No one living knows just when the first white men settled at Bellevue.
The story has many times been told how
Manuel Lisa climbed the sloping
hills from the riverside where his boat lay moored and as his eye swept
that
wonderful panorama of forest, hill and river he exclaimed in French,
"Bellevue;" that he then staked out his fur
trader's cabin in the valley
below and thus began the first white settlement in our state.
This was in
the year 1810, so the story goes. Manuel Lisa himself left no writing to
prove it and we know that
Fort Lisa, his chief fur trading post, was
twenty miles farther up the Missouri River. The old fur traders died long
ago and the trees and hills about Bellevue which looked down upon their
boats in the river tell no tales of these
early "voyageurs."
The Astorians
who passed up the river in 1811 made no mention of the trading post of
Bellevue and the soldiers
who built Fort Atkinson in 1819 on the Council
Bluff twenty-five miles above are equally silent in regard to it.
The fur trading records first tell of Bellevue in 1823. There was then
a fur trading post and an Indian agency, called
the Council Bluffs Indian
Agency, at Bellevue.
The Omahas, Otoes and Pawnees came there to trade. It
was easier for the fur traders and Indians to meet at
Bellevue than at any
other post on the river. The smooth valley of the Platte made a natural
pathway; the rock
foundation of the hills sloping to the riverside made a
natural landing place for boats; wood and water were at hand.
When the
soldiers abandoned Fort Atkinson in 1827 and marched away, Bellevue became
the chief post and the
oldest town in fact as well as in story of the
Nebraska country.
Bellevue was the stopping place of the early adventurers, trappers,
travelers, missionaries and soldiers who came
to this region. The early
names in our annals cluster about Bellevue.
Peter A. Sarpy
Henry
Fontenelle
Prince Maximilian
George Catlin
John C. Fremont
Professor
Hayden
J. Sterling Morton
Brigham Young
The Indians of the Platte valley brought hither
their furs. Missionaries made here their first attempt to civilize and
Christianize Nebraska. When steamboats began to make regular trips up the
Missouri, Bellevue was one of the
principal landing places.
In 1846 the
Presbyterian Church fixed on Bellevue as the site of its principal mission
to the western Indians and
in 1848 the old mission building standing
today was built. Here came the first governor to the Nebraska territory
in 1854 and here the first newspaper, the Nebraska Palladium, was printed.
All the signs then pointed to Bellevue
as a future great metropolis of the
Platte valley.
Then came disaster after disaster to Bellevue's fond hopes and
aspirations.
The capital was located at Omaha.
The Pacific Railroad left a
natural crossing at Bellevue and a natural roadway up the valley of the
Platte to find a
more difficult crossing and longer route through Omaha.
Sarpy county was created with Bellevue as the county seat, but even this
distinction was carried off by the new
town of Papillion in 1875.
Bellevue still stands by the riverside, the oldest town in Nebraska.
Bellevue is still the most beautiful site upon the
river.
No noise of factories or warehouses, no crowding of jealous poverty and
sordid wealth within her borders,
no ugly skyscrapers blot out her
landscape. No clamor and rivalry of the market place disturb her visions.
She is
still Old Bellevue, with all the glory and romance and early dreams
of old Nebraska gathered within her borders.
She is now and forever will
remain the center of interest for all those who love the story of
Nebraska's early days,
and the keeper of Nebraska's earliest memories and
traditions for all time.