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About Council Bluffs, IA

The first Council Bluff (singular) was on the Nebraska side of the river at Fort Atkinson (Nebraska), about 20 miles northwest of the current city of Council Bluffs. It was named by Lewis and Clark for a bluff where they met the Otoe tribe on August 2, 1804. The Iowa side of the river became an Indian Reservation in the 1830s for members of the Council of Three Fires of Chippewa, Ottawa and Potawatomi, who were forced to leave the Chicago area under the Treaty of Chicago, which cleared the way for the city of Chicago to incorporate. The largest group of Native Americans who moved to the area were the Pottawatomi, who were led by their chief Sauganash ("one who speaks English"), the son of the British loyalist William Caldwell, who founded Canadian communities on the south side of the Detroit River, and a Pottawatomi woman. Seeking to avoid confrontation with the Sioux, who were natives of the Council Bluffs area, the 1,000 to 2,000 Pottawattamie initially had settled east of the Missouri River in Indian territory between Leavenworth, Kansas and St.