Abstract
We report electrical transport experiments on the colossal magnetoresistance compound (La,Ca)MnO3 over a wide range of composition and temperature. Comparison of thermopower and electrical resistivity measurements above the metal-insulator transition indicate a transport mechanism not dominated by spin disorder, but by small polaron formation. Additionally, we find that in the high-temperature limit the thermopower corresponds to backflow of spin entropy, expected from motion of positively charged particles in a rigid S=2 system, showing a remarkable independence of S=3/2 particle density.