USA > Nebraska > Douglas County > Omaha > History of the city of Omaha, Nebraska > Part 8
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" This cruel custom of exposing their aged people belongs, I think, to all the tribes who roam about the prairies, making severe marches; when such decrepit persons as are totally unable to go, unable to ride or to walk, when they have no means of carrying them. It often becomes absolutely necessary in such cases that they should be left; and they uniformly insist upon it, saying, as this old man did, that they are old and of no further use; that they left their fathers in the same manner; that they wished to die, and that their children must not mourn for them."
The Commissioner of Indian Affairs, in his report for the year 1878, declares that the Poncas are good Indians, and in men- tal endowment, moral character, physical strength and cleanliness superior to any he had ever met.
The Otoes and Missouris have long been confederated and are supposed by some to have been originally the same tribe. The latter are a tribe of the Dakota family and first became known to the whites about the year 1673. They called themselves Nudar- chas, the name Missouris, or people living
by the muddy water, having been given them by the Illinois. In 1804 they nun- bered only about three hundred persons. having been reduced from their former considerable numbers by the small-pox, which so reduced them that they again affiliated with the Otoes and have for a long time been treated and considered as the same tribe. The Otoes were known to the French by the name of Otontantes, and at the time of the expedition of Lewis and Clarke, their possessions extended to the present City of Omaha on the north, though their villages were principally on the south side of the Platte River, where they lived in mud lodges. At the time of the first settlement of Omaha they occupied a reservation south of the Platte, though their visits to their old hunt- ing grounds about the city were not infre- quent. In the year 1882 the poor remains of these two ill-fated tribes, reduced by wars, hardships, small-pox and civilizing influences to four hundred and fifty-seven souls, were removed to the Indian Territory ; where easy, good natured, lazy and shiftless, they depend on the government for their livelihood, doing just work enough to entitle them to a distribution of rations, and find- ing it exceedingly difficult to abandon their nomadic habits.
There remains to be mentioned, of the four principal tribes inhabiting the eastern portion of Nebraska at the time of the advent of the whites, the nation of the Omahas, or as they were, until a compara- tively recent period, called the Mahas. The signification of the name is said to be "the up-river people." Its proper pronunciation is O-maw-haw, with the accent on the second syllable, the prevailing tendency of the English speaking people to throw back the accent beyond the penult having at present, however, so far established its present pro- nunciation, with the stress on the first sylla- ble, as to render any change impossible. In fact the Indian accents were never strongly marked, and the native sound of the word
42
HISTORY OF THE CITY OF OMAHA.
can best be represented as given above, with no accent whatever on either of its three syllables.
The Mahas were one of the tribes men- tioned by Father Marquette in his account of his voyage down the Mississippi, and their location was given on his map with considerable aceuracy. Nearly one hundred years later they are said to have been visited by Jonathan Carver during his journey to the west. At that time they seem to have been roaming as far east as St. Peter's River.
His own account states that he arrived among the Nandowessie Indians on the 7th of December, 1766, and resided with them seven months. These Nandowessies are supposed to have been the Sioux or Dakota Indians. These Sioux are always reluctant to acknowledge this name, which was first given them by the French, and is now in general use. There are many theories as to its origin, perhaps the most acceptable of which is that it is a corruption of the word Nadonessioux, a general Chippewa designa- tion for enemies; which was gradually applied by missionaries and traders through an imperfect comprehension of the language to the tribes thus designated. Carver declares that the band with which he resided constituted a part of the eight bands of the Nandowessies of the plains; " and are termed the Wawpuntowahs, the Tintons, the Afrah- cootans, the Mawhaws, and the Schians. The other three bands whose names are the Schianese, the Chongonseeton, and the Wad- dapawjestin, dwell higher up to the west of the River St. Pierre, on plains that, accord- ing to their account, are unbounded; and probably terminate on the coast of the Pacific Ocean." His description of his first encounter with these Indians is as follows:
"As soon as I had reached the land two of the chiefs presented their hands to me, and led me amongst the astonished multi- tude, who had, most of them, never seen a white man before, to a tent. Into this we
entered, and according to the custom that universally prevails among every Indian nation, began to smoke the pipe of peace. We had not sat long before the crowd became so great. both around and upon the tent, that we were in danger of being erushed by its fall. On this we returned to the plain, where, having gratified the curiosity of the common people, their wonder abated, and ever after they treated me with great respect. "From the chiefs 1 met with the most friendly and hospitable reception; which induced me, as the season was so far ad- vanced, to take up my residence among them during the winter. To render my stay as comfortable as possible. I first endeavored to learn their language. This I soon did, so as to make myself perfectly intelligible. having before aequired some slight knowl- edge of the language of those Indians that live on the back of the settlements; and in consequence, met with every accommodation their manner of living would afford. Nor did I want for such amusements as tended to make so long a period pass cheerfully away. I frequently hunted with them; and at other times beheld, with pleasure, their recreations and pastimes, which I shall describe hereafter.
"Sometimes 1 sat with the chiefs, and whilst we smoked the friendly pipe, enter- tained them, in return for the accounts they gave me of their wars and excursions, with a narrative of my own adventures, and a description of all the battles fought between the English and French in America, in many of which I had a personal share. They always paid great attention to my details. and asked many pertinent questions relative to the European methods of making war.
" I held these conversations with them in a great measure, to procure from them some information relative to the chief point I had constantly in view, that of gaining a knowl- edge of the situation and produce, both of their own country and those that lay to the westward of them. Nor was I disappointed
43
A FAMOUS OMAHA CHIEF.
in my designs; for I procured from them much useful intelligence. They likewise drew for me plans of all the countries with which they were acquainted; but as I enter- tained no great opinion of their geographical knowledge, I placed not much dependence on them, and therefore think it unnecessary to give them to the public. They draw with a piece of burnt coal, taken from the hearth, upon the inside bark of the birch tree; which is as smooth as paper, and answers the same purposes, notwithstanding it is of a yellow cast. Their sketches are made in a rude manner, but they seem to give us as just an idea of a country, although the plan is not so exact as more experienced draughtsmen could do."
Carver left the habitations of these hos- pitable Indians at the latter end of April, 1767, not forgetting, after he had learned their language, to give them in it some idea of the glory and power of the great king that reigned over the English and other nations; descended from a very ancient race of sovereigns as old as the earth and waters; whose feet stood on two great islands larger than any they had ever seen, amidst the greatest waters in the world; whose head reached to the sun, and whose arms encircled the whole earth; the number of whose war- riors were equal to the trees in the valleys, the stalks of rice in the marshes, or the blades of grass in the great plains; who had hundreds of canoes of his own, of such amazing bigness that all the waters in their country would not suffice for one of them to swim in; each of which have guns of such magnitude that a hundred young braves would, with difficulty, be able to carry one. And these were equally surprising in their operation against the king's great enemies when engaged in battle; the Indian language wanting words to express the terror they carried with them.
To this harangue the Indians, by the mouth of their principal chief responded, that they believed and were well satisfied
of the truth of everything told them about the great English nation and its great king, and implored Carver, on his return, to acquaint their powerful father how carnestly the Nandowessies yearned to be counted among his good children.
It is painful to be obliged to record that poor Carver, after all his magniloquent speeches and romatic exaggerations of fact, did not receive from the British Government the consideration to which he thought him- self entitled. Soliciting from the king a reimbursement of his expenses, he was not only refused this favor, but was ordered to deliver up all his charts, journals and manu- scripts, as the property of the crown, Carver having been a captain of the provincial troops in America. Disappointed in his hopes of fame, abandoned by those whose duty it was to support him, it is said that he died at the early age of forty-eight, in want of the common necessaries of life.
The Omahas are said to be of the same linguistic family as the Poncas, Osages, Kansas, Otoes, Mandans, Winnebagos, and many other tribes. Some of these tribes, notwithstanding the long period which has elapsed since their separation, can still un- derstand each others' speech.
Their period of greatest renown and pros- perity was doubtless during the chieftancy of their distinguished chief Wah-shinguh- saba, or the Blackbird, who died in the year 1800, and of whose career such wild and romantic tales are narrated.
In the days of their prosperity, before the small-pox, that dread scourge of the red men. had reduced their numbers and conquered their haughty spirits, the Omahas conceived themselves to be superior to all other tribes or nations of men, and looked upon the birds of the air, the beasts of the field, and even the human race as created especially for their comfort and aggrandize- ment. Among this people Blackbird, the chief, ruled with a rigor never surpassed in eastern lands. And to this day his name
44
HISTORY OF THE CITY OF OMAHA.
is never mentioned among his people save with veneration. He soon learned the great advantage of being on good terms with the white traders, and was among the first of the dusky potentates along the Missouri to welcome them to a commerce with his tribe, a reasonable but not prohibitory tariff for the support of his royal dignity being always claimed and exacted with unfailing success and regularity.
No autocrat was ever so selfish; no prince ever more liberal with whatever did not belong to him. When the pirogues of the fur traders came in sight of his encampment, on the high bluffs of the right bank of the Missouri, on the spot now occupied by the Omaha reservation, he was always among the first to meet them, and his invariable habit was always to help himself from their store of merchandise, to whatever his royal fancy might indicate as desirable. For such articles he never deigned to give any com- pensation whatever, nor by those who knew his habits was it ever expected. The stores of blankets, beads, paint, ammunition and whisky were laid aside without a word, and when his appetite was satiated he sent for the rest of his tribe, who brought their peltries, and commenced their barter. The traders then found the advantages of his friendship, for they were allowed to fix their own prices upon both their own goods and those of the Indians, and soon, no doubt, indemnified themselves for any losses they might have sustained through him.
It is needless to say that such liberality in trade endeared him to the French and Span- ish traders, and through them to the commanding officers of the province of Louisiana. There is still extant a curious certificate or diploma, given by the Baron C'arondelet to this barbaric Chieftain, in the year 1790, which was, until a very recent date, preserved as a precious heirloom by the descendants of Blackbird, and which is now in the custody of the Nebraska Ilistori- cal Society. The parchment is enriched
with rude pen and ink drawings of the arms of Spain, trophies of war, and an Indian and white man shaking hands in token of amity. In records in magniloquent Spanish phrase the proofs of fidelity and friendship which the Blackbird had shown to the Span- ish government, and recites the bestowal of a medal upon him as a token of the estima- tion in which he was held by the Catholic monarch of Spain. The original text of this interesting document is given in a note .*
The Blackbird was undoubtedly a warrior of unquestionable bravery and remarkable skill, so that his exploits in battle would alone have enabled him to rank among the first of the Indian sachems. Upon the Pawnees of the Republican River he had inflicted a signal and bitter ven- geance for an insult offered by them to one of his Omaha braves. The Otoes, living south of Omaha's present site, had felt the bloody effects of his irresistible fury so often, that it seemed that if the warfare would end at last in the absolute extinction of one nation, if not both. This would probably have been the case, had not the white traders, who could not afford to lose such ready purveyors of bear, beaver. otter, buffalo and other valuable skins, offered themselves as arbitrators, and finally succeeded in patching up a peace between them. In the fierceness of his charges, the celerity of his movements, the irresistible fury of his onsets, the pride with which he exposed himself personally to the weapons of his enemies, he was a very Prince Rupert among the wandering tribes of the prairies. Ilis forays extended even to the Kansas, and that tribe of horsemen had more than one occasion to mourn their devastated villages and their slaughtered braves. By his sud- den incursions, his fulfilled prophesies, which seemed to indicate the possession of super- natural powers, by his miraculous escapes,
*El Baron de Carondelet Caballero de la Religion de San ,Iuan, Mar. de Campo de les Reales Exercitos Gobernador Gene- ral Vice-Patrono de las Provincias.
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AN INDIAN TRAGEDY.
lis astonishing personal prowess, and his daring and dazzling exploits, he was the pride and boast of his own tribe, and the terror and detestation of all surrounding ones.
Irving gives an incident in the career of this barbaric warrior, which exhibits him in a different light, and gives a color of romance also to the more sombre tints of his military career. He says that with all his savage and terrific qualities, he was not unsuscepti- ble to the charm of female beauty, and not incapable 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 this extremity they sent forth a herald bear- ing 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 beau- tiful daughter in her finest ornaments, and sent her forth with the 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 Black- bird. Her youth and beauty had gained an absolute sway over his rugged heart so that he distinguished her above all 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, lie 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, tast- ing 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 com- forted, 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 a harangue upon what he had done, and from that time forward seemed to have thrown the load of grief and remorse from his mind." The sorrowing monarch. his obsequious servants, their vain tenders of consolation and the sudden change at last from the stupor of despair to the habits of ordinary life, can hardly fail to remind the readers of this story of similar recorded incidents in the life of the great Israelitish king.
One dark and fearful charge has been brought against the Omaha Sachem, which has blackened his reputation, and left a stigma upon him which no lapse of years can efface. It has been asserted that the great celebrity and absolute authority he acquired among his tribe were due to a long series of the most diabolical murders com- mitted by him upon the ignorant and trusting children of the plains who believed in his prescience and trembled at his prowess. One of the fur traders, so runs the story, who was accustomed to visit him at his village on the Missouri, seeking to ingratiate himself with so valuable a customer, made
.
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF OMAHA.
him acquainted with the deadly properties of arsenic, and undertook to keep him sup- plied with that noxious poison. From this time it was easy to induce the belief among his people that he was endowed with super- natural powers, and this rendered his despot- ism the more absolute and fearful. Whenever any one had offended him or thwarted his schemes or measures, he was wont to pro- phesy that at a certain time and with certain symptoms his recalcitrant subjeet would surely die. With his deadly drug it was never difficult to insure the fulfillment of his prediction. It has even been said that he administered the potent poison sometimes to friends, as well as to foes, that his prophecies might not all seem the effect of malice or ill- will.
The Omahas were entirely ignorant of the means by which this horrible result was pro- duced, but they saw the effeet, and knew from mournful experience that the displeas- ure of the chief was the forerunner; and their superstitious minds easily adopted the belief that he possessed a power which ena- bled him to will the destruction of his enemies. He thus acquired a despotie sway over the minds of his people which he exercised in the most tyrannical manner. So great was their fear of him that even when he became superannuated and so corpu- lent as to be unable to walk, they carried him about, watched over him when he slept, and awoke him, when necessary, by tickling his nose with a straw, for fear of disturbing him too abruptly. One chief, the Little Bow, whom he attempted ineffectually to poison, had the sagacity to discover the deception, and the independence to resist the influence of the imposter, but being unable to cope with so powerful an oppressor, he withdrew with a small band of warriors and remained separated from the nation until the decease of the Blackbird.
This, if true, is a sad record for the Chief of the Omaha nation; so discreditable that in the horror and detestation it exeites we
are apt to have lost sight of the incredible enormity of those who conferred upon him the power of perpetrating sueh barbarous homieides. If the guilt of the uncivilized and untaught denizen of the wilderness appeals to us with its iniquity, surely that of his civilized tempters and accomplices ought not to pass unnoticed and unreproved.
It is but just, however, to the memory of this haughty and invincible friend of the white man, to say that this story of his atrocities has not received universal accept- ance. Mr. Catlin who, as we have seen, visited the Omahas while their great chief's memory was still fresh among them, says: " This story may be true and it may not. I cannot contradict it and I am sure the world will forgive me if I say I cannot believe it. It is said to have been told by the fur traders, and although I have not always the highest confidence in their justice to the Indian, yet I cannot, for the honor of my own species, believe them to be so depraved and so wieked, nor so weak as to reveal such iniquities of this chief, if they were true, which must directly implicate themselves as accessories to his most wilful and unprovoked murders.
" I have learned much of this noble chief- tain," he continues, " and at a proper time shall recount the modes of his eivil and millitary life; how he exposed his life and shed his blood in reseuing the victims to horrid torture, and abolished that savage custom in his tribe; how he led on and headed his brave warriors against the Sacs and Foxes, and saved the butchery of women and children; how he received the Indian agent and entertained him in his hospitable wigwam in his village, and how he conducted and acquitted himself on his embassy to the civilized world.
"So much I will take pains to say of a man whom I never saw, because other his- torians have taken equal pains just to men- tion his name, and a solitary (and doubtful)
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BURIAL OF BLACKBIRD.
aet of his life, as they have said of hundreds of others, for the purpose of consigning him to infamy.
" Ilow much more kind would it have been for the historian who never saw him, to have enumerated with this, other characteristic actions of his life for the verdict of the world; or to have allowed, in charity, his bones and his name to have slept in silence, instead of calling them up from the grave to thrust a dagger through them and throw them back again."
Towards the close of the eighteenth cen- tury that fearful scourge of Indian tribes, the small-pox, fell upon the tribes in Ne- braska with fearful violence. Neither the Poncas, the Otoes nor the Pawnees escaped its deadly visitation; and upon the Omahas it precipitated itself, as if with a full deter- mination to leave no soul of the tribe remaining. The loathsome pestilence swept like a conflagration over the prairies; and the poor doomed savages, dismayed at the progress of a malady against which their own prayers and the incantations of their medicine men were alike ineffective, at first sat in stoical silence as one after another of their sons, daughters and wives were taken away from them; and at last in despair, sought in suicide and human sacrifice either to appease the offended Deity or to secure for themselves and their friends an easier way to a happier region beyond the grave.
In the height of its ravages, Blackbird fell a victim to the pestilence. He who was supposed to have power over the issues of life and death was found utterly powerless before the approach of the grim monster. But in his last moments, surrounded by the grieving and despairing remnants of the proud tribe he had led to so many victories, he exhibited that fondness for the whites. which for years had made him a prominent object among the chieftains of his race. There is, at a distance of less than a hundred miles north of Omaha, a conspicuous hill which rises high above the bluffs bordering
the Missouri, of which it forms a part. In the year 1811, when it was visited by Man- uel Lisa, the river at its base began a strange winding course, several times returning upon its steps and at length coming within nine hundred yards of where the hills first ap- proached, so that it was visible, and not far off, for a course of thirty miles.
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