On August 11, 1804, the Lewis and Clark Expedition stopped at the foot of a hill on the west side of the Missouri River near present day Macy, Nebraska. The two leaders and ten corpsmen climbed the hill to visit the grave of a notorious Omaha chief called Blackbird. The grave mound was twelve feet in diameter and six feet high, topped with an eight-foot pole to which the corpsmen tied a white flag trimmed in red and blue as a diplomatic gesture to the Omahas in the area.

Blackbird, or Washinga Sahba as the Omahas called him, was the first Native American chief known to the white population. He had the reputation of being a despotic leader who usurped the hierarchy of his tribe and rose to the rank of chief mainly by poisoning his enemies with arsenic acquired from a European trader. Under his leadership, in the last decade of the eighteenth century, the Omahas became the most powerful and influential tribe in the region. They often blockaded the Missouri River and extorted tribute from French and Spanish traders.

However, during the smallpox epidemic at the turn of the nineteenth century, the Omaha population dropped from 700 to 300, and Blackbird was among the deceased. Although native sources indicate that he was well respected and admired among his people, Blackbird’s dramatic reputation as a tyrant and usurper continued in white literature and history, so much so that expeditionists such as Lewis and Clark, Henry Marie Brackenridge, and Karl Bodmer stopped to pay their respects.

Researched, written, and narrated by University of West Florida Public History Student Malina Suity.