The point where Fort Atkinson was built was the noted "Council Bluff" at which Lewis and Clark held the Indian council famous in the first annals of western explorations, and it still remains a rendezvous for the various tribes of Indians, the "Otoes, Pawnees, 'Mahas, Ayeaways, and Sioux," attracted thither by the soldiers and the trading posts, and secure from each others' attacks on this neutral ground. Shortly after the troops were located here an Ayeaway (Iowa) chief and his band pitched their tents near the fort. The daughter of this chief was named Nikumi; she was young and had not been inured to the hard tasks which usually fell to the squaws, so her figure was straight, her eyes bright, and her manner showed somewhat the dignity of her position. Not a white woman was there within a radius of five hundred miles except a few married ones belonging to the fort; was it strange that Dr. Gale, the younger son of an English family who had left civilization for a life of adventure in the New World, and who seemed destined to dwell away from all women of his own race, should woo this Indian princess and make her his wife? He had chosen the best of her race, for all who remember her in after years speak of her dignified carriage, her well-formed profile, and her strength of will and purpose, so remarkable among Indian women. For four years she had been his wife, and the child she had just seized and held in her arms as if she would never let her go, was their child, little Mary, as her father named her, perhaps from his own name, Marion. But now this union, which her unknowing mind had never surmised might not be for all time, and his, alas, too knowing one had carelessly assumed while it should be his pleasure, was about to be severed. A boat had come up the river and brought mail from Chariton or La Charette, as the Frenchmen originally named it, several hundred miles below, and the point to which mail for this fort was sent.