began to harangue them on the great power of his manitou or genius which guided him, and, brandishing his tomahawk in triumph, bade there, with sarcasm and bitterness, " to intone their death songs, if any warlike blood yet circled in their veins;" adding with the accent of revenge "that before the sun's rising" -it was night - " the vultures would fly above their wigwams, and that their wives and children would mourn over their lifeless corpses." It was a night of confusion, tears, fear and tumult. No one escaped the poison!
The whole life of this man was a chain of crimes and cruelties. Tired of " pouring out blood " as the Indians say, or rather pursued by remorse and despair, he allowed himself to die with hunger. Before expiring, he gave orders to his faithful warriors to bury him on the highest of the hills, an elevation of 300 feet, seated on his most beautiful courser, facing the impetuous Missouri - "so that," said he, " I can salute all the voyageurs." His tomb resembles a little hillock. It is surmounted by a pole, to which the Indians attach a flag. It can be easily distinguished eighteen miles off. (7)
Our boat passed near the village of the Omahas, composed of about 1,400 souls. It is situated at the extremity of a beautiful prairie, about three miles in extent, at the foot of a little range of hills. No one came to the shore to see us pass,- fearing, it seems, that the smallpox was on board, and might be introduced among there. Only two years ago [1837], by an unpardonable imprudence of
(7) The story of Blackbird is a famous one in the history of the western Indians. It has been best told by Washington Irving in his Astoria. The hill on which the grave rests is a prominent one on the west shore of the river. Twenty-five miles distant, on a high hill on the east shore, stands an obelisk, 100 feet high, over the grave of the first American pioneer to die in this region - Sergeant Charles Floyd of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, who died and was buried here August 20, 1804. These two graves practically in sight of each other, have a deep historic significance, denoting, as they do, the advent, into this region of one race and the exit of another.