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De Smet’s biography and letters In 1859 Abraham Lincoln ascended the hills at depositing a treasure trove of information on 19th-
document the dangers and hard- Council Bluffs to scout locations for the First Trans- century life for archaeologists to uncover a 100
ships of life in Iowa in the 1830s. continental Railroad completed in 1869. Council years later. Today the Steamboat Bertrand Collection,
It is, however, his remarkable Bluffs later became the eastern terminus for the housed at the DeSoto Bend National Wildlife Refuge,
map of the Council Bluffs area, 1,774-mile-long rail line joining the Midwest to the represents the only public collection of excavated
rediscovered in the course of the Pacific Ocean. cargo from a sunken steamboat. The U.S. Fish and
recent Loess Hills study, which Wildlife Service maintains this Loess Hills related
offers clues to the original loca- In 1865 the Steamboat Bertrand sank just 20 miles collection under the Preserve America mandate that
tion and descriptions of Indian north of Omaha, Nebraska, en route from St. Louis focuses attention on nationally significant archaeo-
settlements, trading houses, and carrying supplies to the goldfields of Montana, logical resources.
other features including tombs
and a shipwreck. Steamboat Bertrand under excavation in DeSoto Bend National Wildlife Refuge in 1969.

Although De Smet mapped the course of the Mis-
souri River from the Big Sioux to below the mouth of
the Platte, he only depicted cultural features in the
southern reaches of this territory. And while his work
was crude, the approximate location of both the
natural and cultural features he drew can be inferred
by aligning with more recent maps and by compari-
son with the archaeological site file at the University
of Iowa. A number of historic Indian sites recorded
in the site file appear to match those portrayed by De
Smet.

In 1853 Mormon migrants also passed through the
Loess Hills area, and their camps are an important
part of the historical and archaeological inventory.
Attracted to the rich agricultural potential of the Mis-
souri valley, a group of Mormons split from the main
wagon train and camped in an area known as Prepa-
ration Canyon, now a state park in Monona County.
Some continued their trek west, but others chose to
settle in the Loess Hills.

University of Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist 27