History of Council Bluffs, 1891

1891 Biographical History of Pottawattamie County, Iowa, by The Lewis Publishing Company.

  As early as 1824 a French trader named Hart had established a trading post and built a cabin on the bluffs above the large spring now known as Mynster Spring, within the limits of the present city of Council Bluffs, and had probably been there some time, as the post was known to the employees of the American Fur Company as La Cote de Hart, or Hart's Bluff. In 1827 an agent of the American Fur Company, Francis Guittar, with others, encamped in the timber at the foot of the bluffs about on the present location of Broadway, and afterward settled there. In 1839 a block house was built on the bluff in the east part of the city. The Pottawattomie Indians occupied this part of the State until 1846-7 when they relinquished the territory and removed to Kansas. Billy Caldwell was then principal chief. There were no white settlers in that part of the State except Indian trade! rs, until the arrival of the Mormons under the lead of Brigham Young. These people, on their way westward, halted for the winter of 1846-7, on the west bank of the Missouri River, about five miles above Omaha, at a place called Florence. Some of them had reached the eastern bank of the river the spring before in season to plant a crop. In the spring of 1847 Brigham Young and a portion of the colony pursued their journey to Salt Lake, but a large portion of them returned to the Iowa side and settled mainly within the present limits of Pottawattamie County. The principal settlement of this strange community was at a place first called "Miller's Hollow" on Indian Creek, and afterward named Kanesville, in honor of Colonel Thomas L. Kane, of Pennsylvania, who visited them soon afterward. The Mormon settlement extended over the county and into neighboring counties, wherever timber and water, furnished desirable locations. Orson Hyde, priest, lawyer, and editor, was installed as Pr! esident of the Quorum of Twelve, and all that part of the State remained under Mormon control for several years. In 1847 they raised a battalion numering 500 men for the Mexican War. In 1848 Hyde started a paper called the "Frontier Guardian" at Kanesville. In 1849, after many of the faithful had left to join Brigham Young at Salt Lake, the Mormons in this section of Iowa numbered 6,552, and in 1850, numbered 7,828; but they were not all within the limits of Pottawattamie County. This county was organized in 1848, all the first officials being Mormons. In 1862 the order was promulgated that all the true believers should gather together at Salt Lake. Gentiles flocked in, and in a few years nearly all the first settlers were gone.