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.
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