[225] See opposite [page] for illustration of Omaha Indians.—Ed.
[226] See our volume xv, pp. 27-33. This woman was the Indian wife of Manuel Lisa. See Chittenden, Fur-Trade, i, pp. 133-135. Judge Walter B. Douglas, of St. Louis, furnishes the following facts concerning Lisa's daughter, who was educated among the whites. She married a Baptist minister named Ely, and reared a considerable family, dying recently at Trenton, Illinois, a small town not far from St. Louis.—Ed.
[227] For the Omaha Indians see our volume v, p. 86, note 49.—Ed.
[228] Jean Pierre Cabanné was born in Pau, France, in 1773. After receiving good education he came to America—first to New Orleans, later to St. Louis, where he married (1797) Julie Gratiot, whose sister was the wife of Pierre Chouteau. For many years he was member of the firm of Chouteau and Pratte, thus acquiring an interest in the American Fur Company. The family home at St. Louis was the seat of a pleasant hospitality; but like many of the chief fur-traders, Cabanné spent part of each year in the Indian country, where he was head of the department centering near Council Bluffs. He left this post about the time of Maximilian's visit, owing to difficulty with a rival trader, Le Clerc, who had appealed to the courts. Cabanné died in St. Louis in 1841. His post was nine or ten miles by land above the present site of Omaha.—Ed.
[229] See p. [269], for illustration of an Omaha boy.—Ed.
[230] Not only these feather caps are pretty similar to those in Brazil, but also the chief instrument of the conjurors, or physicians (medicine men)—schischikue, as it is called—a calabash with a handle, in which there are small stones to rattle. The Omahas, and all the other North American tribes, use it exactly in the same manner as the Brazilians.—Maximilian.
[231] See p. [269], for illustration of an Omaha war-club.—Ed.
[232] See our volume xiv, pp. 288-321; and xv, pp. 11-136.—Ed.
[233] For Boyer River, see our volume xiv, p. 221, note 174.
This fort at Council Bluffs was not on the site of the Iowa town of that name, but some miles higher up the river, on the Nebraska bank, near the village now known as Fort Calhoun, in Washington County. The name was first applied to the bluffs by Lewis and Clark, who held here (1804) an important council with chiefs of neighboring tribes. The United States post was built by a detachment under Colonel Henry Atkinson, when embarked on the famous Yellowstone expedition of 1819. The means of transportation proving inadequate, the troops never reached the Yellowstone, but formed at this point Camp Missouri, where during the winter of 1819-20 much sickness prevailed. The fort was finally christened Atkinson, for its founder, and was so known to the government. The local name was Fort Calhoun—whether in honor of the then secretary of war, or for a soldier who was the first to be here buried, is disputed. On the building of Fort Leavenworth, the troops were removed thither. See note 204, ante, p. 253.—Ed.