View on the Missouri, Blackbird's Grave

Description

Having gone aground on another sandbank on the afternoon of Mays, the Yellow Stone was again moving upstream on the following morning. On the morning of May 7 it passed within sight of the Blackbird Hills, named for a prominent chief of the Omahas whose grave was located there. According to local legend, the chief had, by his own instructions, been buried in a mound seated upright on a live mule. Bodmer made a watercolor study of the river in this vicinity later reproduced as Vignette XII in the aquatint atlas.