Clark impressed with red wax and attached with a blue ribbon.
"When you look at these, remember your Great Father. You are his children. He bids you stop war and make peace with one another." In 1860, the Otoe Indians exhibited at Nebraska City those identical papers, borne for more than half a century in all their homeless wanderings, between flat pieces of bark and tied with buckskin thongs.
Then gifts were distributed and chiefs' dresses. With more handshakings and booming of cannon, the flotilla sailed away that sultry afternoon one hundred years ago. The chiefs stood still on the shore and wonderingly gazed at one another.
"These are the peacemakers!"
A week later Lewis and Clark entered the Omaha country and raised a flag on the grave of Blackbird. Encamping on a sandbar opposite the village, Sergeant Ordway and Cruzatte were dispatched to summon the chiefs. Here Cruzatte had traded two winters. Up from the river he found the old trails overgrown. Breaking through sunflowers, grass, and thistles high above their heads, they came upon the spot where once had stood a village. Naught remained but graves.
The Omahas had been a military people, feared even by the Sioux, the Kansas, and the far-away Crows. Strange mystery clung to Blackbird. Never had one so powerful ruled the Missouri. At his word his enemy perished. Stricken by sudden illness, whoever crossed the will of Blackbird died, immediately, mysteriously.
Then came the smallpox in 1800. Blackbird himself died and half his people. In frenzy the agonised Omahas burnt their village, slew their wives and children, and fled the fatal spot,—but not until they had buried Blackbird. In accord with his last wish, they took the corpse of the Omaha King to the top of the highest hill and there entombed him, sitting upright on his horse that he might watch the traders come and go.
And one of those traders bore in his guilty heart the secret of Blackbird's power. He had given
