182 Expedition to the 



single combat, with pistols or such other weapons as he might 

 choose. 



He is esteemed the bravest and most intelligent of the 

 Ioways, and amongst the Otoes he was associated with many 

 equally brave with himself. But as there are national preju- 

 dices amongst the Indians as well as amongst the whites, he 

 has not escaped from many a keen allusion to his nation. In 

 a quarrel, which arose from some expressions of this nature, 

 letan knocked him down with a war-club. 



He has been in fifty battles, and has commanded in seven. 



He says the white people often request the Indians to ab- 

 stain from war, and yet the white people continue to fight 

 each other, as if they wished to monopolize the occupation 

 of war, and thereby deprive the Indian of his principal ave- 

 nue to honour and dignity. 



Several Omawhaws, who have been trapping in the coun- 

 try opposite to Blackbird hill, remained with us last night. 

 The principal one, A-ha-ga-nash-he, or the Upright horn, has 

 a rather handsome Sioux squaw, to whom he appears to be 

 much attached, paying her great attention in conversation, 

 giving her a portion of his whiskey , and handing her the pipe 

 to smoke. She is, however, not exempted from the ordinary 

 employments of the Indian women, and we had an opportu- 

 nity to-day of seeing her depart from Mr. Lisa's with a 

 heavy load, consisting of the goods which her husband had 

 received in exchange for his beaver, on her back, whilst he 

 carried only a keg of whiskey slung over his shoulders, and 

 his gun and hunting apparatus. Previously to the departure of 

 the Omawhaws from our establishment this morning, the 

 brother of one of them, who, report said, had been killed by 

 the Sioux, arrived; he has been with aboutten lodges (about 

 twenty men) of his tribe trapping on the Elk-horn, and they 

 have taken about two hundred beavers. He has taken sixty 

 himself, of which he presented his elder brother twenty, and 

 is on his way to Mr. Lisa, to have a trader with merchan- 



