Much of interest respecting the manners and ways of life of the Oto when they occupied their village near the mouth of the Platte is to be found in Irving's narrative of the expedition of which he was a member. During the summer of 1833 the small party under the leadership of Commissioner H. L. Ellsworth left St. Louis and, with several teams, proceeded up the Valley of the Missouri. They traversed the vast rolling prairie: "Hour after hour passed on; the prospect was still the same. At last a loud cry from our guide announced that we had come in sight of the cantonment. There was a snowy speck resting upon the distant green; behind it rose a forest of lofty timber which shadowed the Missouri. This was Leavenworth.... It was mid day when we first caught sight of Leavenworth, but it was near sunset before we arrived there. About a dozen white-washed cottage-looking houses, composed the barracks and the abodes of the officers. They are so arranged as to form the three sides of a hollow square; the fourth is open, and looks out into a wide but broken prairie. It is a rural looking spot--a speck of civilization dropped in the heart of a wilderness." (Irving, J. T., (1), I, pp. 46-47.) From Fort Leavenworth they continued up the valley, soon reaching the village of the Oto, near the banks of the Platte. After describing the reception accorded the party by the people of the town Irving wrote: "The village of the Otoe Indians is situated upon a ridge of swelling hills overlooking the darkly wooded banks of the Platte river, about a quarter of a mile distant. There is but little beauty or neatness about an Indian town. The lodges are built in the shape of a half egg. They frequently are twenty feet in height, and sometimes sixty in diameter. The roofs are formed of long poles, which diverge like the radii of a circle, from one common centre. The ring of the circle is formed of upright posts, driven closely together in the ground, and projecting upward about five feet. These are interwoven with brushwood and the smaller branches of trees, and form the support of the outer end of the poles composing the roof, the interstices of which are also interwoven with twigs and brushwood. The whole is then covered with earth, and when finished resembles a large hillock. The town contained about seventy of these lodges, standing singly or in groups, without any attention to order or regularity. Within, they are capacious, but dark, being lighted merely by a small aperture at the top, which serves both as window and chimney. The fire is built in a cavity in the centre, directly under the hole in the roof, by which the smoke escapes after floating in easy wreaths about the interior.