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Kanesville
Residents |
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History
The Crossroads to
the American West
Miller's Hollow, 1846; Kane, 1847; Kanesville, 1848; Council Bluffs,
1853
Council Bluffs was the greatest “jumping off point” for white
pioneers leaving the United States and crossing the Missouri River
to Indian Country and to the then sparsely populated American West.
The Middle Missouri Valley, from the State of Missouri, north
border, up to the Big Bend of the Missouri River in South Dakota,
was, before 1846, Native American fur trade country. Thousands of
Mormon (Latter-day Saint) refugees fleeing mob attacks in Illinois
and southeastern Iowa changed the Old Council Bluff(s) area, roughly
a 50-mile radius around Miller’s Hollow, forever in 1846.
Merrill Mattes’s Platte River Road Narratives demonstrated
that by 1852 more persons headed to California “jumped off” at
Kanesville than at any other point along the Missouri River. And,
after studying thousands of letters, journals, and diaries, Mattes
concluded that in some years after 1852 more emigrants jumped off at
Kanesville/Council Bluffs than at all other points along the
Missouri River combined.
Henry W. and Daniel Miller, millers by trade, moved north from Grand
Encampment in July 1846 to settle their wagon train where Council
Bluffs is now. A well-to-do member of the wagon train paid the
Pottawattamie/Ottawa/Chippewa Native Americans $300 for the 1837
United States Dragoon-built Blockhouse, a couple of cabins, and 30
acres of corn. Scores of other Latter-day Saint wagon trains were
settling north, south, and east of Grand Encampment. They all
needed fresh supplies of wood, water, and grass.
Miller’s Hollow was a descriptive name designed to ensure letters
brought by Latter-day Saint couriers would find the bishop’s
residence. Bishop Henry W. Miller would then see that all mail
addressed to residents of his settlement were quickly distributed to
the right family or person. Miller’s hollow was a steep ravine
running up into the bluffs which generously watered the Miller
garden when enough rain fell. Many other members of the Miller wagon
train also lived in hollows around the base of the bluffs for the
same reason.
About a mile to the northwest of Miller’s Hollow was Billy
Caldwell’s Village. That was one of five or six widely scattered
Pottawattamie/Ottawa/Chippewa Indian villages. Their territory was
known as the Pottawattamie Purchase, which included most of what
today is southwestern Iowa. With the predominantly Pottawattamie
was a following of part French, part Pottawattamie who intermarried
primarily during the Pottawattamie/Ottawa/Chippewa trade and
war-time alliance with the French against the British and
Americans. That was before England won a fourth successive colonial
war against France and forced the French government out of North
America in 1763.
Thereafter the Pottawattamie, for trade purposes, allied themselves
with the British against the Americans both in the American
Revolution and in the War of 1812. For that reason in the 1820s and
1830s they were removed from proximity to Canada first to what now
is northwestern Missouri and then to southwestern Iowa. There were
in 1846 about 2,250 Pottawattamie in southwestern Iowa, having been
moved there in 1837. An equal number of Pottawattamie had fled to
Canada during the removal process. Another third had quickly agreed
with American commissioners and moved to northeastern Kansas. The
Pottawattamie in Iowa were in the process of agreeing in 1846 to
move to northeastern Kansas just as Latter-day Saint refugees arrived.
The Blockhouse, located a little north of what today is East Pierce
Street, between Union and Franklin Streets in Council Bluffs, was
donated by its purchaser to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints as a meetinghouse. The town of Miller’s Hollow began to grow
to the west and north of that meetinghouse.
The High Council organized at Council Point gradually expanded its
direction over other communities, including Miller’s Hollow. A
network of roads, bridges, and ferries was built by volunteer labor
throughout southwestern Iowa. Extensive farming was started even
late in 1846 and expanded each year thereafter. Small businesses
popped up in the Latter-day Saint towns as other pioneers migrated through and
made purchases in the Latter-day Saint communities on their way primarily to
California and Oregon.
Leadership of the church, with some 2,000 members, had crossed the
Missouri River in July of 1846. That was to avoid having to cross
the Missouri River the next spring when the river was at flood
stage. Brigham Young and other members of the Twelve kept regular
contact with the Latter-day Saint communities in southwestern Iowa.
Orson Hyde, Ezra T. Benson, and George A. Smith were asked by the
Twelve to live in Miller’s Hollow and assist branches of the church
on the Iowa side. There were about 13,000 members of the church
living in Iowa as compared to less than 4,000 in Nebraska.
Miller’s Hollow/Kane/Kanesville grew significantly when 2,000
pioneers in 1847 and 4,000 in 1848 migrated west to Utah. About
2,000 members from Winter Quarters lacked enough supplies to migrate
to Utah. They returned to communities in Iowa, especially to
Kanesville.
It grew even more in 1848 when Pottawattamie County was organized,
with Kanesville as county seat. But the big jump was in 1849 when
about 10,000 California Gold Rushers swarmed across the Missouri
River ferries west, just north, and just south of Kanesville.
Prices shot up as it appeared Gold Rusher purchases would leave
Kanesville without enough food or grain to feed its own. Suddenly,
farmers and businessmen were making money without being attacked by
mobs as they had been in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois.
“The market has been entirely unsettled for the past month, prices
varying according to the demand, and the demand for flour, bacon,
pork, corn, and other articles, which… emigrants for the West
require, have commanded very high prices,” reported The Frontier
Guardian of May 30, 1849 (p 3, col. 5). “Flour, week before
last varied from five to ten dollars per hundred, but since that
time the prices have settled down some…flour at $3.50 @ $4.50 for
hundred pounds; bacon 6 @ .08 for lb….
“The country has been nearly swept clean of provisions and
breadstuffs, of all kinds, and there will be barely sufficient
remaining to supply our own inhabitants until harvest.”
Outsiders began moving into Kanesville and other Latter-day Saint communities to
farm, manufacture and open other useful businesses.
Orson Hyde, who in 1842 had dedicated the Holy Land for the return
of the Jews a half century before the founding of the Zionist
movement in Basle, Switzerland, in February of 1849 started a Whig
newspaper called The Frontier Guardian. Another member of
the church started a second newspaper in 1850 just across Main
Street, now Broadway. Almon Babbitt called his Democrat paper
The Weekly Bugle. Orson Hyde’s Frontier Guardian had
most of the advertising and readership tied up. Babbitt decided to
turn editorship of his Weekly Bugle over to his son-in-law,
Joseph Ellis (J.E.) Johnson. That was a brilliant move. Johnson, a
poet and successful businessman, turned out to be a talented writer
and investigative reporter. Council Bluffs and the surrounding
region yet today benefit historically from the excellent quality of
frontier newspaper coverage by both the Guardian and the
Bugle.
Johnson went on to publish a newspaper in Crescent, Iowa; the first
in Omaha – The Omaha Arrow; and a newspaper in Woodriver,
Nebraska Territory. Jacob Dawson bought Hyde’s press and failed to
promote a new town, Dawsonburg, southeast of Tabor, Iowa with his
paper. He did, however, publish a newspaper in Wyoming, Nebraska
Territory long enough to cover an important segment of the
Underground Railroad and of the Down-and-Back Wagons from Utah
picking up new members of the church coming from the British Isles
and Scandinavia.
Hyde was not only a very successful newspaper editor and publisher.
He built a Music Hall on the west side of what now is South First
Street, just north of where Platner St. ends.
He hired Aldo Dami away from Westpoint Military Academy. Dami gave
woodwind and brass lessons in the two-story music hall during the
day. He conducted band and choral concerts occasionally in the
evening. He probably also had a hand in staging performances of
Shakespeare’s Macbeth in Hyde’s Music Hall. The two-story
Union Hotel was the next building south. The two-story Cottonwood
Jail, built by Pottawattamie County to comply with State of Iowa
law, stood just north of the Music Hall. East across the street,
then named Hyde Street, was St. Louis Best Boot & Shoe Store.
East of Hyde Street and north of what now is East Pierce was the
town square. There some 5,000 citizens assembled July 4, 1850 for a
parade through town with a band in front and in back of the parade,
large banners, and ladies all dressed in white.
North of Main Street (now Broadway) and east of Hyde Street (now
First Street) stood the 40’ x 60’ Log Tabernacle, with a 12’ x 20’
extension on the north side. Church conferences, voting, dances,
social events, and school graduations were held there.
The post office stood at the northeast corner of what now is
Broadway and First Street.
Newspapers were left in a reading room for those unable to afford
that luxury. Postmaster J.E. Johnson cautioned men against putting
their feet on the reading room table.
Half a dozen large mercantile houses, and many smaller businesses,
included an auction house, hotels, diners, blacksmith shops, a
jewelry store, a daguerreotype shop that offered to go to your home
to photograph it for the folks back east, lined the streets. At a
safe distance was a slaughter house that offered meat delivery to
the home at least once a week.
by Gail Geo.
Holmes
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