Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/287

 MORMON SETTLEMENTS IN MISSOURI VALLEY. ^79 the lands of the Sacs and Foxes. Two of these settlements, or farms, called Garden Grove and Mt. Pisgah, included upwards of two miles of fenced land, well tilled, with com- fortable log buildings ; intended as permanent camps for those to follow, and to accumulate reserve provisions for the coming winter. In addition more or less permanent camps were established at intervals along the trail from the Mississippi to the Missouri, at Sugar Creek, Richardson Point, on the Chari- ton, Lost Camp, Locust Creek, and at Indiantown, the "Little Miami" village of the Pottawattamies. Several thousand did not reach the Missouri in 1846. Many returned to eastern States ; others remained at Garden Grove and Mt. Pisgah, because of a lack of wagons to transport them further west, and in order to cultivate the huge farms to pro- vision the camps the following winter. The van of the main body of Mormons reached the Missouri, near the present city of Council Bluffs, June 14, 1846, and then moved back into the hills while a ferry boat was being built. The boat was launched the 29th, and the next day the pioneers began push- ing across the river. The next few weeks the companies of emigrants as they arrived temporarily camped on the bluffs and bottoms of the Missouri, at Mynster Springs, at Rush- ville, at Council Point and Traders' Point. The pioneers at the same time advanced into the Indian country, building bridges over the Papillion and Elkhorn, and constructing roads. In July, it was resolved to establish a fort on Grand Island, but the pioneers did not reach that far west that year. Some reached the Pawnee villages, and then finding the season too far advanced to continue westward, turned north and win- tered on the banks of the Missouri at the mouth of the Ni- obrara, among the Poncas. The Pottawattamies and Omahas received the refugees kindly. A solemn council was held by the Pottawattamies in the yard of one of Sarpy's trading houses, and the assembled chiefs welcomed the wanderers in aboriginal manner. Pied Riche, surnamed Le Clerc, the scholar, told them :