The Incidents Just Related
Induced Us To Give To This Place The Name Of The Council Bluffs:
The Situation Of
It is exceedingly favorable for a fort and
trading factory, as the soil is well calculated for bricks,
and there
Is an abundance of wood in the neighborhood, and the air
being pure and healthy."
Of course the reader will recognize, in the name given
to this place by Lewis and Clark, the flourishing modern city
of Council Bluffs, Iowa. Nevertheless, as a matter of fact,
the council took place on the Nebraskan or western side of the river,
and the meeting-place was at some distance above the site
of the present city of Council Bluffs.
Above Council Bluffs the explorers found the banks of the river to be
high and bluffy, and on one of the highlands which they passed they
saw the burial-place of Blackbird, one of the great men of the Mahars,
or Omahas, who had died of small-pox. A mound, twelve feet in diameter
and six feet high, had been raised over the grave, and on a tall
pole at the summit the party fixed a flag of red, white, and blue.
The place was regarded as sacred by the Omahas, who kept the dead
chieftain well supplied with provisions. The small-pox had caused
great mortality among the Indians; and a few years before the white
men's visit, when the fell disease had destroyed four hundred men,
with a due proportion of women and children, the survivors burned
their village and fled.
"They had been a military and powerful people; but when these warriors
saw their strength wasting before a malady which they could not resist,
their frenzy was extreme; they burned their village, and many of them put
to death their wives and children, to save them from so cruel an affliction,
and that all might go together to some better country."
In Omaha, or Mahar Creek, the explorers made their first experiment
in dragging the stream for fish. With a drag of willows, loaded
with stones, they succeeded in catching a great variety of fine fish,
over three hundred at one haul, and eight hundred at another.
These were pike, bass, salmon-trout, catfish, buffalo fish, perch,
and a species of shrimp, all of which proved an acceptable
addition to their usual flesh bill-of-fare.
Desiring to call in some of the surrounding Indian tribes,
they here set fire to the dry prairie grass, that being the customary
signal for a meeting of different bands of roving peoples.
In the afternoon of August 18, a party of Ottoes, headed by Little Thief
and Big Horse, came in, with six other chiefs and a French interpreter.
The journal says: -
"We met them under a shade, and after they had finished a repast with which we
supplied them, we inquired into the origin of the war between them and
the Mahas, which they related with great frankness. It seems that two of
the Missouris went to the Mahas to steal horses, but were detected and killed;
the Ottoes and Missouris thought themselves bound to avenge their companions,
and the whole nations were at last obliged to share in the dispute.
They are also in fear of a war from the Pawnees, whose village they entered
this summer, while the inhabitants were hunting, and stole their corn.
This ingenuous confession did not make us the less desirous of negotiating
a peace for them; but no Indians have as yet been attracted by our fire.
The evening was closed by a dance; and the next day, the chiefs
and warriors being assembled at ten o'clock, we explained the speech
we had already sent from the Council Bluffs, and renewed our advice.
They all replied in turn, and the presents were then distributed.
We exchanged the small medal we had formerly given to the Big Horse for one
of the same size with that of Little Thief:
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