Council Bluffs, IA news and local guide

The original Council Bluff was on the Nebraska side of the Missouri River at Fort Atkinson, about 20 miles northwest of the present city, named by Lewis and Clark for the bluff where they met the Otoe on August 2, 1804. In the 1830s the Iowa side became a reservation for Chippewa, Ottawa and Potawatomi of the Council of Three Fires who were forced from the Chicago area under the Treaty of Chicago. The largest group were Potawatomi led by Sauganash, known in English as Billy Caldwell, son of the British loyalist William Caldwell and a Mohawk woman. They first settled between Leavenworth and St. Joseph, but after the Platte Purchase of 1837 they were forced onto their reservation at Council Bluffs, where Sauganash's village was called Caldwell's Camp and Army dragoons built a small fort nearby.

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In 1838 and 1839 the missionary Pierre-Jean De Smet founded St. Joseph's Mission to the Potawatomi. He was appalled by the violence of the whiskey trade and tried to protect the tribe from unscrupulous traders, and he contributed to Joseph Nicollet's mapping of the upper Midwest, drawing the first detailed European map of the Council Bluffs area. Until about 1853 the town was known as Kanesville, the starting point of the Mormon Trail and the northernmost of the emigrant trail towns, where a steam ferry carried wagons and cattle across the Missouri. In 1869 the first transcontinental railroad to California was connected to the eastern rail network at Council Bluffs. Sources Wikipedia: Council Bluffs, Iowa