Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 1.djvu/187



(the Little Sioux River). Most of the tributaries of the Missouri had been visited by French adventurers and trappers from 1705 up to the close of French dominion in the Mississippi Valley. They had given them names and to some extent explored them in their search for furs and game. Lewis and Clark were told by the Indians that the Little Sioux took its rise not far from the west branch of the Des Moines River; that within ninety miles of that river it passes through a lake sixty miles in circumference, divided into two parts, the banks of which approach very close to each other. “It varies in width, contains, several islands, and is the 'Lake of the Great Spirit.'”

On the 10th the party passed a high bluff near the river where they were told by the Indians that the Omaha chief, Black Bird, was buried. He had died of smallpox four years before. Over the grave a mound twelve feet in diameter and six feet high had been piled up on an elevation three hundred feet above the river. Near this bluff was formerly a village of the Omahas, where were now buried nearly one thousand members of the tribe who had perished from smallpox the year their chief died. They had buried the dead and then burned their village consisting of three hundred wigwams.

Lewis and Clark now estimated that they had traveled by the river more than a thousand miles. On the 18th of August they landed on the west bank of the river opposite a point at the southwest corner of what is now Woodbury County, Iowa, and held a council with a band of Ottoe and Missouri Indians. The next day a young soldier of their party, Sergeant Charles Floyd, was prostrated with a sudden and very severe attack of bilious colic. The next morning presents were distributed among the Indians, who then mounted their ponies and departed westward over the prairie. The explorers embarked in their boats soon after and ascended the river thirteen miles, going into camp on the east shore. Here Sergeant Floyd died. His body was conveyed some distances to a high bluff