, 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 faithfull