"Ter hoogte van Council Bluffs, waar de jezuïeten een paar jaar geleden nog een mislukte poging deden om de toekomst van de Potawatomi te verbeteren, ontmoet De Smet een grote groep vluchtelingen. Het zijn 10.000 uit Nauvoo verdreven mormonen op zoek naar een thuisland waar ze ongestoord hun geloof kunnen beleven."
"In the Fall of 1846, as I drew near to the frontiers of the state of Missouri. I found the advance guard of the Mormons, numbering about 10,000, camped on the territory of the Omaha, not far from the old Council Bluffs. They had just been driven out for the second time from a state of the Union (Illinois had recieved them after their war with the people of Missouri). They had resolved to winter on the threshold of the great desert, and then to move onward into it, to put distance between themselves and their persecutors, without even knowing at that time the end of their long wanderings, nor the place where they should once more erect for themselves permanent dwellings. They asked me a thousand questions about the regions I had explored, and the valley which I have just described to you pleased them greatly from the account I gave them of it. Was that what determined them? I would not dare assert it. They are there! In the last three years Utah has changed it's aspect , and from a desert has become a flourishing territory, which will soon become one of the states of the Union.
(uit het archief van de familie de Smet d'Olbecke)