Return of Spring.--Appearance of Snakes.--Great Flights of
Wild Pigeons.--Renewal of the Voyage.--Night Encampments.--
Platte River.--Ceremonials on Passing It.--Signs of Indian
War Parties.--Magnificent Prospect at Papillion Creek.--
Desertion of Two Hunters.--An Irruption Into the Camp of
Indian Desperadoes.--Village of the Omahas.--Anecdotes of the
Tribe.--Feudal Wars of the Indians.--Story of Blackbird, the
Famous Omaha Chief.
THE weather continued rainy and ungenial for some days after Mr. Hunt’s
return to Nodowa; yet spring was rapidly advancing and vegetation was
putting forth with all its early freshness and beauty. The snakes
began to recover from their torpor and crawl forth into day; and the
neighborhood of the wintering house seems to have been much infested
with them. Mr. Bradbury, in the course of his botanical researches,
found a surprising number in a half torpid state, under flat stones
upon the banks which overhung the cantonment, and narrowly escaped being
struck by a rattlesnake, which darted at him from a cleft in the rock,
but fortunately gave him warning by his rattle.
The pigeons, too, were filling the woods in vast migratory flocks. It is
almost incredible to describe the prodigious flights of these birds in
the western wildernesses. They appear absolutely in clouds, and move
with astonishing velocity, their wings making a whistling sound as they
fly. The rapid evolutions of these flocks wheeling and shifting suddenly
as if with one mind and one impulse; the flashing changes of color they
present, as their backs their breasts, or the under part of their wings
are turned to the spectator, are singularly pleasing. When they alight,
if on the ground, they cover whole acres at a time; if upon trees, the
branches often break beneath their weight. If suddenly startled while
feeding in the midst of a forest, the noise they make in getting on the
wing is like the roar of a cataract or the sound of distant thunder.
A flight of this kind, like an Egyptian flight of locusts, devours
everything that serves for its food as it passes along. So great were
the numbers in the vicinity of the camp that Mr. Bradbury, in the
course of a morning’s excursion, shot nearly three hundred with a
fowling-piece. He gives a curious, though apparently a faithful, account
of the kind of discipline observed in these immense flocks, so that each
may have a chance of picking up food. As the front ranks must meet with
the greatest abundance, and the rear ranks must have scanty pickings,
the instant a rank finds itself the hindmost, it rises in the air, flies
over the whole flock and takes its place in the advance. The next rank
follows in its course, and thus the last is continually becoming first
and all by turns have a front place at the banquet.
The rains having at length subsided, Mr. Hunt broke up the encampment
and resumed his course up the Missouri.
The party now consisted of nearly sixty persons, of whom five were
partners, one, John Reed, was a clerk; forty were Canadian “voyageurs,”
or “engages,” and there were several hunters. They embarked in four
boats, one of which was of a large size, mounting a swivel, and two
howitzers. All were furnished with masts and sails, to be used when the
wind was sufficiently favorable and strong to overpower the current of
the river. Such was the case for the first four or five days, when they
were wafted steadily up the stream by a strong southeaster.
Their encampments at night were often pleasant and picturesque: on some
beautiful bank, beneath spreading trees, which afforded them shelter and
fuel. The tents were pitched, the fires made, and the meals prepared by
the voyageurs, and many a story was told, and joke passed, and song sung
round the evening fire. All, however, were asleep at an early hour. Some
under the tents, others wrapped in blankets before the fire, or beneath
the trees; and some few in the boats and canoes.
On the 28th, they breakfasted on one of the islands which lie at the
mouth of the Nebraska or Platte River--the largest tributary of the
Missouri, and about six hundred miles above its confluence with the
Mississippi. This broad but shallow stream flows for an immense distance
through a wide and verdant valley scooped out of boundless prairies. It
draws its main supplies, by several forks or branches, from the Rocky
Mountains. The mouth of this river is established as the dividing point
between the upper and lower Missouri; and the earlier voyagers, in
their toilsome ascent, before the introduction of steamboats, considered
one-half of their labors accomplished when they reached this place. The
passing of the mouth of the Nebraska, therefore, was equivalent among
boatmen to the crossing of the line among sailors, and was celebrated
with like ceremonials of a rough and waggish nature, practiced upon the
uninitiated; among which was the old nautical joke of shaving. The river
deities, however, like those of the sea, were to be propitiated by a
bribe, and the infliction of these rude honors to be parried by a treat
to the adepts.
At the mouth of the Nebraska new signs were met with of war parties
which had recently been in the vicinity. There was the frame of a skin
canoe, in which the warriors had traversed the river. At night, also,
the lurid reflection of immense fires hung in the sky, showing the
conflagration of great tracts of the prairies. Such fires not being made
by hunters so late in the season, it was supposed they were caused by
some wandering war parties. These often take the precaution to set the
prairies on fire behind them to conceal their traces from their enemies.
This is chiefly done when the party has been unsuccessful, and is on the
retreat and apprehensive of pursuit. At such time it is not safe even
for friends to fall in with them, as they are apt to be in savage humor,
and disposed to vent their spleen in capricious outrage. These signs,
therefore, of a band of marauders on the prowl, called for some degree
of vigilance on the part of the travellers.
After passing the Nebraska, the party halted for part of two days on the
bank of the river, a little above Papillion Creek, to supply themselves
with a stock of oars and poles from the tough wood of the ash, which
is not met with higher up the Missouri. While the voyagers were thus
occupied, the naturalists rambled over the adjacent country to collect
plants. From the summit of a range of bluffs on the opposite side of the
river, about two hundred and fifty feet high, they had one of those vast
and magnificent prospects which sometimes unfold themselves in those
boundless regions. Below them was the Valley of the Missouri, about
seven miles in breadth, clad in the fresh verdure of spring; enameled
with flowers and interspersed with clumps and groves of noble trees,
between which the mighty river poured its turbulent and turbid stream.
The interior of the country presented a singular scene; the immense
waste being broken up by innumerable green hills, not above eight feet
in height, but extremely steep, and actually pointed at their summits. A
long line of bluffs extended for upwards of thirty miles parallel to
the Missouri, with a shallow lake stretching along their base, which had
evidently once formed a bed of the river. The surface of this lake was
covered with aquatic plants, on the broad leaves of which numbers of
water-snakes, drawn forth by the genial warmth of spring, were basking
in the sunshine.
On the 2d day of May, at the usual hour of embarking, the camp was
thrown into some confusion by two of the hunters, named Harrington,
expressing their intention to abandon the expedition and return home.
One of these had joined the party in the preceding autumn, having been
hunting for two years on the Missouri; the other had engaged at St.
Louis, in the following March, and had come up from thence with Mr.
Hunt. He now declared that he had enlisted merely for the purpose
of following his brother, and persuading him to return; having been
enjoined to do so by his mother, whose anxiety had been awakened by the
idea of his going on such a wild and distant expedition.
The loss of two stark hunters and prime riflemen was a serious affair to
the party, for they were approaching the region where they might expect
hostilities from the Sioux; indeed, throughout the whole of their
perilous journey, the services of such men would be all important, for
little reliance was to be placed upon the valor of the Canadians in
case of attack. Mr. Hunt endeavored by arguments, expostulations,
and entreaties, to shake the determination of the two brothers. He
represented to them that they were between six and seven hundred miles
above the mouth of the Missouri; that they would have four hundred miles
to go before they could reach the habitation of a white man, throughout
which they would be exposed to all kinds of risks; since, he declared,
if they persisted in abandoning him and breaking their faith, he would
not furnish them with a single round of ammunition. All was in vain;
they obstinately persisted in their resolution; whereupon, Mr. Hunt,
partly incited by indignation, partly by the policy of deterring others
from desertion, put his threat into execution, and left them to find
their way back to the settlements without, as he supposed, a single
bullet or charge of powder.
The boats now continued their slow and toilsome course for several days,
against the current of the river. The late signs of roaming war parties
caused a vigilant watch to be kept up at night when the crews encamped
on shore; nor was this vigilance superfluous; for on the night of the
seventh instant, there was a wild and fearful yell, and eleven Sioux
warriors, stark naked, with tomahawks in their hands, rushed into the
camp. They were instantly surrounded and seized, whereupon their leader
called out to his followers to desist from any violence, and pretended
to be perfectly pacific in his intentions. It proved, however, that they
were a part of the war party, the skeleton of whose canoe had been seen
at the mouth of the river Platte, and the reflection of whose fires had
been descried in the air. They had been disappointed or defeated in the
foray, and in their rage and mortification these eleven warriors had
“devoted their clothes to the medicine.” This is a desperate act of
Indian braves when foiled in war, and in dread of scoffs and sneers. In
such case they sometimes threw off their clothes and ornaments, devote
themselves to the Great Spirit, and attempt some reckless exploit with
which to cover their disgrace. Woe to any defenseless party of white men
that may then fall in their way!
Such was the explanation given by Pierre Dorion, the half-breed
interpreter, of this wild intrusion into the camp; and the party were
so exasperated when appraised of the sanguinary intentions of the
prisoners, that they were for shooting them on the spot. Mr. Hunt,
however, exerted his usual moderation and humanity, and ordered
that they should be conveyed across the river in one of the boats,
threatening them however, with certain death if again caught in any
hostile act.
On the 10th of May the party arrived at the Omaha (pronounced Omawhaw)
village, about eight hundred and thirty miles above the mouth of the
Missouri, and encamped in its neighborhood. The village was situated
under a hill on the bank of the river, and consisted of about eighty
lodges. These were of a circular and conical form, and about sixteen
feet in diameter; being mere tents of dressed buffalo skins, sewed
together and stretched on long poles, inclined towards each other so as
to cross at about half their height. Thus the naked tops of the poles
diverge in such a manner that, if they were covered with skins like the
lower ends, the tent would be shaped like an hour-glass, and present the
appearance of one cone inverted on the apex of another.
The forms of Indian lodges are worthy of attention, each tribe having
a different mode of shaping and arranging them, so that it is easy to
tell, on seeing a lodge or an encampment at a distance, to what tribe
the inhabitants belong. 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. In this way tribes were either swept away at once, or
gradually thinned out, and savage life was surrounded with constant
horrors and alarms. That the race of red men should diminish from
year to year, and so few should survive of the numerous nations
which evidently once peopled the vast regions of the west, is nothing
surprising; it is rather matter of surprise that so many should survive;
for the existence of a savage in these parts seems little better than a
prolonged and all-besetting death. It is, in fact, a caricature of the
boasted romance of feudal times; chivalry in its native and uncultured
state, and knight-errantry run wild.
In their most prosperous days, the Omahas looked upon themselves as the
most powerful and perfect of human beings, and considered all created
things as made for their peculiar use and benefit. It is this tribe of
whose chief, the famous Wash-ing-guhsah-ba, or Blackbird, such savage
and romantic stories are told. He had died about ten years previous to
the arrival of Mr. Hunt’s party, but his name was still mentioned with
awe by his people. He was one of the first among the Indian chiefs on
the Missouri to deal with the white traders, and showed great sagacity
in levying his royal dues. When a trader arrived in his village, he
caused all his goods to be brought into his lodge and opened. From these
he selected whatever suited his sovereign pleasure; blankets, tobacco,
whiskey, powder, ball, beads, and red paint; and laid the articles on
one side, without deigning to give any compensation. Then calling to him
his herald or crier, he would order him to mount on top of the lodge
and summon all the tribe to bring in their peltries, and trade with the
white man. The lodge would soon be crowded with Indians bringing bear,
beaver, otter, and other skins. No one was allowed to dispute the prices
fixed by the white trader upon his articles; who took care to indemnify
himself five times over for the goods set apart by the chief. In this
way the Blackbird enriched himself, and enriched the white men, and
became exceedingly popular among the traders of the Missouri. His
people, however, were not equally satisfied by a regulation of trade
which worked so manifestly against them, and began to show signs of
discontent. Upon this a crafty and unprincipled trader revealed a secret
to the Blackbird, by which he might acquire unbounded sway over his
ignorant and superstitious subjects. He instructed him in the poisonous
qualities of arsenic, and furnished him with an ample supply of
that baneful drug. From this time the Blackbird seemed endowed with
supernatural powers, to possess the gift of prophecy, and to hold
the disposal of life and death within his hands. Woe to any one who
questioned his authority or dared to dispute his commands! The Blackbird
prophesied his death within a certain time, and he had the secret means
of verifying his prophecy. Within the fated period the offender was
smitten with strange and sudden disease, and perished from the face of
the earth. Every one stood aghast at these multiplied examples of his
superhuman might, and dreaded to displease so omnipotent and vindictive
a being; and the Blackbird enjoyed a wide and undisputed sway.
It was not, however, by terror alone that he ruled his people; he was a
warrior of the first order, and his exploits in arms were the theme
of young and old. His career had begun by hardships, having been taken
prisoner by the Sioux, in early youth. Under his command, the Omahas
obtained great character for military prowess, nor did he permit an
insult or an injury to one of his tribe to pass unrevenged. The
Pawnee republicans had inflicted a gross indignity on a favorite and
distinguished Omaha brave. The Blackbird assembled his warriors, led
them against the Pawnee town, attacked it with irresistible fury,
slaughtered a great number of its inhabitants, and burnt it to the
ground. He waged fierce and bloody war against the Ottoes for many
years, until peace was effected between them by the mediation of the
whites. Fearless in battle, and fond of signalizing himself, he dazzled
his followers by daring acts. In attacking a Kanza village, he rode
singly round it, loading and discharging his rifle at the inhabitants as
he galloped past them. He kept up in war the same idea of mysterious
and supernatural power. At one time, when pursuing a war party by their
tracks across the prairies, he repeatedly discharged his rifle into the
prints made by their feet and by the hoofs of their horses, assuring
his followers that he would thereby cripple the fugitives, so that they
would easily be overtaken. He in fact did overtake them, and destroyed
them almost to a man; and his victory was considered miraculous, both
by friends and foe. By these and similar exploits, he made himself
the pride and boast of his people, and became popular among them,
notwithstanding his death-denouncing fiat.
With all his savage and terrific qualities, he was sensible of the power
of female beauty, and capable of love. A war party of the Poncas had
made a foray into the lands of the Omahas, and carried off a number of
women and horses. The Blackbird was roused to fury, and took the field
with all his braves, swearing to “eat up the Ponca nation”--the Indian
threat of exterminating war. The Poncas, sorely pressed, took refuge
behind a rude bulwark of earth; but the Blackbird kept up so galling a
fire, that he seemed likely to execute his menace. In their extremity
they sent forth a herald, bearing the calumet or pipe of peace, but he
was shot down by order of the Blackbird. Another herald was sent forth
in similar guise, but he shared a like fate. The Ponca chief then, as a
last hope, arrayed his beautiful daughter in her finest ornaments,
and sent her forth with a calumet, to sue for peace. The charms of the
Indian maid touched the stern heart of the Blackbird; he accepted the
pipe at her hand, smoked it, and from that time a peace took place
between the Poncas and the Omahas.
This beautiful damsel, in all probability, was the favorite wife whose
fate makes so tragic an incident in the story of the Blackbird. Her
youth and beauty had gained an absolute sway over his rugged heart, so
that he distinguished her above all of his other wives. The habitual
gratification of his vindictive impulses, however, had taken away from
him all mastery over his passions, and rendered him liable to the most
furious transports of rage. In one of these his beautiful wife had the
misfortune to offend him, when suddenly drawing his knife, he laid her
dead at his feet with a single blow.
In an instant his frenzy was at an end. He gazed for a time in mute
bewilderment upon his victim; then drawing his buffalo robe over his
head, he sat down beside the corpse, and remained brooding over his
crime and his loss. Three days elapsed, yet the chief continued silent
and motionless; tasting no food, and apparently sleepless. It was
apprehended that he intended to starve himself to death; his people
approached him in trembling awe, and entreated him once more to uncover
his face and be comforted; but he remained unmoved. At length one of his
warriors brought in a small child, and laying it on the ground, placed
the foot of the Blackbird upon its neck. The heart of the gloomy savage
was touched by this appeal; he threw aside his robe; made an harangue
upon what he had done; and from that time forward seemed to have thrown
the load of grief and remorse from his mind.
He still retained his fatal and mysterious secret, and with it his
terrific power; but, though able to deal death to his enemies, he could
not avert it from himself or his friends. In 1802 the small-pox, that
dreadful pestilence, which swept over the land like a fire over the
prairie, made its appearance in the village of the Omahas. The poor
savages saw with dismay the ravages of a malady, loathsome and agonizing
in its details, and which set the skill and experience of their
conjurors and medicine men at defiance. In a little while, two thirds
of the population were swept from the face of the earth, and the doom of
the rest seemed sealed. The stoicism of the warriors was at an end; they
became wild and desperate; some set fire to the village as a last means
of checking the pestilence; others, in a frenzy of despair, put their
wives and children to death, that they might be spared the agonies of an
inevitable disease, and that they might all go to some better country.
When the general horror and dismay was at its height, the Blackbird
himself was struck down with the malady. The poor savages, when they
saw their chief in danger, forgot their own miseries, and surrounded
his dying bed. His dominant spirit, and his love for the white men,
were evinced in his latest breath, with which he designated his place of
sepulture. It was to be on a hill or promontory, upwards of four hundred
feet in height, overlooking a great extent of the Missouri, from whence
he had been accustomed to watch for the barks of the white men. The
Missouri washes the base of the promontory, and after winding and
doubling in many links and mazes in the plain below, returns to within
nine hundred yards of its starting-place; so that for thirty miles
navigating with sail and oar the voyager finds himself continually near
to this singular promontory as if spell-bound.
It was the dying command of the Blackbird that his tomb should be on
the summit of this hill, in which he should be interred, seated on his
favorite horse, that he might overlook his ancient domain, and behold
the barks of the white men as they came up the river to trade with his
people.
His dying orders were faithfully obeyed. His corpse was placed astride
of his war-steed and a mound raised over them on the summit of the hill.
On top of the mound was erected a staff, from which fluttered the banner
of the chieftain, and the scalps that he had taken in battle. When the
expedition under Mr. Hunt visited that part of the country, the staff
still remained, with the fragments of the banner; and the superstitious
rite of placing food from time to time on the mound, for the use of the
deceased, was still observed by the Omahas. That rite has since fallen
into disuse, for the tribe itself is almost extinct. Yet the hill of the
Blackbird continues an object of veneration to the wandering savage,
and a landmark to the voyager of the Missouri; and as the civilized
traveller comes within sight of its spell-bound crest, the mound is
pointed out to him from afar, which still incloses the grim skeletons of
the Indian warrior and his horse.