London, and was lost there; but fortunately a text of the narrative was preserved in a German translation. It begins by narrating that the tribe started from a region variously supposed to be west of the Mississippi, or in southern Illinois, or southern Ohio. They traveled west, then south, then southeast, until they reached eastern Georgia. Here they met a tribe, called in the legend, the “Palachucolas,” who gave them “black drink” as a sign of friendship, and said to them, “Our hearts are white, and yours must be white, and you must lay down the bloody tomahawk, and show your bodies as a proof that they shall be white.” This was evidently the first knowledge the Kosihta tribe had of this beverage. The next mention is by Cabeza de Vaca, who found the Cutalchiches west of the mouth of the Mississippi drinking a tea from the leaves of a tree like an oak. Another narrative says, “Leaves like a plum leaf.” It was drunk by men only. Jean Ribault, the French explorer of east Florida (1666), mentions his first experience in tasting the beverage: “Leur boisson qu’ils appellent _cassinet_ se fait d’herbes composées, et m’a semblé de telle couleur que la cervoyce de ce pays; j’en ay gousté et ne l’ay point trouvé fort estrange.” (Their drink, which they call _cassinet_, is made of compounded herbs, and seemed to me about the color of French beer. I tasted it and did not find it at all unpleasant.) Gatschet, in commenting on the mention of cassine in the legend, says: