Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/295

 MORMON SETTLEMENTS IN MISSOURI VALLEY. 287 several thousand who were disaffected or too poor to go on, never left the valley of the Missouri. These scattered over all Southwestern Iowa. A year after the last company left Winter Quarters for Utah, the church had thirty-eight branches in Pottawattamie and Mills counties. The census from 1849 to 1853 gives Pottawattamie County a population varying from 5,758 to 7,828, reaching the maximum in 1850 and showing a loss of 2,500 from 1852 to 1854, the years of final Mormon exodus. Every governmental function was controlled by the Mormons up to 1853. They elected Mormon representatives to the General Assembly, and Mormon juries sat in the courts of Mormon judges. The Gentile vote and influence was small. Kanesville, of course, was the principal settlement. Its pop- ulation was as unstable as might be expected of a frontier outfitting camp. September, 1850, it contained 1,100; in November, 1851, 2,500 to 3,000 ; and the census of 1852 showed 5,057. It was at first hardly of the dignity of a village. Its inhabitants all looked forward to an early departure; the buildings they erected were temporary make-shifts, and their home-made furniture was rude and not intended for perma- nent use. With the rush of the gold-seekers following 1849, the resting place of the well-behaved Saints gradually changed to a roistering mining camp, too lively and wicked for the Mor- monsby the way, the original prohibitionists of Iowa. Little attention was paid to life or property in the crush and con- fusion of outfitting from the first of March to the first of July, while the westward immigration was in its height. After June the population dwindled to scarcely 500, and the village again became sedate and orderly. There were only two or three other settlements of any size. Council Point, three or four miles south of Kanesville, was a favorite steamboat landing. Traders or Trading Point, or St. Francis was made a postoffice in the summer of 1849, under the name "Nebraska." A year later this postoffice was given the vagrant name, "Council Bluffs," and was credited with a population of 125. California City was opposite the mouth