15th. Mr. Woods, of the Missouri Fur Company, has returned from a trading excursion. He reports that he saw several of the Pawnee _caches_, which had been broken open and robbed of their corn by the Omawhaws. This is by no means a rare occurrence with the Indians, but it does not appear that it has ever led to hostilities between nations; they say that when a person is in want of food, he has a right to take any he can find.
Corporal Norman, who went out this morning to kill rabbits, returned about noon with twenty-seven, which he had killed with single balls.
February 9th. Several Oto Indians have visited us within this day or two, and one of them, Ca-he-ga-in-ya, { 171} remained with us last night; he was finely dressed, had on a chief's coat laced with silver, and a profusion of wampum about his neck, and suspended to his ears; he departed this morning on his way to the Omawhaws, to trade for horses.
The ice on the Missouri is sixteen inches in thickness, that of the Boyer creek fifteen and three-fourths.
12th. Messrs. Dougherty, Peel [Peale], and myself, with an assistant, encamped at a pond near the Boyer to obtain fish; we cut several holes in the ice of the pond, and obtained one otter and a number of small fishes, amongst which three species appeared to be new; several specimens were of the genus gasterosteus.
15th. Mr. Zenoni, of the Fur Company, who departed the twenty-seventh ultimo on a trading expedition, returned and remained with us last night. He and two men had ascended the Elk Horn about twenty-five miles higher than Mr. Swift had been, but were not successful in finding any Indians. And although they saw a few bisons and antelopes, and elks, they were not so fortunate as to kill any game for subsistence, excepting three turkeys; so that they returned in a state of considerable exhaustion, having been for some time on an allowance of a little maize per day. He found that the upper part of the Elk Horn had not frozen during the severe weather, but still remained open. This circumstance seems to indicate the flow of a great quantity of spring water, or water of a medium temperature, in that part of the stream, requiring time to cool in its passage, before it can congeal.