Council Bluffs is a city in and the county seat of Pottawattamie County , Iowa , United States [6] and is on the east bank of the Missouri River across from what is now the much larger city of Omaha, Nebraska.
It was known until as Kanesville, Iowa β the historic starting point of the Mormon Trail and eventual northernmost anchor town of the other emigrant trails. The population of Council Bluffs was 62, at the census. Along with neighboring Omaha to the west, Council Bluffs was part of the 60th-largest metropolitan area in the United States in , with an estimated population of , residing in the eight counties of the Omaha-Council Bluffs metropolitan area.
Council Bluffs is more than a decade older than Omaha. The latter, founded in by Council Bluffs businessmen and speculators following the Kansas-Nebraska Act , has grown to be the significantly larger city. The city was named for an meeting of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with the Otoe tribe , which took place at Council Bluff , near present-day Fort Calhoun , Nebraska, 20 miles to the north.
The Council Bluffs became the generic name for the land on both sides of the Missouri River north of the mouth of the Platte River ; the northwestern corner of Mills County, Iowa was then specifically called Council Bluffs. The present city of Council Bluffs was first settled by Sauganash and his Potawatomi band in He won the respect of Americans in the War of , but was later persuaded to remove from what became Chicago. Sauganash, the mixed-race son of Irish immigrant William Caldwell and a Mohawk mother, was also called Billy Caldwell.
The Potawatomi main settlement, which numbered about 2, people, became called Caldwell's Camp. The U. Dragoons built a small fort nearby. Joseph's Mission to minister to the Potawatomi.
