y, 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.

"They had been a military and powerful people; but when these warriors
saw their strength wasting before a malady which they could not resist,
their frenzy was extreme; they burned their village, and many of them
put to death their wives and children, to save them from so cruel an
affliction, and that all might go together to some better country."

In Omaha, or Mahar Creek, the explorers made their first experiment
in dragging the stream for fish. With a drag of willows, loaded with
stones, they succeeded in catching a great variety of fine fish, over
three hundred at one haul, and eight hundred at another. These were
pike, bass, salmon-trout, catfish, buffalo fish, perch, and a species of
shrimp, all of which proved an acceptable addition to their usual flesh
bill-of-fare.

Desiring to call in some of the surrounding Indian tribes, they here
set fire to the dry prairie grass, that being the customary signal for a
meeting of different bands of roving peoples. In the afternoon of August
18, a party of Ottoes, headed by Little Thief and Big Horse, came in,
with six other chiefs and a French interpreter. The journal says:--

"We met them under a shade, and after they had finished a repast with
which we supplied them, we inquired into the origin of the war between
them and the Mahas, which they related with great frankness. It seems
that two of the Missouris went to the Mahas to steal horses, but were
detected and killed; the Ottoes and Missouris thought themselves bound
to avenge their companions, and the whole nations were at last obliged
to share in the dispute. They are also in fear of a war from the
Pawnees, whose village they entered this summer, while the inhabitants
were hunting, and stole their corn. This ingenuous confession did
not make