The Exterior Of
The Omaha Lodges Have Often A Gay And Fanciful Appearance, Being
Painted With Undulating Bands Of Red Or Yellow, Or Decorated With
Rude Figures Of Horses, Deer, And Buffaloes, And With Human
Faces, Painted Like Full Moons, Four And Five Feet Broad.
The Omahas were once one of the numerous and powerful tribes of
the prairies, vying in warlike might and prowess with the Sioux,
the Pawnees, the Sauks, the Konsas, and the Iatans.
Their wars
with the Sioux, however, had thinned their ranks, and the small-
pox in 1802 had swept off two thirds of their number. At the time
of Mr. Hunt's visit they still boasted about two hundred warriors
and hunters, but they are now fast melting away, and before long,
will be numbered among those extinguished nations of the west
that exist but in tradition.
In his correspondence with Mr. Astor, from this point of his
journey, Mr. Hunt gives a sad account of the Indian tribes
bordering on the river. They were in continual war with each
other, and their wars were of the most harassing kind;
consisting, not merely of main conflicts and expeditions of
moment, involving the sackings, burnings, and massacres of towns
and villages, but of individual acts of treachery, murder, and
cold-blooded cruelty; or of vaunting and foolhardy exploits of
single warriors, either to avenge some personal wrong, or gain
the vainglorious trophy of a scalp. The lonely hunter, the
wandering wayfarer, the poor squaw cutting wood or gathering
corn, was liable to be surprised and slaughtered.
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