Some of the company went with the goods while others bought teams and wagons in Western Missouri and drove to the appointed place.

Kanesville was a small Mormon camp, while Council Bluffs was a trading post of a few log cabins on the river bank, inhabited mostly by Indians.

There was no regular ferry at either place, and our party secured a log raft which they used to get their wagons and provisions across, making the oxen swim.
They asked all the questions they could think of from everyone who pretended to know anything about the great country to the west of them, for it seemed a great undertaking to set out into the land they could see stretching out before them across the river.

Other parties bound the same way, also arrived and joined them.

They chose a guide who claimed to have been over the road before.