In “The Karankawa Indians, the coast people of Texas,” by A. S. Gatschet (Peabody Museum, 1891), Mrs. Oliver, who lived among that tribe, says: At their principal festival, at the full moon, they assembled in a tent, in the middle of which was a small fire upon which boiled a very strong and black decoction made from the leaves of the youpon tree. From time to time this was stirred with a whisk, till the top was covered thickly with a yellowish froth. This tea, contained in a vessel of clay of their own manufacture, was handed around occasionally and all the Indians drank freely. It was very bitter and said to be intoxicating, but if so, it could only have been when drunk to great excess, as it never seemed to produce any visible effect upon them. She further mentions a chant, which rose and fell in a melancholy cadence, and occasionally all the Indians joined in the chorus, which was ha-i-yah, ha-i-yah, hai, hai-yah, hai-yah. The first two words were shouted slowly, then a succession of hai-yahs very rapidly uttered in chromatic ascending and descending tones, ending in an abrupt hai! very loud and far reaching. [Compare this with the Creek ceremonies--Adair.] Gatschet adds a note: “The Texans find it [yopon] in the woods, not on the coast line, and drink a tea or decoction of it with sugar and milk. The white people east of the Mississippi do the same.” In the narrative of the expedition of Dominique de Gourges (1567) to Florida, to revenge the massacre of the Huguenots at St. Augustine, it is narrated that when he was on a visit to the Chief Satoriona, whose tribe lived in southern Georgia, near the seacoast-- Before leaving there the savages made a beverage, called by them _cassine_, which they are accustomed to take at all times, and when they go to fight in places where there is danger. This beverage, made of a certain plant, and drunk quite hot, keeps them from being hungry or thirsty for 24 hours. They presented it first to Captain Gourges, who pretended to drink it, and swallowed none of it; then Satoriona partook of it, and after him all the others, each one according to his rank. This assertion that the drink prevents hunger and thirst reminds us of the similar effect of coca leaves used by the Peruvian Indians, and now an officinal medicine used for the same purpose. James Adair was an Englishman, who lived 40 years among the Southern Indians (from 1735 to 1775), and whose “History of the American Indians” is invaluable to the antiquarian. It was published in London, A. D. 1775, and is a mine of valuable information. He thus describes the cassine: