Staying organized is important, even for outcasts.  Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) were driven out of west central Illinois and southeastern Iowa in 1846 by armed mobs.  Traveling in ox or horse-drawn covered wagons they slogged west across Iowa in the bitter cold of winter and endless mud of an Iowa spring.  The first three of hundreds-yet-to-come wagon trains arrived at the Missouri River June 15, 1846.

This new temporary home was Indian country.  The federal government had moved 2,500 Pottawattamie/Ottawa/Chippewa Indians into the southwestern quarter of Iowa in 1837.  Congress very early in the 1830’s had declared all lands west of the Missouri River to be “Indian Country.”

Nine days before the LDS arrived at the same place, leaders of the Pottawatamie and their relatively few Ottawa and Chippewa allies met tribal members at the partial ruins of an1842 Fort Croghan to consider moving to northeastern Kansas. Tribal members voted in favor of the plan their leaders had struck shortly before in Washington, D.C.  The same favorable response was given by tribal members at other such meetings ending in June and July in other parts of southwestern Iowa.

Thomas L. Kane of Philadelphia, released from his position with the American Legation in Paris, France because of ill health, visited the LDS and the Pottawattamie and wrote:

“(The Pottawattamie)…were pleased with the Mormons.  They would have been pleased with any  whites  who would not cheat them, nor sell them whiskey, nor whip them for their poor gypsy habits, nor bear themselves indecently toward their women, many of whom among the Pottawattamie, especially those of nearly unmixed French descent, are singularly comely, and some of them educated…..Their hospitality was sincere, almost delicate.”

The LDS were given permission to cut any wood they needed and to use any land not occupied by the Native Americans.  For the most part, the LDS were exhausted from the hard pull across Iowa, many were sick, and most had exhausted the food and other necessities they had loaded into their wagons at Nauvoo, Illinois.

  The Pottawattamie were so friendly they climbed through the LDS wagons and inspected everything.  One woman giggled that they pulled pins out of her dress.  On the 16^th of June the LDS pulled their wagons back three miles from the river.  The wagon train climbed to the hill tops east or northeast of present-day Iowa School for the Deaf.  The wagons were arranged in double row squares or parallelograms.  Then picket fences were put up around the wagons, and sometimes on both sides of the road climbing the hill.  The space between the double row of wagons was covered with leafy arborwork to make a shady walk for children, the ill, and the elderly. 

Into headquarters camp June 30^th on Taylor-Pratt Hill (now 100 block east 29^th Avenue, in southeast Council Bluffs) rode Capt. James Allen and five men of United States Dragoons -- mounted infantry.  They were followed by a baggage wagon.

Wednesday morning, July 1, the Quorum of the Twelve invited Captain Allen and his aides to meet with them.  Informed the night before on the basics of the Dragoons’ request, the Quorum had met at night and decided to support the federal government call for about 500 LDS volunteers to serve in the War with Mexico.  The morning meeting went smoothly.

Brigham Young sent word for all LDS men in a huge nearby camp to assemble on Taylor-Pratt Hill at 10:40 a.m.  Brigham explained to the men that in the past January he had sent Jesse C. Little to Washington, D.C. to seek some form of federal service the LDS might perform to help finance their migration to the Rocky Mountains.

Although the LDS were generally bitter about government failure to protect their civil rights, Brigham posed a question.  He asked:  “…is it prudent for us to enlist to defend our country?  If we answer in the affirmative, all are ready to go….If we embrace this offer we will have the United States to back us and have an opportunity of showing our loyalty and fight for the country that we expect to have for our homes.”

Then the senior member of the Quorum added:  “Now I want you men to go and all that can go, young or married.  I will see that their families are taken care of; they shall go as far as mine, and fare the same, and if they wish it, they shall go to Grand Island first.”

A motion to raise some 500 volunteers was unanimously supported by the assembled men.

Captain Allen volunteered to write to Pres. James K. Polk seeking his support for Allen’s grant of permission that the LDS might stay on Indian lands either side of the Missouri River as long as the Mormon Battalion was away in service.  Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball immediately made plans to go back through Iowa at least as far as Mount Pisgah

seeking volunteers for the battalion.

On July 16^th four companies of LDS men and boys were enlisted at Taylor/Pratt Hill.  Then they marched seven miles down Mosquito Creek to the French and Indian town of Point aux poules or Prairie Chicken Point where later they were mustered into service.   There Captain Allen, having raised four companies of volunteers was automatically advanced in rank to Lieutenant Colonel.  The men drew camp kettles, eating utensils and plates, coffee, sugar, 18 ounces of flour and four of pork per day, and blankets for their march to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas territory.  There they would be issued rifles.

That same day Ezra T. Benson was ordained and set apart as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve.  Ninety men were called as bishops to look after the women and children left behind by volunteers in the Mormon Battalion.

On the 20^th of July Company E, the fifth company completing the Battalion, was filled. The first four companies of the Battalion marched four miles south down the muddy east bank of the  Missouri River to the mouth of Mosquito Creek and camped.  Company E started the next day and joined the other four companies further down the east side of the river.

 Immediately after retreating to the hill tops in mid-June, plans were made to build a ferry over the Missouri River.  That was half a mile south of the present South Omaha Bridge (Hwys 92/275).  They cut and hauled timber to the Indian (Wick’s) Mill about two miles northeast of present Council Bluffs.  There they had it cut into board sizes designated by Brigham Young, himself a professional boat builder.  A crew of 100 men and families of varying skills established a town called Council Point, near the Missouri River.  Four teams started  1) building a properly caulked boat capable of carrying three loaded wagons and their teams;  2) cutting a roadway down to the river; 3) cutting a dug way into the Iowa bank of the river and two dug ways into the Nebraska bank half a mile below, and half a mile above the Iowa dug way; and  4) gathering hemp, building a rope walk hundreds of feet long, and twisting the hemp into cord, rope, and cable. 

Thomas L. Kane claimed the river at that point was about a mile wide.  It was likely less.  The hemp cable was stretched from the Iowa dug way downstream to the lower Nebraska dug way and another to the upper Nebraska dug way.

All general authorities of the church were asked to be at the river the night of June 29 to test the boat!  All boarded the ferry, sheltered in the dug way from the flow of the Missouri. Then the boat was pushed into the river & attached to the down-river leg of the hemp cable.

The flow of the river pushed them, boat and all, to the lower Nebraska dug way.  There they unloaded a team of horses.  The boat was backed out of the lower dug way, the team hitched to the front pulled it up-river while passengers used long poles to keep the boat from being pulled against the bank of the river.  A mile up-river the boat was pushed into the upper dug way and the team of horses put back on the boat. 

After loading, the boat was pushed back into the river and attached to the hemp cable.  The force of the river pushed it back to the Iowa dug way.  The night test was successful.  The ferry went into public service July 1.  It operated day and night, as long as the wind was not too strong from a direction that would lap water into the boat.  Cattle were forced to swim over the Missouri.  LDS refugees crossing the river moved west about four miles and started a community they called Cold Spring Camp. 

About 200 of the refugees moved west along the north side of the Platte River to the north fork of the Loup River.  That was about where Genoa, Nebraska is today.  Others waited for

the official notice to move on west to Grand Island or to the Rocky Mountains. It never came.  Leaders of the church were concerned about stragglers still in Nauvoo, or broken down in Garden Grove, or Mount Pisgah, Iowa. 

Members of the Quorum of the Twelve and Presiding Bishop of the Church Newel K. Whitney met on Council Hill, little more than a mile northwest of Cold Spring Camp on July 24, 1846. They spent two hours talking about the migration, stragglers, the church in England and other matters needing their attention.  They put on temple clothing in a tent they had raised on the hill top.  Then they prayed for two hours.  Finally, they set apart Ezra T. Benson to go on mission to the Eastern States and Orson Hyde, Parley P. Pratt and John Taylor to go on mission, also within the week, to England.

A week later the Quorum of the Twelve decided they would winter at the Missouri River in order to be close enough to Mount Pisgah, Garden Grove, and Nauvoo to rush back help if the stragglers needed it.

Cold Spring Camp was abandoned August 6 and 7 for a move north nine miles to a winter quarters they called Cutler’s Park.  The favorable location near today’s Mormon Bridge Road and Young Street in northeast Omaha had been discovered by Alpheus Cutler.  It was decided there the LDS would build no houses until they had put up enough hay to winter their cattle.  On August 27^th, however, about 90 Omaha Indians and a smaller band of Oto Indians arrived at Cutler’s Park asking for rent for LDS use of the land.  The Omaha agreed to camp up the hill in what now is Forest Lawn Cemetery.  The Oto declined and asked permission to camp by the LDS wagon squares – for fear the Omaha would fall upon them and kill them in the night.  Permission was granted. 

The next day all were invited to meet with Brigham Young and other LDS leaders in a big double tent on top of the hill.  The Oto refused, saying they would meet with the LDS after the Omaha Indians.  Brigham Young spoke to the assembled Native Americans.  He said the LDS were on their way to the Rocky Mountains.  They might need to stay at Cutler’s Park two years before completing their move west.  Brigham offered to do farming for the Omaha and repair of their guns.  The LDS, however, would not fight enemies of the Omaha for them, he said. 

After allowing all his men an opportunity to speak, the very elderly Omaha Chief Big Elk rose and said: “I am an old man and will have to call you all sons.  I am willing you should stop in my country, but I am afraid of my great Father at Washington.  I would like to know what the Oto say; if they claim this land, you can stay where you please.  If they do not, I am willing you should stay.  One half of the Oto are willing the Omaha should have these lands…I hope you will not kill our game.  I will notify my young men not to trouble your cattle.”

Big Elk added:  “You can stay with us while we hold these lands, but we expect to sell as our Grandfather will buy.  We will likely remove northward.  While you are among us as brethren, we will be brethren to you.  I like, my son, what you have said very well; it could have been said no better by anybody.”

The Omaha signed a two-year agreement for the LDS to stay in what today is northeast Omaha.  After they filed out of the double tent, the Oto came in.  Brigham Young repeated what he had told the Omaha and offered the same farming and gun repair benefits.  Then the Oto chief stood up and asked:  “But what have you offered the Omaha?”

When Brigham Young said the same offer was made to both the Omaha and the Oto, the Oto erupted and stormed out of the tent.  They threatened war – against the Omaha.  Later it was learned the Oto had crossed into Nebraska from southwest Iowa or northwest Missouri about 1700 A.D.  The Omaha had crossed Iowa and entered Nebraska much earlier, but had only come to the Bellevue area in 1845, much later than the Oto, and only one year before the LDS.  No amount of entreaty by the LDS would stop the Oto from storming back south 15 miles to their village.

Two days later the LDS sent two men to talk with the Oto.  They were rejected with new pledges of war.  Consequently, Brigham Young and other members of the Quorum of the Twelve decided to try to defuse the emotions by moving.  They started surveying north and east of Turkey Creek – later called Mill Creek – running into the Missouri River.   While doing so, it was suggested that a high bench land overlooking the river with bluffs on the north and west sides would provide some shelter from prevailing winds from the northwest.

That new location was surveyed and the move there from Cutler’s Park commenced the 23^rd of September.  Other refugees streamed over the loess hills to their assigned lots in Winter Quarters.  Native Americans, watching the move from a distance, quickly spread the word.  All talk of Oto war against the Omaha ended. 

Rivers were highways, open to all travelers.  Travelers had a right to camp adjacent to the river.  Apparently even the Oto recognized they couldn’t collect rent from the LDS at their new Winter Quarters location.  Some of the hay cut, cured, and stacked near Cutler’s Park was hauled to just south of Winter Quarters.  The final families did not leave Cutler’s Park until early December, but it was a happy ending to a serious threat to refugee tranquility.

The city was organized into wards.  A mill was constructed.  A city welfare store was opened.  The Middle Mormon Ferry was moved north with the Iowa dugway about where Interstate Hwy 680 is located.  The Nebraska dugways were nearly half a mile downstream and upstream from the Iowa dugway.  A support town on the Iowa side, called Ferryville, was constructed near the Iowa dugway.  There operators of the North Mormon Ferry lived.

Winter Quarters was headquarters for all church units and communities on both sides of the Middle Missouri Valley.  Its population reached nearly 4,000 by the spring of 1847. Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball had gardening farms opened in the spring of 1847 to raise food for those who later would be migrating west to the Rocky Mountains.  Brigham’s farm was called Summer Quarters.  It was located about two and a half miles northwest of today’s Fort Calhoun.  Heber C. Kimball’s farm was called that and was located about two miles south of where Fort Calhoun now is.

According to Assistant Church Historian Andrew Jenson, who researched the subject from the 1890s to the 1920s, migrations from Winter Quarters, and then from both sides of the Missouri River, were about 2,000 in 1847; 4,000 in 1848, 3,000 in 1849, 5,000 in 1850, 5,000 in 1851, 10,000 in 1852, and 1,600 in 1853.    

Winter Quarters was abandoned in May or June of 1848.  Those who were not ready to go west moved back across the Missouri River to Kanesville and other communities in southwestern Iowa. 

LDS residents in 1848 organized all of southwestern Iowa into one giant Pottawattamie County.  In 1850 they commenced organizing other counties within that “Pottawattamie Purchase.”  They had built roads, bridges, ferries, saw and grist mills, tabernacles, published four newspapers, and operated at least six large mercantile houses in Kanesville to supply California Gold Rushers.  About 10,000 Gold Rushers stopped in Kanesville in 1849.  They pre-empted the Mormon Trail north of the Platte River in Nebraska.  As a result, the LDS in 1850 crossed the Missouri River at Bethlehem, Iowa and followed the south side of the Platte River west.  The next year they moved back to the north side of the Platte, saying it was 100 miles shorter.

Kanesville boomed in 1849 to a population of about 7,000.  Because of the great need for wood, water, and grass the LDS refugees had scattered throughout southwestern Iowa creating about 100 separate communities.

Community after community, however, set a date a year or a season ahead to load up their wagons and head west for the Rocky Mountains.  New settlers who knew not the LDS came in and took over the extensive farms, wagon repair and manufacturing shops, the 

boot and shoe, cloth manufacturing  businesses, the bakeries, meat and leather shops, plough manufacturing, etc.  Jonathan Browning’s pistol and automatic rifle manufacturing business, however, moved west with the refugees.

Town and street names were changed.  Cemeteries were still used, but platted anew, and the dead of newcomers were buried on top of the LDS burials.  Records were changed and soon local history of the industrious LDS refugees was out of sight.  A few stayed behind or came back from Utah Valley and blended in with the new southwestern Iowa settlers. 

Today, thousands of descendants of the religious refugees come back each year to south-west Iowa looking for a place to put a grave stone or some kind of memorial.  Slowly, ever so slowly, the history and geography of the early pioneers is being pieced back together, but help is needed to document names, dates, and places.  It is a labor of love as long as ancestors are honored for their pioneering efforts on our behalf.

 Gail Geo. Holmes  C July 2008