Of course the reader will recognize, in the name given to this place by
Lewis and Clark, the flourishing modern city of Council Bluffs, Iowa.
Nevertheless, as a matter of fact, the council took place on the
Nebraskan or western side of the river, and the meeting-place was at
some distance above the site of the present city of Council Bluffs.

Above Council Bluffs the explorers found the banks of the river to be
high and bluffy, 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