EARLY IOWA LOCALITY RECORDS 
109 
These descriptions of topography and geologic formations are 
of especial interest because they do not at all apply to any part 
of the vicinity of Council Bluffs, Iowa, as any one familiar with 
the region under discussion will at once perceive. 
It is evident that Long’s party found the river and bluff at 
Council Bluff much as Lewis and Clark had described them. 
Long’s map shows the great bend of the Missouri near Council 
Bluff, evidently about as it had appeared thirteen years before,' 
and it also clearly shows the relative position of Boyer ’s River 
(so named on the map). Engineer Cantonment and Council 
Bluff. 
The great bend of the Missouri river was still in existence in 
1839 when Nicollet visited Council Bluff, and his map, com- 
piled by Lieut. W. H. Emory,^^ shows the same relative position 
of Boyer River, Engineer Cantonment and Council Bluff as 
that indicated on Long’s map. A great change, however, took 
place soon after as is shown by Nicollet’s report, which, it should 
be remembered, was prepared two years after his observations 
at Council Bluff were made, and was not published until two 
more years had elapsed. Referring to the unstable character 
of the Missouri channel he says (p. 22) : ‘‘Thus we could not 
recognize many of the bends described by Lewis and Clark ; and 
most probably those determined by us in 1839, and laid down 
upon my map, will ere long have disappeared; such is the un- 
settled course of the river. Already have I been informed, in 
fact, that the great bend opposite Couneil Bluffs has disappeared 
since our visit; and that the Missouri, which then flowed at the 
foot of the bluff, is now further removed by several miles to 
the east of it.” The extent of this change is indicated on the 
map of Harrison county, Iowa, published in the Reports of the 
Iowa Geological Survey, opposite p. 380, in Vol. XX, 1910. In 
this map the writer published the results of the Lewis and Clark 
survey, 1804, the U. S. survey, 1853, and the Wattles survey, 
1898. Council Bluff was a little south of the south line of Har- 
rison county, and on the opposite side of the Missouri river. If 
the change reported by Nicollet brought the river to the position 
indicated by the U. S. survey of 1853, which is not materially 
i-This map accompanies the report intended to illustrate A Map of the 
Hydrographic Basin of the Upper Mississippi River. — I. N. Nicollet. — 1843. 
Snhm’tted Feb. 16, 1841. , Published as a Senate Document, 26th Congress, 
2d Session. 
