"Boom," went the blunderbuss, and the council smoke arose under an awning made of the mainsail of the bateau. Every man of the expedition, forty-five in all, paraded in his best uniform.
Lewis talked. Clark talked. All the six chiefs expressed satisfaction in the change of government. They begged to be remembered to their Great Father, the President, and asked for mediation between them and the Omahas.
"What is the cause of your war?"
"We have no horses," answered the childlike Otoes. "We borrow their horses. Then they scalp us. We fear the Pawnees also. We very hungry, come to their village when they are hunting, take a little corn!"
The Captains could scarce repress a smile, nor yet a tear. Thefts, reprisals, midnight burnings and slaughter, this was the reign immemorial in this land of anarchy. In vain the tribes might plant,—never could they reap. "We poor Indian," was the universal lament.
Severely solemn, Lewis and Clark hung medals on the neck of each chief, and gave him a paper with greetings from Thomas Jefferson with the seals of Lewis and 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.