446 Expedition to the 



wood, not only for fuel, but for the support of their nume- 

 rous horses. 



They encamp in their lodges of skins wherever the cotton 

 wood is found in sufficient quantities for their horses, and. 

 game for themselves. The horses, in the country bordering 

 the Missouri, are fed, during the winter, in the extensive 

 wooded bottoms of that river, and are not, therefore, con- 

 fined exclusively to the cotton wood, having access to other 

 timber, also to the rushes and coarse grass which abound in 

 the bottoms. We are, however, well assured that the Indian 

 horses, farther to the west, about the upper branches of the 

 Platte, and Arkansa, subsist, and thrive, during the winter, 

 with no other article of food than the bark and branches of 

 the cotton wood. The winter at the Pawnee villages is said 

 to be uncommonly severe, but is probably little, if any more 

 so, than at Council Bluff, on the Missouri. Thermometric 

 observations at Council Bluff, and at St. Peters on the Mis- 

 sissippi, prove that the climate at these two places does not 

 very widely differ from that of the corresponding latitudes 

 on the Atlantic coast, except that it is at times something 

 colder. The vicissitudes of temperature appear to be equally 

 great and sudden. 



The climate at Council Bluff is beyond the influence of 

 the south-western winds from the Gulf of Mexico, which 

 have been supposed to have so perceptible an effect to soften 

 the rigors of winter in the valley of the lower Mississippi. 

 The three Pawnee villages, with their pasture grounds, and 

 insignificant enclosures, occupy about ten miles in length of 

 the fertile valley of the Wolf river. The surface is wholly 

 naked of timber, rising gradually to the river hills, which 

 are broad and low, and from a mile to a mile and an half 

 distant. The soil of this valley is deep and of inexhaustible 

 fertility. The surface, to the depth of two or three feet, is 

 a dark coloured vegetable mould intermixed with argilla- 



