244 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



which he concludes from the evidence he gives, that the chief died in the year 

 1802. Mr. Collett is certainly nearer the date of that event than some other 

 writers to whom he refers. I am inclined, however, to believe, from the record 

 left by the celebrated explorers, Lewis and Clarke, that the death of Black-Bird 

 occurred about two years earlier. 



Captains Lewis and Clarke set out on their voyage of exploration from the 

 mouth of Wood River, May 14, 1804. On the loth day of August of the same 

 year they reached, as they state in their journal, a highland on the Missouri 

 River, near the spot where Black-Bird, one of the great chiefs of the Mahas, 

 died of small-pox four years before.. This would fix the date of the death of that 

 chief in the first year of the present century — 1800. They described the place of 

 his burial as " a hill of yellow, soft sandstone, which rises from the river in bluffs 

 of various heights, till it ends in a knoll about three hundred feet above the water. 

 On the top of this a mound of twelve feet diameter at the base, and six feet high, 

 is raised over the deceased king." They further record that they placed upon 

 this mound "a white flag bordered with red, blue and white." 



Speaking further in regard to the chief, Lewis and Clarke say: "Black- 

 Bird seems to have been a personage of great consideration, for ever since his 

 death he is supplied with provisions, from time to time, by the superstitious re- 

 gard of the Mahas." 



Near the place of Black-Bird's burial the Mahas had a village where four, 

 hundred of their warriors died at the time when Black-Bird was taken from them 

 by the same malady. Lewis and Clarke calculate the latitude of this village as 

 42° 1' 3.8" N. Speaking further of the village, they say it was about five miles 

 from their camp (on the Missouri); that it had once consisted of three hundred 

 cabins, '■'■\)\i.'i v^z.^'hnxTi.t^ about four years ago, soon after the small-pox had de- 

 stroyed four hundred men, and a proportion of women and children." 



The Indians described to the explorers the dreadful ravages of the malady, 

 which had carried away so many of their people, but Lewis and Clarke could 

 not learn in what way the disease had been communicated to them. They sup- 

 posed it was through some war party, as the Mahas had been a warlike and 

 powerful people. "When the warriors saw their strength wasting before a 

 malady 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 a better country." Such is 

 the account given of Black-Bird and the great scourge which came upon his 

 people, by so rehable an authority as Captains Lewis and Clarke. 



The explorers remained with the Mahas several days, during which time 

 they obtained much information in regard to their history and their relations 

 with the neighboring tribes. The account which they obtained in regard to the 

 great chief, Black-Bird, is certainly quite conclusive as to the time and manner of 

 his death and burial. The evidence given in their journal quite definitely points 

 to the year 1800 as that in which occurred the death of the great chief and the 

 calamity which destroyed so many of his people. 



