six or eight oxen to the crazy vehicle described by Colonel Kane as loaded with a baby and drawn by a dry, dogged little heifer. Each man marched with a loaded, but uncapped musket, and so perfect was their discipline and organization that frequently hostile Indians passed small bodies of Mormons to attack much stronger bands of other immigrants.

During the year 1847 the Indians on the west side of the river complained that the Mormons were killing too much game and cutting too much timber, and the Saints were thereupon ordered to leave.1 They obtained permission to occupy the Pottawattomi lands for five years, and accordingly the main body moved to the east side of the Missouri. Their Bishop Miller had settled a little earlier, in the valley of Indian creek, in the center of the old part of the present city of Council Bluffs. After the complaint had been made by the Indians the great part of the Mormons settled around the old government blockhouse there. "Miller's Hollow" became "Kanesville" in honor of the gentile friend of the Mormons, Col. Thomas L. Kane, who was a brother of Elisha Kent Kane, the explorer.2 The headquarters of the church were transferred to a huge log tabernacle on the flats.3 A postoffice was established that year in Kanesville, but mails were received very irregularly until the great influx of gentile immigration in 1852–53. Orson Hyde, the apostle and lawyer, became editor as well, and published the Frontier Guardian for three years, commencing in February, 1849.

Prof. Charles E. Bessey explodes this idea as non-botanical in a letter published in the Lincoln Courier, November 8, 1898. Positive testimony is existent that the sunflowers dotted the plains in 1832 (testimony of Benjamin Gilmore), fifteen years before the first Mormon emigration. Sunflowers, of course, marked the trails, as they sprang up in profusion where the soil was broken.

1Not based on documentary authority quoting original sources, but amply verified by conversations with pioneers. The Mormon Church History claims that an outfitting station east of the Missouri was desired, hence the move.

2

Biography of Elisha Kent Kane (William Elder). p. 313.

3 Frontier Guardian, May 30, 1849.

The population of Pottawattamie county at that time was about 4,000, mainly of the Mormon faith.1

The crops in 1847 were bountiful, and a series of strong emigrant trains was organized at the Elkhorn rendezvous. The Quorum of the presidency of the church left for Salt Lake early in the summer at the head of strong bands; Brigham Young in May, with 397 wagons and 1,229 persons, Heber C. Kimball in July with 226 wagons and 662 persons, and Willard Richards soon after with 169 wagons and 526 persons, 2,417 emigrants in all, with 892 wagons. Richard's departure left Winter Quarters quite deserted.2

These companies took what was called the North Platte route, ferrying the Elkhorn (whose bridge had disappeared) and Loup, and keeping on the north bank of the Platte the whole distance to the Sweetwater. All the later Mormon trains were governed by the same strict discipline as the pioneers and first emigration, and their travels present no features of special interest.

The Salt Lake emigration continued with diminishing volume from 1848 to 1852, until scarcely distinguishable from the general rush to the West following the discovery of gold.3 The perpetual emigration fund was established in 1849, and the attention of the church was turned to gathering its communicants from Great Britain in Salt Lake valley. The emigration was to New Orleans and St. Louis by steamboat, and

1 Memorial of Judge James Sloan to Iowa Senate, December 19, 1848, quoted in Frontier Guardian, April 4, 1849.

2 Frontier Guardian, May 30, 1849, quoting First General Epistle of the presidency of the church from the Great Salt Lake valley. The Otoes and Omahas fired on Kimball's band at the Elkhorn, wounding three.

3 During the years 1849 and 1850 more than a hundred thousand emigrants passed through the trans-Missouri country on their way to California, Utah, Oregon, and New Mexico. (Letter of Abelard Guthrie, provisional delegate to Congress from Nebraska Territory, to Chairman Committee on Elections, U. S. House of Representatives, July 20, 1861. See vol. III, 2d series, Nebraska State Historical Society Publications, p. 75. In the spring of 1850, before June 3, there passed Ft. Laramie, bound westward, 11,433 men, 119 women, 99 children; 3,188 wagons, 10,900 horses, 3,588 mules, 3,428 oxen, 233 cows. It was estimated that by July 7 of the same year 40,000 persons and 10,000 wagons passed Ft. Laramie, westward. (Frontier Guardian, July 10, 1850.)

then by boat to Independence, St. Joseph, Kanesville, or neighboring Missouri river settlements.

The Independence and St. Joseph trails soon merged in the well-known government and stage road of later years to Ft. Kearney. Bethlehem, opposite the mouth of the Platte, was a favorite crossing place for those landing at Council Point, near Kanesville, but preferring the South Platte route. Many started from Nebraska City, or Old Ft. Kearney, and after 1856 from Wyoming, in Otoe county.1 The South Platte route followed the southerly bank of the Platte until it joined the Ft. Kearney road.

The trail officially recognized and directed was along the north bank of the Platte, leaving Kanesville by way of Crescent, making a rendezvous at Boyer Lake or Ferryville, crossing to the abandoned Winter Quarters, then to the Elkhorn rendezvous, with ferries over the Elkhorn and Loup. All the sunflower trails converged into one at Ft. Laramie. The North Platte route was deemed the healthier, and was thus constantly urged and recommended by the church authorities at Kanesville. Orson Hyde counted 500 graves along the trail south of the Platte, and but three graves north of the Platte river from the Missouri to Ft. Laramie.2

Many Mormons did not start immediately for Salt Lake, and several thousand who were disaffected or impoverished never left the valley of the Missouri. These scattered over southwestern Iowa. A year after the last company left Winter Quarters, the church had thirty-eight branches in Pottawattamie and Mills counties. The census from 1849 to 1853 gives Pottawattamie county a population varying from 5,758 to 7,828, reaching the maximum in 1850, and showing a loss of 2,500 from 1852 to 1854, the years of final Mormon exodus. Every governmental function was controlled by the Mormons up to 1853. They elected Mormon representatives to

'Letter of the late J. Sterling Morton to the writer, December 17, 1898. 2 Frontier Guardian, December 11, 1850.

3 Frontier Guardian, May 2, 1849.

the state general assembly, and Mormon juries sat in the courts of Mormon judges.

As

Kanesville, of course, was the principal settlement. might be expected of a frontier outfitting camp, its population was very unstable. In September, 1850, it contained 1,100 inhabitants; in November, 1851, it was 2,500-3,000; and the census of 1852 showed 5,057. At first it hardly attained the dignity of a village. Its inhabitants regarded it as a temporary resting place and all looked forward to an early departure therefrom; the buildings they erected were makeshifts, and their home-made furniture was rude and not intended for permanent use. With the rush of the gold-seekers following 1849, the resting place of the well-behaved Saints gradually changed to a roistering mining camp, too lively and wicked for the Mormons, who, by the way, were the original prohibitionists of Iowa. Little attention was paid to life or property in the crush and confusion of outfitting from the first of March to the first of July, while the westward emigration was at its height. After June the population dwindled to scarcely 500, and the village again became sedate.1

There were only two or three other settlements of any size. Council Point, three or four miles south of Kanesville, was a favorite steamboat landing.2 Traders or Trading Point, or St. Francis, three or four miles below Council Point, opposite Bellevue, was made a postoffice in the summer of 1849, under the name Nebraska.3 A year later this postoffice was given the vagrant name Council Bluffs, and was credited with a population of 125.4

Frontier Guardian, September 18, 1850; testimony of G. G. Rice, reported in "History of Pottawattamie County," Iowa, by D. C. Bloomer, in "Annals of Iowa," 1870-71, pp. 528-29.

2 Frontier Guardian, March 7, 1849.

3 Frontier Guardian, July 11, 1849. Joseph Pendleton was postmaster. Traders Point was the "Pull Point" or Point aux Poules mentioned in Kane's lecture. (Testimony of Judge W. C. James.)

Frontier Guardian, July 10, 1850, and September 18, 1850, the editor, in the former number, warning his readers to leave "Council Bluffs" off everything designed for Kanesville.

California City was directly opposite the mouth of the Platte, and a little south was Bethlehem ferry. Carterville was three miles southeast of Kanesville, a thriving village of some hundreds. Indiantown, at the crossing of the Nishnabotna, on the Mt. Pisgah road, west of the present Lewis, in Cass county, was the center of quite a large trade. Coonville became Glenwood.1

We have the names of some forty or fifty other settlements in southwestern Iowa. Little of these remains, however, but their name and memory and a half-rotted squared log occasionally plowed up. Strictly, they were not villages or even hamlets, merely the collection within easy distance of a handful of farm houses in a grove on a creek, with a school or church and perhaps a mill or trader's stock. They resembled rather the ideal farm communities or settlements of some modern sociologists."

The greater part of the Saints who acknowledged the leadership of Brigham Young left Iowa in 1852, and with the legislative change of the name of Kanesville to Council Bluffs

1Plats of Kanesville, Bethlehem, Coonville, and California City are found in Record A, pp. 32, 7, 5, and 3 respectively, in the office of the recorder of deeds of Pottawattamie county, Iowa. The Frontier Guardian, February 6, 1850, reports a postoffice established at Indian Town, fortyfive miles east of Kanesville.

2 Among the other Iowa settlements whose names still remain were: Allred's Camp, Americus, Austin (Fremont county), Barney's Grove, Benson's Settlement, Big Grove (now Oakland), Big Pigeon (Boomer township), Blair, Boyer Lake Rendezvous, Brownings, Bullocks Grove, Carbonca, Cooleys Mill, Coolidges Mill, Crescent City (still existing by that name), Davis Camp, Dawsonburg (Fremont county), Ferryville (opposite Winter Quarters), Galland's Grove (Harrison or Shelby county), Harris Grove, Highland Grove (northwest of Nicola), Honey Creek (still existing by that name), Hyde Park, Indian Mill (also known as Wicks Mill, and later as Parks Mill, on Mosquito creek), Keg Creek, Keg Creek Mills (at present Glenwood), Little Pigeon, Lynn Grove (east of Avoca on one branch of Nishna off the trail), Macedonia (still existing by that name), McKissick's Grove (Fremont county), McOlneys, North Pigeon, Nishnabotna (synonymous with Macedonia), Old Agency, Perkins Camp (near Council Bluffs), Pleasant Grove, Plum Hollow (Fremont county) Rockyford or Rockford, Rushville, Sidney (Fremont county, still existing by that name), Silver City (Mills county, still existing by that name), Silver Creek, Springville, Stringtown (inside present limits of Council Bluffs on south bottoms), Union or Unionville, Voorhis' Spring (31⁄2 miles north of present city of Council Bluffs), Wheeler's Grove (Hanson county), Willow. Many of these settlements can not be located definitely at this time. The Mormons had little to do with some named, but branches of the church were reported at all the above settlements at an early date.