Historic highways of America

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LIBRARY

OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.
Class

HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF AMERICA

VOLUME 1

HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF AMERICA

VOLUME 1

Paths of the Mound= Building Indians
and Great Game Animals

BY

ARCHER BUTLER HULBERT

With Maps and Illustrations

THE ARTHUR H. CLARK COMPANY

CLEVELAND, OHIO

1902

v«

COPYRIGHT, I9O2
BY

THE ARTHUR H. CLARK COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

TO

MY FATHER

THIS SERIES OF VOLUMES

IS AFFECTIONATELY

DEDICATED

'Je ri1 aurais point aux Dieux demandt d' autrc pere.

CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE ... .n

GENERAL INTRODUCTION . . 17

PART I
I. THE COMPARATIVE METHOD OF STUDY 37

II. DISTRIBUTION OF MOUND-BUILDING

INDIANS . -43

III. EARLY TRAVEL IN THE INTERIOR . 53

IV. HIGHLAND LOCATION OF ARCHAEO

LOGICAL REMAINS . . .68

V. WATERSHED MIGRATIONS . . .94

PART II

I. INTRODUCTORY . . . 101

II. RANGE AND HABITS OF THE BUFFALO 103

III. EARLY USE OF BUFFALO ROADS . no

IV. CONTINENTAL THOROUGHFARES . 128

ILLUSTRATIONS

I. ARCH^OLOGIC MAP OF WISCONSIN
(showing interior location of re
mains) ...... 48

II. ARCH^OLOGIC MAP OF OHIO (showing

interior location of remains) . 52

III. ARCH/EOLOGIC MAP OF ILLINOIS AND

INDIANA (showing interior loca
tion of remains) . . . -55

IV. EARLY HIGHWAYS ON THE WATER

SHEDS OF OHIO . . . -78

PREFACE

BEGINNING with the first highways
of America, the first monograph of
the series will consider the routes
of the mound-building Indians and the
trails of the large game animals, particu
larly the buffalo, as having set the course
of landward travel in America on the
watersheds of the interior of the conti
nent. The second monograph will treat
of the Indian thoroughfares of Amer
ica; the third, fourth, and fifth, the three
roads built westward during the old
French War, Washington's Road (Nema-
colin's Path), Braddock's Road, and the
Old Glade (Forbes's ) Road. The sixth
monograph will be a study of Boone's
Wilderness Road to Kentucky ; the seventh
and eighth, a study of the principal portage
paths of the interior of the continent and
of the military roads built in the Missis
sippi basin during the era of conquest;

12 HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF AMERICA

Vol. IX. will take up the historic water
ways which most influenced westward con
quest and immigration; the famed Cum
berland Road, or Old National Road,
" which more than any other material
structure in the land served to harmonize
and strengthen, if not to save, the Union,"
will be the subject of the tenth monograph.
Two volumes will be given to the study of
the pioneer roads of America, and two to
the consideration of the history of the
great American canals.

The history of- America in the later part
of the pioneer period, between 1810 and
1840, centers about the roads and canals
which were to that day what our trunk rail
way lines are to us today. The " life of
the road " was the life of the nation, and a
study of the traffic on those first highways
of land and water, and of the customs
and experiences of the early travelers
over them brings back with freshening
interest the story of our own " Middle
Age. ' ' Horace Bushnell well said : " If you
wish to know whether society is stagnant,
learning scholastic, religion a dead formal
ity, you may learn something by going

PREFACE 13

into universities and libraries; something
also by the work that is doing on cathedrals
and churches, or in them; but quite as
much by looking at the roads. For if there
is any motion in society, the Road, which
is the symbol of motion, will indicate the
fact. When there is activity, or enlarge
ment, or a liberalizing spirit of any kind,
then there is intercourse and travel, and
these require roads. So if there is any
kind of advancement going on, if new ideas
are abroad and new hopes rising, then you
will see it by the roads that are building.
Nothing makes an inroad without making
a road. All creative action, whether in
government, industry, thought, or religion,
creates roads." The days when our first
roads and our great canals were building,
were days when " new ideas were abroad
and new hopes rising." The four volumes
of our series treating of pioneer roads and
the great canals will be a record of those
ideas and hopes and the mighty part they
played in the social development of Amer
ica. The final volume will treat of the
practical side of the road question. An
index will conclude the series.

HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF AMERICA

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

NOTHING is more typical of a civiliza
tion than its roads. The traveler
enters the city of Nazareth on a
Roman road which has been used, perhaps,
since the Christian era dawned. Every line
is typical of Rome; every block of stone
speaks of Roman power and Roman will.
And ancient roads come down from the
Roman standard in a descending scale even
as the civilizations which built them. The
main thoroughfare from the shore of the
Yellow Sea to the capital of Korea, used
by millions for millenniums, has never
been more than the bridle path it is today —
fit emblem of a people without a hope in
the world, an apathetic, hermit nation.

Every road has a story and the burden of
every story is a need. The greater the
need, the better the road and the longer
and more important the story. Go back

18 HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF AMERICA

even to primeval America. The bear's
food was all about him, in forest and bush.
He made no roads for he needed none, save
a path into the valley. But the moose and
deer and buffalo required new feeding-
grounds, fresh salt licks and change of
climate, and the great roads they broke
open across the watersheds declare nothing
if not a need.

The ancient Indian confederacies which
tilled the soil of this continent and built
great mounds for defense and worship — so
great, indeed, that the people have even
been known as "mound-builders" — un
doubtedly first traveled the highest high
ways of America. Some of them may have
known the water-ways better than any of the
land- ways — for their signal stations were
erected on the shores of many of our im
portant rivers — but the location of their
heaviest seats of population was where we
find the richest lands and the heaviest popu
lations today, and that is in what may be
called the interior of the continent, or
along the smaller rivers. Such stupendous
works as Fort Ancient and Fort Hill are
located beside very inferior streams, and

GENERAL INTRODUCTION 19

between such works as these, placed with
out any seeming regard for the larger water
ways, these mound-building Indians must
have had great thoroughfares along the
summits of the watersheds. About these
earthworks they constructed great, graded
roadways, commensurate with the size of
the works of which they were a necessary
part, but so far as we know these early
peoples built no roads between their forts
or between their villages. They made no
thoroughfares.

It was for the great game animals to
mark out what became known as the first
thoroughfares of America. The plunging
buffalo, keen of instinct, and nothing if not
a utilitarian, broke great roads across the
continent on the summits of the watersheds,
beside which the first Indian trails were
but traces through the forests. Heavy,
fleet of foot, capable of covering scores of
miles a day, the buffalo tore his roads from
one feeding-ground to another, and from
north to south, on the high grounds; here
his roads were swept clear of debris in
summer, and of snow in winter. They
mounted the heights and descended from

20 HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF AMERICA

them on the longest slopes, and crossed
each stream on the bars at the mouths of
its lesser tributaries.

Evidence remains today to show what
great thoroughfares these buffalo roads
were, for on the summit of many of the
greater watersheds may be seen the re
mains of the old courses, and there the
hoofprints of centuries of travel may yet
be read. If the summit should be bare of
trees, the very contour of the ground may
suggest the old-time, deeply-trod roadway;
where a forest lies over the summit a
remarkably significant open aisle in the
woods speaks yet more plainly of the
ancient highway, where only shrubs and
little trees are found in the center of the
track.

It is very wonderful that the buffalo's
instinct should have found the very best
courses across a continent upon whose thou
sand rivers such great black forests were
thickly strung. Yet it did, as the tripod
of the white man has proved; and until
the problem of aerial navigation is solved,
human intercourse will move largely on
paths first marked by the buffalo. It is

GENERAL INTRODUCTION 21

interesting that lie found the strategic
passage-ways through the mountains, so
that the first explorers came into the West
through gaps where were found broad
buffalo roads ; it is also interesting that the
buffalo marked out the most practical port
age paths between the heads of our rivers
— paths that are closely followed today, for
instance, by the Pennsylvania and Baltimore
and Ohio railways through the Allegha-
nies, ,the Chesapeake and Ohio through the
Blue ' Ridge, the Cleveland Terminal and
Valley railway between the Cuyahoga and
Tuscarawas rivers and the Wabash railway
between the Maumee and Wabash rivers.
In one instance (that of the Cuyahoga- Tus
carawas portage) the route of the ancient
portage — most plainly to be discovered
because it was for so long a time the boun
dary of the United States that lands on the
west of it were surveyed by a different
system from those on the east — is crossed
by a modern road seven times in a distance
of eight miles.

But the greater marvel is that these early
pathfinders chose routes, even in the rough
est districts, which the tripod of the white

22 HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF AMERICA

man cannot improve upon. A rare instance
of this is the course of the Baltimore and
Ohio railway between Grafton and Parkers-
burg in West Virginia. That this is one
of the roughest rides our palatial trains of
today make is well known to all who have
passed that way, and that so fine a road could
be put through such a rough country is one
of the marvels of engineering science. But
leave the train, say, at the little hamlet of
Petroleum, West Virginia, and find on the
hill the famous old-time thoroughfare of
the buffalo, Indian, and pioneer and follow
that narrow ' ' thread of soil ' ' westward to
the Ohio river. You will find that the rail
way has followed it steadily throughout its
course and when it came to a more difficult
point than usual, where the railway is com
pelled to tunnel at the strategic point of
least elevation, in two instances the trail
runs exactly over the tunnel. This occurs at
both " Eaton's " tunnel, and *' Gorham's "
tunnel (or " No. 6 ").

With the deterioration of the civilization
to which the mound-building Indians
belonged, the art of road-building became
lost — for the great need had passed away.

GENERAL INTRODUCTION 23

The later Indians built no such roads as did
their ancestors, nor did they improve such
routes on the highways as they found or
made. But they collected poll- taxes from
travelers along them, setting an example
to generations of county commissioners who
collect taxes for roads they do not improve.

That the later Indians used the paths
made by the buffalo they hunted is beyond
question. Warring Indian nations lured
each other into ambush by stamping a
buffalo hoof upon the soft ground in their
trail. And when, later, Daniel Boone
hewed his path through Cumberland Gap
toward Kentucky, he plainly says that he
left the Indian road on Rockcastle river and
marked out the remainder of his way over
a buffalo trace.

The great Indian trails, covering the land
as with a network, and leading by the
straightest practicable courses to all stra
tegic points, became of momentous import
ance to the white man when he turned his
attention to the interior of the continent.
When the Indian learned the value of his
furs, a great tide of trade set eastward over
a thousand rivers and woodland trails. On

24 HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF AMERICA

these same rivers, but more frequently on
the trails, white traders ventured westward
with their bright wares — and the western
land became known among a much larger
coterie than before. The tales of the trad
ers, together with dreams of commercial
exploitation led to the first careful explora
tion of the interior of the continent by such
men as Walker, Gist, Boone, and Carver, to
whom these narrow " roads of iron," as the
Jesuit missionaries in the north called the
rough Indian trails, were shining paths to
an El Dorado. The first two great roads
built westward were opened under the direc
tion of trading companies: the road from
the Potomac to the Ohio by Captain Cresap,
for the first Ohio Company, and the road
from Virginia to Kentucky by Daniel
Boone, for the Transylvania Company.
And these were at first only blazed and
widened Indian thoroughfares which had
been used from times prehistoric. Ji

The missionaries, too, were great ex
plorers, and they knew the Indian thor
oughfares perhaps better even than the
traders ; at least they knew some that white
men had never traveled before them.

GENERAL INTRODUCTION 25

" Whither is the paleface going? " asked
an old Seneca chieftain of the indomitable
Zeisberger; " why does the paleface travel
such unknown roads? This is no road for
white people and no white man has come
this trail before."

" We reached home very late at night,"
wrote a brave Jesuit, " after considerable
trouble — for the paths were only about
half a foot wide where the snow would sus
tain one, and if you turned ever so little to
the right or left you were in it half way up
to your thighs."

When the land was once discovered,
its conquest was directed along the very
paths on which these explorers came. To
the armies which conquered the West the
Indian thoroughfares were indispensable.
Washington followed narrow Indian trails
while on his mission to the French on
the Allegheny in 1753; in the year follow
ing he widened Nemacolin's Path across
the mountains over which he hauled his
swivels to Fort Necessity. Braddock
followed the same rough path in the suc
ceeding year, making a great gorge of a road
which, after a century and a half, we can

26 HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF AMERICA

follow as plainly as a new-made furrow
behind a plow — even to the ford and char-
nel-ground where the thin red line was
swept away in that torrent of lurking flame.
Three years later, prejudiced against Vir
ginia's Braddock Road, the dying but
indomitable Forbes — truly, as the Indians
called him, a Head of Iron — mowed an
other swath of a road westward through
Carlisle and Bedford to Fort Duquesne,
that Pennsylvania herself might have a
road through her own province to the Ohio
river. Braddock's Road paused abruptly
on the brink of a bloody ravine seven miles
from Pittsburg; but the home-stretch of
the road built by this Head of Iron is the
beautiful Forbes Avenue of today.

The Great Trail of the West was the
highway between Pittsburg and Detroit,
and its story is the bloody story of the
Revolutionary War in the West. For cen
turies this path had been a famed thorough
fare, throwing its great sinuous lengths
over the watersheds from the lakes to the
" Forks of the Ohio." Over this track the
brave Swiss Bouquet led the first English
army that crossed the Ohio river, making a

GENERAL INTRODUCTION 27

tri-track road to the Muskingum valley and
bringing to a triumphal close Pontiac's
bloody rebellion. The old Iroquois trail
up the Mohawk valley and across the great
watershed of New York to the Niagara
river was a famous Revolutionary highway
and afterward became one of the impor
tant pioneer routes. On the Great Trail to
Detroit Lachlan Mclntosh erected the first
fort built by the thirteen colonies west of
the Ohio, Fort Laurens on the Muskingum
near Great Crossings, where Bouquet had
thrown his army across the river in 1764.
Indeed, throughout that whole half-cen
tury of conflict in the Central West the
lines of conquest were the lines of the
earlier routes of travel. Washington,
Braddock, Forbes, Bouquet, Lewis, Shirley,
Sullivan, Clark, Brodhead, Crawford,
Irvine, Mclntosh, Harmar, St. Clair,
Wayne, and Harrison followed these old
highways and fought their battles on and
beside them. These campaigns were not
made by water but by land. Had they
been made by rivers, the courses of their
routes would have been frequently de
scribed and mapped as having an important

28 HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF AMERICA

bearing on the history of each campaign.
Because they were made by land over routes
which have never received attention from
historians the real ground- work of these
campaigns has been entirely omitted.
Each would be far better understood in
every way if its route were clearly de
fined. A thorough understanding of our
history is impossible without a knowledge
of these highways of trade and war and
the strategic points they covered and con
nected.

But of vaster interest is the study of the
surging armies of pioneers and the occupa
tion of the great empire conquered by
these armies for them. To the emigrant
each tawny trail was a path to a Promised
Land. They came in thousands and hun
dreds of thousands over the roads of New
York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. And
what roads they were ! It was impossible
for those pioneer wagons to follow the
Indian paths with any exactness. Even
Braddock avoided the steeper hills and yet
was compelled to lower his wagons from
some hills with blocks and tackling — many
being demolished at that. And yet to

GENERAL INTRODUCTION 29

avoid the high ground was inevitably to
run into bogs and swamps which were even
worse than the hills. We do not have roads
a mile wide nowadays, but this was not an
unheard-of thing in the days of the pioneer
roads. It was preferable to have them a
mile wide rather than a mile deep, which
would certainly have been the case in some
places if one track had been used alone.
And even with numberless side tracks,
skirting in every direction around the more
dangerous localities, horses were not infre
quently drowned, and great wagons heavy
with freight sometimes sank completely out
of sight. The Black Swamp Road through
Ohio south of Lake Erie was one of the most
important in the West. It is recorded that
on one occasion six horses were able to draw
a two-wheeled vehicle but fifteen miles in
three days. A newspaper of August 31,
1837, affirms that " the road through the
Black Swamp has been much of the season
impassable. A couple of horses were lost
in a mud hole last week. The bottom had
fallen out. The driver was unaware of the
fact. His horses plunged in and ere they
could be extricated were drowned." It is

30 HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF AMERICA

comforting to think there has been some
improvement in our country highways.
Such accounts as this would have a ten
dency to influence the most skeptical.

The rivers were also great highways for
emigration, particularly such streams as
the Ohio which flowed west. With the
building of the great canals new and more
stable methods of travel were at the dis
posal of prospective travelers and there
was an increase in the great tide of home-
seekers. The smaller inland rivers were
not likely so largely used by these armies
of pioneers as some have thought. For
instance, in a history of one of the interior
counties of Ohio (which is divided by one
of the best rivers in the West) is a twenty-
five page description of the first immi
grants, and of only one does it say : * * James
Oglesby was a very early settler . . .
and is said to have traveled up the Mus-
kingum and Walhounding rivers in true
Indian style in a canoe." And, though
the Ohio river was always a great highway
to the West and Southwest, it was used
less perhaps in the early days of the immi
gration than later. Flat and keel boats

GENERAL INTRODUCTION 31

cost money, and money was a scarce article.
In summer the river was very low, and one
party of pioneers, at least, spent one-third
of the entire time of journey from Connec
ticut to Marietta, Ohio, in coming down
the Ohio from near Pittsburg. It took half
as long to come those two hundred miles
by river as to come all the way from Con
necticut to the Ohio in a cart drawn by
oxen. Moreover, even as late as the time
of the starting of a regular line of steamer
packets from Pittsburg to Cincinnati ( 1 796)
the passengers were assured in an adver
tisement that, in addition to being provided
a place to sleep and something to eat, they
would have each a loophole from which to
shoot! The coming of steam navigation
revolutionized river travel as later it revolu
tionized land travel.

This series of monographs will treat of
the history of America as portrayed in the
evolution of its highways of war and immi
gration and commerce. The more impor
tant highways, both land and water, will
be specifically treated with reference to the
national needs which they temporarily or

32 HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF AMERICA

permanently satisfied. The study of any
highway for itself alone might prove of
indifferent value, even though it were an
Appian Way; but the story of a road,
which shows clearly the rise, nature,
and passing of a nation's need for it, is
of importance. It is not of national import
that there was a Wilderness Road to Ken
tucky, but it is of utmost importance that a
road through Cumberland Gap made possi
ble the early settlement of Kentucky, in that
Kentucky held the Mississippi river for the
feeble colonies through days when every
thing in the West and the whole future of
the American republic lay in a trembling
balance. It is not of great importance that
there was a Nemacolin's Path across the
Alleghanies; but if for a moment we can
see the rough trail as the young Major
Washington saw it while the vanguard of
the ill-fated Fry's army marched out of
Wills Creek toward the Ohio, or if we can
picture that terrible night's march Wash
ington made from Fort Necessity when
Jumonville's scouting party was run at last
to cover by Half King's Indians, we shall
know far better than ever the true story of

GENERAL INTRODUCTION 33

the first campaign of the war which won
America for England, and realize as never
before what a brave, daring youth he
was who on Indian trails learned lessons
that fitted him to become a leader of half-
clothed, ill-equipped armies.

The first aim of these monographs is
suggestiveness ; there is a vast deal of geo
graphic-historical work to be done through
out the United States. There is no more
interesting outdoor work for local students
than to trace, each in his own locality,
the old land and water highways, Indian
trails, portage paths, pioneer roads or early
county or state roads. Maps should be
made showing not only the evolution of
road-making in each county in the entire
land, but all springs and licks of importance
should be correctly located and mapped;
sites of Indian villages should be marked ;
frontier forts and blockhouses should be
platted, including the surrounding de
fenses, covered ways, springs or wells, and
paths to and fro; traders' huts should all be
placed, ancient boundary lines marked, old
hunting-grounds mapped. Those who can

34 HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF AMERICA

assist students in such explorations are fast
passing away. Much can be done this year
that can never be done so well in all the
years which will succeed.

In subsequent monographs the author
will endeavor to thank such persons as
have assisted him in their preparation.
For the work already completed and for that
yet to be done I am especially indebted to
Mr. Arthur H. Clark, for encouragement
and assistance ; to the Hon. Rodney Metcalf
Stimson, for the freedom of his splendid
collection of Americana lately presented to
Marietta College ; and to the patient, devoted
assistance and collaboration of my wife.

A. B. H.

MARIETTA, OHIO, July i, 1902.

PARTI
Paths of Mound-Building hrdrans

CHAPTER I

THE COMPARATIVE METHOD OF STUDY

THE latest explorations of the mounds
erected by those first Americans,
known best as the mound-building
Indians, have revolutionized our concep
tions of the earliest race of which we know
in America. Very many notions, founded
upon the authority of the earlier archae
ologists, seem now to be either partly or
wholly incorrect. Many assumptions as to
the population of this country during the
mound-building era, the degree of the
civilization, and the perfection of the arts,
have not been substantiated by the more
accurate studies which have been made in
the past decade.

The most important reason why so little
progress has been made in unraveling the
mystery of the mounds that abound in cen
tral North America is that " the authors

38 PATHS OF MOUND-BUILDING INDIANS

who have written upon the subject of
American archaeology have proceeded upon
certain assumptions which virtually closed
the door against a free and unbiased inves
tigation." l Of these assumptions, the one
most detrimental to the advance of the
study of archaeology is that which has
affirmed that ' ' mound-builders ' ' and Amer
ican Indians were two distinct races; thus
all conclusions reached concerning the
"mound-builders" which were founded
upon the earliest knowledge we have of the
American Indian were denied to archaeol-

ny . But the evidence of latest explorations
d investigations makes it positive that the
' ' mound-builders ' ' were not a race distinct
and apart from the race we know as Amer
ican Indians : ' ' The links directly connect
ing the Indians and mound-builders are so
numerous and well established that archae
ologists are justified in accepting the theory
that they are one and the same people."2
This fact having been placed beyond
the realm of speculation, a great mass of

1 Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Eth
nology, p. 601.
*/</., p. 17, art. 7.

COMPARATIVE METHOD OF STUDY 39

testimony furnished by the study of the
American Indians is to be admitted in
settlement of the question raised concern
ing the history of the mound-builders in
America.

First, this testimony will be found to set
aside once and for all the exaggerated state
ments as to the high grade of civilization
reached by these first Americans. It does
not appear that the mound-building Indians
occupied a higher plane than that reached
by the Indians as first known by Europe
ans. One of the most exaggerated notions
of these Indians is that which ascribes to
them very perfect ideas of measurement;
the alleged mathematical accuracy of cer
tain of their monumental works having
been cited repeatedly as a sign of their
advanced stage of civilization. It has even
been affirmed that their mathematical
accuracy could hardly be excelled by the
most skillful engineers of our day.

Recent explorations have dispelled this
entertaining theory : ' * The statement so
often made that many of these monuments
have been constructed with such mathe
matical accuracy as to indicate not only a

40 PATHS OF MOUND-BUILDING INDIANS

unit of measure, but also the use of instru
ments, is found upon a reexamination to be
without any basis, unless the near approach
of some three or four circles and as many
squares of Ohio to mathematical correctness
be sufficient to warrant this opinion. As a
very general and in fact almost universal
rule the figures are more or less irregular,
and indicate nothing higher in art than an
Indian could form with his eye and by
pacing." 3

The fanciful theory of a great teeming
population during the mound-building era
is equally without foundation. Even the
size and extent of the mounds do not imply
a great population. An authority of repu
tation gives figures from which it can be
shown that four thousand men, each trans
porting an equivalent of one wagon-load of
earth and stone a day, could have erected
all the mounds in the state of Ohio (which
contains a greater number than any other
in the Union) in one generation.4

3 Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnol
ogy* P- 645.

4 Report of the Geological Survey of Ohio, vol. vii.,
partii., p. 37.

COMPARATIVE METHOD OF STUDY 41

When it is realized that the art for which
the earliest Indians have been most extolled
was not, in reality, in advance of that
known by the ordinary Indian, and that
the population of the country in the mound-
building1 era cannot be shown to have
exceeded the population found when the
first white men visited the Indian races,
it is easy to see in the erection of the
mounds, the burial of dead, the rude imple
ments common to both, the poor trinkets
used for ornamentation, the houses each
built, the weapons each employed, a vast
deal of additional testimony proving that
the " Mound-builder" and Indian were of
one race.

Thus the true historical method must be
to compare what is definitely known of the
earliest Indians with the relics and memo
rials which are surely those of the mound-
building era in order to reach undoubted
facts concerning the prehistoric Indians.
This applies equally to customs, weapons,
edifices, ornaments, and what is of present
moment to our study : highways of travel.

However, a complete detailed study of
the highways of the early Indians according

42 PATHS OF MOUND-BUILDING INDIANS

to this method will not be indulged in for
certain respectable reasons; there are very
few undoubted routes of the mound-build
ing1 Indians, and a detailed comparative
study of these and later Indian routes
would become, under the circumstances,
too speculative to be of genuine historical
value. Our purpose, then, will be, merely
to give the reasons for believing that the
earliest Indians had great overland routes of
travel ; that, though they lived largely in the
river valleys, their migrations were by land
and not by water — in short, that these first
Americans undoubtedly marked out the
first highways of America used by man, as
the large game animal, the buffalo, marked
out the first great highways used by animal
life.

These highways were the highestways
because their general alignment was on the
greater watersheds : and our study may be
better described perhaps by a subtitle —
a study in highestways.

CHAPTER II

DISTRIBUTION OF MOUND-BUILDING INDIANS

THE mounds of these first Americans
of which we know are found between
Oregon and the Wyoming valley, in
Pennsylvania, and Onondaga county in New
York ; they extend from Manitoba in Canada
to the Gulf of Mexico.

The great seat of empire was in the
drainage area of the Mississippi river; on
this river and its tributaries were the heav
iest mound-building populations. Few
mounds are found east of the Alleghany
mountains.

In the Catalogue of Prehistoric Works East
of the Rocky Mountains, issued by the Bureau
of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Insti
tution,5 the geographical extent and density
of the mounds in central North America is
brought out state by state with striking
suggestiveness. While the layman is
5 Bulletin, 1891.

44 PATHS OF MOUND-BUILDING INDIANS

warned that these maps " present some
features which are calculated to mislead,"
and that the maps indicate ' ' to some extent
the more thoroughly explored areas rather
than the true proportion of the ancient
works in the different sections," still some
conclusions have already been reached
which future exploitation will never
weaken.

It is not expected that future investiga
tion will change the verdict that the heav
iest mound-building population found its
seat near the Mississippi and Ohio rivers.
' ' There is little doubt, ' ' writes Dr. Thomas,
"that when Mississippi, Alabama, and
Georgia have been thoroughly explored
many localities will be added to those indi
cated . . . but it is not likely that
the number will be found to equal those in
the area drained by the Ohio and its affluents
or in the immediate valley of the Missis
sippi." 6

This fact, that the heaviest populations
of the mound-building Indians seem to have
been near the Mississippi and Ohio is, of

^Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnol
ogy, P- 525-

THEIR DISTRIBUTION 45

course, shown by the archaeological maps.
In a rough way, subject to the limitations
previously mentioned, it can be found that
the following fourteen states contain evi
dences of having held the heaviest ancient
populations :

Ohio, Michigan,

Wisconsin, Georgia and Arkan-

Tennessee, sas,

Illinois, Missouri and North

Florida, Carolina,

New York, Minnesota,

Kentucky, Iowa,

Indiana, Pennsylvania.

Now, by our last census the states which
contain the largest population today are :
New York, Indiana,

Pennsylvania, Michigan,

Illinois, Iowa,

Ohio, Georgia,

Texas, Kentucky,

Missouri, Wisconsin,

Massachusetts, Tennessee.

Thus of the fourteen most thickly popu
lated states today perhaps twelve give fair
evidence of having been most thickly popu-

46 PATHS OF MOUND-BUILDING INDIANS

lated in prehistoric times. As a general
rule (but one growing less reliable every
day) the heaviest population has always
been found in the best agricultural regions ;
the states having the largest number of
fertile acres have had, as a rule, the largest
populations — or did have until the cities
grew as they have in the past generation.

This argument, though necessarily loose,
still is of interest and of some importance
in the present study. The earliest Indians
found, without any question, the best parts
of the country they once inhabited if we
can take the verdict of the present race
which occupies the land.

Coming down to a smaller scope of terri
tory, can it be shown that in the case of
any one state the early Indians occupied
the portions most heavily populated today?
It has been said that, in Ohio, four counties
contain evidence of having been the scenes
of special activity on the part of the earliest
inhabitants: Butler, Licking, Ross, and
Franklin. These are interior counties (at
a distance from the Ohio and Lake Erie)
and, of the remaining sixty-three interior
counties in the state, only seven exceeded

£*UFQ«M\*^

ARCHAEOLOGIC MAP OF WISCONSIN
[Showing interior location of remains}

}

THEIR DISTRIBUTION 49

these four in population in 1880 — when
the cities had not so largely robbed the
country districts of their population as now.
Thus the aborigines seem to have been
busiest where we have been busiest in the
last half of the nineteenth century.

In Wisconsin the mound-building Indians
labored most in the southern part of the
state, where the bulk of that state's popu
lation is today — seventy-five per cent being
found in the southern (and smaller) half
of the state.

In Michigan, a line drawn from the
northern coast of Green Bay to the south
western corner of the state includes a very
great proportion of the archaeological re
mains in the state. That line today em
braces on the southeast thirty-three per cent
of the counties of the state, yet sixty-three
per cent of the population.

Thus it can be said that in a remark
able measure the mound-building peoples
found with interesting exactness the por
tions of this country which have been the
choice spots with the race which now occu
pies it.

Here, in the valleys, and between them,

50 PATHS OF MOUND-BUILDING INDIANS

toiled their prehistoric people. Their low
grade of civilization is attested by the rude
implements and weapons and domiciles
with which they seem to have been content.
Divided, as it is practically sure they were,
into numerous tribes, there must have been
some commerce and there was, undoubt
edly, much conflict. Above their poorly
cultivated fields, or in the midst of them,
they erected great earthen and stone for
tresses, and, flung far and wide over valley
and hill, stand the mounds in which they
buried their dead.

ARCHAEOLOGIC MAP OF OHIO

[Showing interior location of remains}

CHAPTER III

EARLY TRAVEL IN THE INTERIOR

IT has been noted that a considerable
portion of archaeological remains in
Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Wiscon
sin are inland — or away from the largest
river valleys. The lands on the lesser
streams were occupied in some instances
for the entire distance to the springs. For
instance, in Ohio and Kentucky we find
only a fraction of the ancient works on the
shores of the Ohio river — either mounds or
forts. In Ohio the largest collections are
found in the interior counties mentioned,
as is the case in Kentucky, at a distance
varying from fifty to one hundred and fifty
miles from the great water highway which
flows by these states on the north or on the
south.

As with these states, so with the counties
within them — the mound-building people
seem to have been scattered widely. An

54 PATHS OF MOUND-BUILDING INDIANS

archaeological map of Butler county, Ohio,
shows that the remains are found every
where quite without reference to the largest
streams. In this county there are more
works in Oxford township in the far corner
of the county than in Hanover township,
which lies between Oxford and the Miami
river. Today there are six hundred more
inhabitants in Oxford township (exclusive
of the population of Oxford village) than
in Hanover township. There are more
remains in Reily township, which is sepa
rated from the Miami by Ross township,
than in Madison township, which is bounded
by the Miami and is drained by a larger
stream than any in Reily. St. Clair town
ship contains several works in the western
portion, on the branches of the Miami river,
and almost none at all in the eastern
portion which is bounded by that river
itself.

Crawford county, Wisconsin, has also
been mapped. Though bounded on the
south and west by the Wisconsin and
Mississippi rivers, fifty per cent of the
ancient works are at a distance from those
streams.

ARCHAEOLOGIC

[Showing

MAP OF ILLINOIS AND INDIANA

interior location of remains}

EARLY TRAVEL IN THE INTERIOR 57

The large proportion of remains in Ken
tucky are in the western portion of the state
situated along the watershed between the
Ohio and Tennessee valleys. In Indiana
the great majority of works are in the eastern
tier of counties where there are no streams
of importance.

This makes up a sum of testimony that
enables one to say that in some instances
at least the mound-building peoples were
largely a rural people ; in some noticeable
instances their works are found more pro
fusely on the smaller streams than on
larger ones. In this they differed in no
wise from the red-men who were found
living in these regions mentioned when the
whites first came to visit them, and we
might have held to our original line of
reasoning to reach this same conclusion.
It might have been shown that the red-
men in Ohio and some of the neighboring
states lived more on the smaller streams
than on the larger ones, and then made the
deduction that the mound-building people
did the same.

For this was true. The three centers of
Indian population in Ohio were on the

58 PATHS OF MOUND-BUILDING INDIANS

smaller streams. The Delawares made
their headquarters on the upper Muskin-
gum; the Wyandots had their villages on
the Sandusky river and bay ; the Shawanese
were on the Scioto, and the Miamis on the
rivers that have borne their name. The
well-known Indian settlements on the Ohio
and on Lake Erie can almost be counted on
the ringers of one hand, while the towns at
Coshocton, Chillicothe, Piqua, Fremont,
and Dresden were of national importance
during the era of conquest. Referring to
the location of the Indians of Ohio an early
pioneer casually writes: " Their habita
tions were at the heads of the principal
streams. ' ' 7 There was almost no exception
to the rule.

The explanation of this may be found
partly in the great floods which were, doubt
less, more menacing near the larger streams.
While the floods rise perhaps faster today,
it is doubtful if they reach the height that
they did in earlier days. Then, at flood-
tide, a thousand forest swamps, licks, pools,
and lagoons which do not exist today added
their waters to the river tides. General

7 Life and Times of Ephraim Cutler, p. 23.

EARLY TRAVEL IN THE INTERIOR 59

Butler, who was on the lower Ohio just
after the Revolution, was advised by a
friendly Indian chief to locate Fort Finney
high up from the Ohio in order to be clear
of high water. Under the date of October
24, 1785, he wrote in his Journal : " Capt.
George, who had lived below the mouth of
this river [Miami] assured me that all the
bank from the river for five miles did abso
lutely overflow, and that he had to remove
to the hill at least five miles back, which
determined me to take the present situa
tion."8

Under such circumstances as these it is
not surprising that the Indians preferred
the little rivers to the larger ones. The
smaller streams amid their hills did not
rise so high, and when they did rise safe
camping spots could be found on high
ground not far removed.

What was true of these Indians was
probably true of any antecedent race.

Assuming, then, that the mound-building
people lived (in these states more particu
larly noticed) on the lesser " inland"

8General Butler's Journal, "The Olden Time," vol.
ii., pp. 455-456.

60 PATHS OF MOUND-BUILDING INDIANS

streams where the later Indians were found,
there is no question but that they moved
about the country more or less as the
Indians themselves did. Although the
former people were more nearly a station
ary people, yet we know that they hunted,
and it is not reasonable to believe that they
did not have commercial intercourse. In
fact, from the contents of their mounds, we
know they did. We also know that the
various tribes made war upon one another,
or at least were made war upon by some
enemy.

All this necessitated highways of travel.
Any one who has studied the West during
Indian occupancy does not need to be asked
to remember that travel in the earliest days
in the interior was by land as well as by
water. Those making long journeys at
propitious seasons, such as the Iroquois
who went southward in war parties, the
Moravians being transferred to Ohio from
Pennsylvania, pioneers en route down the
Ohio river to Kentucky, the Wyandots on
their memorable hegira to the Detroit river,
used the waterways. But the main mode
of travel for explorers, war parties, pioneer

EARLY TRAVEL IN THE INTERIOR 61

armies and missionaries seems to have been
by the paths which threaded the forests.9

Of the hundreds of Indian forays into
Virginia and Kentucky there is perhaps not
one, even those moving down the Scioto
and up the Licking, that used water trans
portation. In their hunting trips the canoe
was useless except for transporting game
and peltry to the nearest posts, and this
was done often on the little Indian ponies.

For long months the lesser streams were
ice-bound in the winter; in the summer,
for equally long periods, they must have
been nearly dry, as in the present era of
slack-water navigation the larger of them
are frequently very low. Even travel on

9Cf. Gist's, Dr. Walker's, Boone's, Washington's,
Post's, Zeisberger's, Croghan's, Heckewelder's, journeys
into the West as related in their Journals or letters;
note the routes of such armies as those led by Bouquet
and Mclntosh which went from Fort Pitt to the interior
of Ohio, or by Lewis which marched from Virginia to the
mouth of the Great Kanawha, or by Harmar, St. Clair,
and Wayne, which went northward from the Ohio river
toward the Great Lakes. Troops were shipped fre
quently from Pittsburg and Detroit westward by water,
but is there one instance where they were transported
into the interior on the smaller rivers? Cf. Pentland's
Journal, " History of Western Pennsylvania," appen
dix, pp. 389-391.

62 PATHS OF MOUND-BUILDING INDIANS

the Ohio in low-water months was exas-
peratingly slow. One pilgrim to Ohio
spent ninety days en route from Killingly,
Connecticut, to Marietta, Ohio — thirty-one
of them being spent in getting from Will-
iamsport, Pennsylvania, down the Monon-
gahela and Ohio to Marietta! Tbe journey
from Connecticut in a cart drawn by oxen
to the Monongahela took but twice the time
needed to come down the rivers to Marietta
on a ' ' Kentucky ' ' flatboat ! 10 With high-
water, and going down stream, a hundred
miles a day could be covered.11

That the first pioneers into the interior
of Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana preferred
land routes to water is plain to the most
casual reader of the history of the pioneer
period. Such great entrepots as Wells-
burg, Ohio, Limestone, Kentucky, and
Madison, Indiana (all on the Ohio), attest
the fact that the travel to the interior was
by land routes and not by the smaller
rivers.

And so, throughout historic times, one
rule has held true in the region now under

™Ltfe and Times of Ephraim Cutler, p. 21.
11 Hildreth's Pioneer History, p. 159.

EARLY TRAVEL IN THE INTERIOR 63

survey : that the lesser streams have never
been used to any large degree as routes of
travel by the white race, or by the red race
before them. It is thus reasonable to
believe that the earliest people, who so
largely inhabited the interior valleys, found
land travel more sure and expeditious than
water travel on the little streams. A great
many mound-building people lived by these
smaller streams where so many of their
works now stand. That they had ways of
getting about the country goes without say
ing. In some instances the earth and stone
with which they worked was brought from
a distance. This could not have been
accomplished by any means by water. We
know they fought great battles ; it is exceed
ingly doubtful and all against the lesson
taught in times that are historic, that these
armies traveled water routes. True, there
were watch " towers" along the river
banks, and the rivers of real size were un
doubtedly the routes of armies — but it has
been the opinion of some archaeologists
that their enemies came from the north.
There are no rivers flowing from the inte
rior of Ohio, for instance, to Lake Erie that

64 PATHS OF MOUND-BUILDING INDIANS

are even now when dammed of a size suffi
cient to warrant us the belief that great
armies passed over them.12 We cannot
imagine a hostile army of power great
enough to have necessitated the building
of such a work as Fort Ancient ever coming
to it on the little river on which it stands.
Speaking of the mound-building Indians,
MacLean remarks : ' * In order to warn the
settlements [of mound-builders], where
such a band should approach, it was found
necessary to have . . . signal stations.
Judging by the primitive methods em
ployed, these wars must have continued for
ages. If the settlements along the two
Miamis and Scioto were overrun at the same
time before they had become weakened, it
would have required such an army as only
a civilized or semi-civilized nation could
send into the field. It is plausible to
assume that a predatory warfare was car
ried on at first, and on account of this the
many fortifications were gradually built.

12 Gen. Moses Cleaveland, on coming to the site of the
city which bears his name, found he could not ascend the
Cuyahoga because of the vast quantity of deadwood
which filled it.

EARLY TRAVEL IN THE INTERIOR 65

During a warfare such as this, the regular
parties of miners would go to the mines,
for the roads could be kept open, even
should an enemy cross the well-beaten
paths."13 Here a scholar of reputation
gives the strongest kind of evidence in a
belief that overland routes of travel were
in existence and were employed in prehis
toric times — by incidentally referring to
them while discussing another question.
It is difficult to think of any possible
alternative. The verdict of history is all
against another.

Assuming, then, that overland routes of
travel were used by this earliest of Ameri
can races of which we have any real knowl
edge, it is to the purpose of our study to
consider where such routes were laid.
L The one law which has governed land
travel throughout history is the law of least
resistance, or least elevation. " An easy
trail to high ground " is a colloquial ex
pression common in the Far West, but there
has been a time when it was as common to
Pennsylvania and Ohio as it is common
today along the great stretches of the

18MacLean's Mound Builders, p. 145.

66 PATHS OF MOUND-BUILDING INDIANS

Platte. The watersheds have been the
highways and highestways of the world's
travel. The farther back we go in our his
tory, the more conclusive does the evidence
become that the first ways were the highest-
ways. Our first roads were ridge roads and
their day is not altogether past in many
parts of the land. These first roads were
" run," or built, along the general align
ment of the first pioneer roads, which, in
turn, were nothing more than " blazed"
paths of the Indian and buffalo^ A single
glance at one of the maps of tne Central
West of Revolutionary times, for instance,
will show how closely Ifire first routes clung
to the heights of the watersheds. And for
good reason : here the ground suffered least
from erosion ; here the forests were thin
nest; here a pathway would be swept clear
of snow in winter and of leaves in summer
by the swift, clean brooms of the winds.
For the Indians, too, the high lands were
points of vantage both in hunting and in
times of war.

In every state there were strategic heights
of land, generally running westward; in
Ohio, for example, the strategic watershed

EARLY TRAVEL IN THE INTERIOR 67

was that between the heads of the lake
rivers and the heads of those flowing south
ward into the Ohio. Across this divide ran
the Great Trail toward Detroit and the lake
country. In western Virginia a strategic
watershed was that formed between the
heads of streams flowing northward into the
Ohio and southward into the Kanawha.
And in a remarkable degree the strategic
points of a century and a half ago are the
strategic points today, a fact attested by the
courses of the more important trunk rail
way lines. The steady rise and importance
of such a city as Akron, Ohio, is due to a
strategic situation at the junction of both
an important portage path and of a great
watershed highway.

With all these facts in mind it is not pre
sumptuous then to inquire whether the
mound-building Indians did not find the
high lands and mark out on them these
first highways of America.

CHAPTER IV

HIGHLAND LOCATION OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL
REMAINS

IN examining the standard work on the
exploration of the American mounds,
the Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau
of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institu
tion, by Dr. Cyrus Thomas, it is plain that
the mound-building Indians were well
acquainted with the watersheds and high
lands in the regions which they occupied.
As a general rule it can be said that they
cultivated the lowlands and built their forts
and mounds upon the adjacent heights;
but, so widespread are their works over
the counties which they occupied, that it
seems evident that they were at least well
acquainted with all the surrounding terri
tory. Whatever may have been the signifi
cance of their works, it is reasonable to
believe that they were erected to be seen
and visited ; it is sane to believe that they

HIGHLAND LOCATION OF REMAINS 69

were erected near the highways traveled,
as has been the case with all other races of
history. It is now in point to show that
their mounds and effigies were not only on
high ground, but often on the ranges of hills.

Examining Crawford county, Wisconsin,
we find the mound-builders' works " on the
main road from Prairie du Chien to East
man," which " follows chiefly the old trail
along the crest of the divide between the
drainage of the Kickapoo and Mississippi
rivers. . . The group is, in fact, a series
or chain of low, small, circular tumuli ex
tending in a nearly straight line northwest
and southeast, connected together by em
bankments. . . They are on the top of
the ridge."14

" About 2 miles from Eastman,
just east of the Black River Road, . . .
are three effigy mounds and one long
mound. . . They are situated in a little
strip of woods near the crest, but on the
western slope of the watershed and near
the head of a coulee or ravine. ' ' 15

14 Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnol-

°gy, P- 52.

15 Id., pp. 54-55-

70 PATHS OF MOUND-BUILDING INDIANS

" In the same section . . . are the
remains of two bird-shaped mounds, both
on top of the watershed." 16

' The next group surveyed . . . are
on the crest of the ridge heretofore men
tioned and on both sides of the Black River
Road."17

11 Mound No. 23 ... is also in the
form of a bird with outstretched wings. It
lies ... on top of the ridge, with
the head lying crosswise of the highest
point." 18

" Mound No. 24 is close to the right or
east, on the high part of the ridge, extend
ing in the same direction as 23." 19

1 Northward of this group some 400
yards, there is a mound in the form of a
quadruped, probably a fox, . . . partly
in the woods and partly in the field on the
west side of the road. It is built on the
crest of the ridge with the head to the
south."20

16 Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnol
ogy, P- 54-
17 Id., p. 56.
ls/^., p. 58.
19 Id., p. 58.
20 /</., p. 59-

HIGHLAND LOCATION OF REMAINS 71

" About a mile southward of Hazen Cor
ners ... is a group. . . . They
are all situated on the northern slope of the
ridge not far from the top." 21

" . . . A small group . . . situ
ated west of the Black River Road, . . .
on the top of the ridge in the woods. The
ridge slopes from them to the east and
west. ' ' 22

" Some 10 or 12 miles southwest of the
battle-field of Belmont [Missouri] is one of
the peculiar sand ridges of this swampy
region, called Pin Hook ridge. This ex
tends 5 or 6 miles north and south, and is
less than a mile in width. . . There is
abundant evidence here that the entire
ridge was long inhabited by a somewhat
agricultural people, with stationary houses,
who constructed numerous and high
mounds, which are now the only place of
refuge for the present inhabitants and their
stock from the frequent overflows of the
Mississippi." w

21 Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnol
ogy^ p. 60.
22 Id., p. 62.
23 Id., p. 184.

72 PATHS OF MOUND-BUILDING INDIANS

" These . . . are situated on the
county road from Cairo, Illinois. . . .
They are the highest ground in that im
mediate section ' ' (Missouri).24

Crowley's Ridge, running through Green,
Craighead, Poinsett, and St. Francis coun
ties (Arkansas) forms the divide between
the waters of White and St. Francis rivers,
and terminates in Phillips county just below
the city of Helena. Most of the bottom
lands are overflowed during high water.
There are some evidences of archaeological
remains throughout the length of this
ridge.25

" The works . . . one mile north
east of Dublin [Franklin county, Ohio]
are on a nearly level area of the
higher lands of the section. ' ' ^

" The group shown . . . is on a
high hill near the Arnheim pike, Brown
county [Ohio]."27

" On nearly every prominent hill in the

24 Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnol
ogy, p. 192.
26 Id., pp. 198-215.
26 Id., p. 449.
"/A, p. 451.

HIGHLAND LOCATION OF REMAINS 73

neighborhood of Ripley [Brown county,
Ohio] are stone graves." 28

" Just east of Col. Metham's residence,
on a high point overlooking the valley
was a mound." 29

"... A group . . . located 2
miles southwest of the village of Browns
ville [Licking county, Ohio] and half a mile
south of the National Road, on a high hill,
from which the surrounding country is in
view for several miles." 30

In the Catalogue of Prehistoric Works issued
by the Bureau of Ethnology almost every
page gives proof that the mound-builders
were occupants of the highlands. Some
quotations will be in place :

" Inclosures, hut-rings, and mounds on
a sandy ridge between the Mississippi River
and Old Town Lake at the point where
they make their nearest approach to each
other, and near the ancient outlet of Old
Town Lake " (Phillips county, Arkansas).31

28 Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnol-

°gy, p- 452.

29 7^., p. 458.
80 Id., p. 458.

31 Catalogue of Prehistoric Works East of the Rocky
Mountains, p. 22.

74 PATHS OF MOUND-BUILDING INDIANS

Remains of an Indian fort on
the summit of a precipitous ridge near Lake
Simcoe."32

1 ' Stone cairn ... on ridge between
Anawaka and Sweetwater creeks ' ' (Doug
lass county, Georgia).33

' ' Stone cairn on a ridge ' ' (Habersham
county, Georgia).34

; ' Stone mound on a ridge ' ' (Hancock
county, Georgia).35

"Deposit . . . on a ridge half a mile
south of Clear Creek " (Cass county, Illi
nois).36

' ' Mounds on the spur of a ridge, midway
between the Welsh group [Brown county]
and Chambersburg, in the extreme north
eastern part of the county ' ' (Pike county,
Illinois).37

1 ' Group of mounds on a ridge in Skillet
Fork bottom " (Wayne county, Illinois).38

32 Catalogue of Prehistoric Works East of the Rocky
Mountains, p. 26.
33 Id., p. 48.
34 Id., p. 50.
86/</., p. 51.
36 Id., p. 57-
37 Id., p. 63.

"/</., P. 69.

HIGHLAND LOCATION OF REMAINS 75

" Mounds on several high hills " (Frank
lin county, Indiana).39

" Four mounds on top of a ridge near
Sparksville" (Jackson county, Indiana).40

' ' Stone enclosure known as Fort Ridge ' '
(Caldwell county, Kentucky).41

" Indian mounds ... on ' Indian
Hill ' " (Hancock county, Kentucky).42

" A group of circular mounds scattered
along a ridge between Fox river and Sugar
Creek " (Clark county, Missouri).43

11 Two parallel embankments stretching
across a hog-back between two ravines"
(Livingston county, New York).44

" Embankments on Ridge road .
along the edge of the bluff overlooking the
Ridge road " (Niagara county, New York).45

" Cairns on ridges " (Caldwell county,
North Carolina).46

39 Catalogue of Prehistoric Works East of the Rocky
Mountains, p. 74.
40 Id., p. 75-
41 Id., p. 91.
42 Id., p. 94-
13 Id., p. 128.
"Id., p. 144.
45 Id., p. 146.
46 Id., pp. 152-153.

76 PATHS OF MOUND-BUILDING INDIANS

!< Stone cairns ... on trail cross
ing ridge between Tuckasegee river and
Alarka Creek" (Swain county, North Caro
lina).47

Flint Ridge in Coshocton and Licking
counties, Ohio, contained stone and earth
mounds and quarries; " Indian trail from
Grave Creek mound, West Virginia, to the
lakes, passing over Flint Ridge."48

Some of these remains are undoubtedly
of no later age than the Indians whom the
first whites knew ; many of them are of far
earlier times. It is now held by the most
prominent archaeologists that there are
works of the mound-building Indians which
do not date back far from the time Colum
bus discovered America. Thus any work
which gives evidence of having been in
existence five hundred years may belong
to the mound-building era. And through
out all these five hundred years there is
hardly a time when there is not evidence
of Indian occupation. So the line between
the mound-building Indians and the later

47 Catalogue of Prehistoric Works East of the Rocky
Mountains, p. 157.

48 Id., pp. 169, 177.

EARLY HIGHWAYS ON THE WATERSHEDS OF OHIO

HIGHLAND LOCATION OF REMAINS 79

Indians, among whom the building of
mounds was a lost art, is exceedingly hard
to draw.

These quotations give some evidence that
the builders of our earliest archaeological
works were well acquainted with the high
grounds. It is not apparent now that in
any signal instance there exists evidence of
a reliable character that any watershed was
a highway ; all we are seeking to show now
is the very general fact that these people
lived and moved and had their being often
far inland on the heads of the little streams
which never in historic times have served
the purpose of navigation, and that here
many of their works are found on the high
grounds where it is sure all previous races
have made their roads.

Now, it has been suggested already that
lines of land travel have varied little since
the time the buffalo and Indian marked out
the best general courses across the conti
nent. Mr. Benton said that the buffalo
blazed the way for the railroad to the Paci
fic. In a general way this has been the
rule throughout our history ; the first routes
chosen have often proved the best the tripod

80 PATHS OF MOUND-BUILDING INDIANS

could find. Now it would be significant if
it could be proved that there are numerous
archaeological remains along these strategic
lines of travel. This, probably, cannot be
shown. There is, however, strong evidence
that is worthy of consideration. Many of
the early routes of travel converged on
certain well-worn, strategic gaps in our
mountain ranges. It is interesting to
notice how many archaeological remains
are found at these points. A few quota
tions from the Catalogue of Prehistoric Works
will be in point:

" Stone cairns in Rabun Gap" (Rabun
county, Georgia).49

' ' Pictographs on large bowlders in Track
Rock Gap " (Union county, Georgia).50

" Ancient fire-bed and refuse heap at
Buffalo Gap (bones and pottery found
here) " (Union county, Illinois).61

" Mound near Cumberland Gap" (Bell
county, Kentucky).52

49 Catalogue of Prehistoric Works East of the Rocky
Mountains, p. 52.
^ Id., pp. 53, 54.

51 Id., p. 68.

52 Id., p. 90.

HIGHLAND LOCATION OF REMAINS 81

* * Cairn at Indian Grave Gap on Green
Mountain ... in the trail ' ' (Caldwell
county, North Carolina).53

" Mound . . . said to be . . .
toward Grandmother Gap ' ' (Caldwell coun
ty, North Carolina).54

" Mound . . . one mile southwest
of Paint Gap post-office. . . . Cairn at
Indian Grave Gap, in Walnut Mountain
. . . on south side of road from Mar
shall to Burnsville " (Madison county,
North Carolina).55

" Cairn at Boone's Gap on Boone's Fork
of Warriors Creek ' ' (Wilkes county, North
Carolina).56

" Cairns at Indian Grave Gap (Blount
county, Tennessee).57

" Cairns in the gap on the. state line at
Slick Rock trail" (Monroe county, Ten
nessee).58

" Mound 500 feet long, 250 feet wide,

53 Catalogue of Prehistoric Works East of the Rocky
Mountains, p. 153.
54 Id,, p. 152.
55 Id., p. 156.
56 Id., p. 158.
57 Id., p. 200.
^ Id., p. 209.

82 PATHS OF MOUND-BUILDING INDIANS

and 40 feet high . . . 2% miles west
of Rockfish Gap Tunnel ' ' (Augusta county,
Virginia).59

Some of these cairns do not, in all proba
bility, date back to the mound-building
era, but the mounds and other archaeolog
ical works probably do, giving the best
reasons for believing that the earliest of
Americans found the strategic paths of
least resistance across our great divides.

But not only in the mountain passes have
our tripods placed their stern stamp of ap
proval upon the ingenuity of the earliest
pathfinders of America. In a host of
instances our highways and railroads follow
for many miles the general line of the routes
of the buffalo and Indian on the high
ground. This is particularly true of our
roads of secondary importance, county
roads, which in hundreds of instances fol
low the alignment of a pioneer road which
was laid out on an Indian trail.

No one can examine the maps and dia
grams of the archaeological works of central
North America with this truth in mind

59 Catalogue of Prehistoric Works East of the Rocky
Mountains, p. 218.

HIGHLAND LOCATION OF REMAINS 83

without noticing how largely these works
are found near to some present-day thor
oughfare. This is of significance. While
it is true that works near such highways
are perhaps more quickly discovered and
easily approached, it is at the same time
doubtful if any of importance have been
ignored because they are at a distance from
highways of approach. The relation of
these works to neighboring roads has also
been accidentally emphasized by the neces
sity of describing their position, which is
often most easily done by a reference to
adjacent roads. For all this due allowance
must be made. At the same time this does
not explain the fact that a significant frac
tion of these works lie along the general
alignment of our present routes of travel
and are in numerous instances touched by
them. It need hardly be added that these
roads were laid out with as much reference
to the stars above them as to the ancient
works near which they accidentally pass.

The following instances have a bearing
on the question :

Two miles from Madison, Wisconsin, a
line of mounds is found beside a highway

84 PATHS OF MOUND-BUILDING INDIANS

to the city. The road passes through one
of the group and the remainder follow the
road on high ground almost parallel with
it.60

The road from Prairie du Chien (Wiscon
sin) to Eastman is paralleled by a long line
of works. As previously noted (p. 69) this
road follows the alignment of an old Indian
trail.61

There are mounds on both sides of the
Black River road near Hazen Corners, Wis
consin.62

In the archaeological map of Hazen Cor
ners, Wisconsin, the works bear a signifi
cant relation to the junction of the three
roads which meet there. Supposing the
roads to be the prehistoric route of travel, it
is seen that all the mounds lie just beside
them, many even touching them, but in
only one instance does a mound cross
any of the three present roads. True, the
roads may have destroyed some of the
works, but of the effigy mounds, at least,

60 Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnol
ogy, PP- 46, 47.

61 /</., p. 52.
6S/</., p. 56.

f

HIGHLAND LOCATION OF REMAINS 85

it is sure that the figures are complete, or
nearly so.63

It is to be noticed with reference to the
effigy mounds that, to a person standing on
the present highway the figures are ' ( right
side up." In the case of the animal fig
ures, if the road runs to the left of a
figure that figure is found to be lying on
its right side ; if the road runs on the right
the figure is found to be lying on its left
side; the feet are toward the road. In the
case of birds, either the head or the tail
is toward the present highway.64

A line of mounds lies on high ground on
the northeast bank of the Mississippi river,
near Battle Island, Vernon county, Wiscon
sin. The road to De Soto is on the same
bank and lies parallel with them through
out their length.65

A remarkable line of mounds and effigies
lies near Cassville, Grant county, Wisconsin.
A road runs exactly parallel with them.
The mounds lie on the west and the effigies

63 Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnol
ogy, P- 55-

64 Id,, pp. 54, 55, 56, 59.

65 Id., p. 78.

86 PATHS OF MOUND-BUILDING INDIANS

on the east. The animals lie in a correct
position to be viewed from the road.66

Between the Round Pond mounds (Union
county, Illinois), which are so near together
that " one appears partially to overlap the
other," runs a roadway.67

A roadway cuts through the ancient
works on the Boulware place, Clark coun
ty, Missouri ; the alignment of the road and
the series of works is nearly the same.68

The Rich Woods works, Stoddard coun
ty, Missouri, lie on a long, sandy ridge ;
' ' the general course is almost directly
north and south." The road to Dexter
runs near them, touching one, in the
same north and south direction the entire
length.69

The Knapp mounds, Pulaski county, Ar
kansas, * * the most interesting group in the
state," are surrounded by a wall of earth.
A roadway passes through the entire semi
circle formed by this surrounding wall,

66 Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnol
ogy, P- 85-
67 Id., p. 1 60.
68 Id. , plate viii.
69/</., p. 175.

HIGHLAND LOCATION OF REMAINS 87

and passes between or at the base of the
mounds contained within it.70

A road runs through the entire length of
the ancient stone work near Bourneville,
Ross county, Ohio.71

A state road (Lebanon to Chillicothe)
crosses over Fort Ancient. At the spot
where this road ascends to the fort, the
embankments of the latter are found to be
increased in height and solidity, showing
that this point was most easy of ascent -
probably the very spot where the ancient
road was made.72

A road passes through the entire length
of the North Fork works (Ross county,
Ohio).73

A road passes through the entire length
of ancient work, Ross county, Ohio.74

Two roads cut ancient work in Fayette
county, Kentucky.75

70 Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnol
ogy, p. 243, plate opp. p. 244.

71 Squier and Davis's Ancient Monuments of the
Mississippi Valley, plate iv.

72 Id., plate vii.
73 Id., plate x.

74 Id., plate xii., No. 4.
75 Id. , plate xiv. , No. 4.

88 PATHS OF MOUND-BUILDING INDIANS

Ancient work is cut in two by road from
Chillicothe to Richmondale, Liberty town
ship, Ross county, Ohio.76

The state road passes through the great
Graded Way in Pike county, Ohio, one of
the most famous works in the United States.
It is surely significant that a modern road
should pass so near the very track which
evidently was a highway in prehistoric
times.77

Such are the conspicuous examples of
! ancient works that are now found to be on
the alignment of modern routes of travel.
In two singularly significant instances — in
the Graded Way in Pike county, Ohio, and
at Fort Ancient, Warren county, Ohio —
there is no doubt that the modern road
passes over the very track of the road used
by the mound-builders. These two famous
works, with the exception of the Serpent
Mound probably the most famous in all
the Central West, are near no stream of
water which is not frozen in the winter and
nearly dry in the summer. There can be

16Squier and Davis's Ancient Monuments of the
Mississippi Valley, plate xx.
77 7#., plate xxxi., No. i.

HIGHLAND LOCATION OF REMAINS 89

no reasonable doubt that their builders used
the routes on the watersheds.

As was said at the beginning, it does not
seem wise to attempt to speculate on the
probable routes by which these early tribes
found their way to and fro between their
works within the interior of the country.
That they did so pass it seems difficult to
doubt. That those early ways were along
the watersheds, higher or lower, we may
well believe, since for the races that
have occupied the land since their time
these watersheds have been the routes of
travel — and will be until aerial navigation
is assured.

That these earliest Americans had roads
of one description or another, there is suffi
cient evidence. About their great works
there were graded ways of ascent, up which
the materials used in construction were
hauled or borne. Now and then we find
mention of some sort of roads which may
seem to have been of a less local nature,
but so far as highways of war and commerce
are concerned there is no evidence which
can be admitted into this treatise.

It will not be of disadvantage, however,

90 PATHS OF MOUND-BUILDING INDIANS

to give a brief catalogue of such roads and
ways as seem of most importance in the
Catalogue of Prehistoric Works previously
quoted :

MANITOBA, DOMINION OF CANADA: " Calf
Mountain " (Tete de Boeuf), a mound 95
feet in diameter and 1 5 feet high, with a
graded roadway 2 feet high, running south
west from it 154 feet; about 60 miles north
of Pembina. 78

JEFFERSON COUNTY, GEORGIA: Remains
of large cemeteries and a broad trail lead
ing to Old Town, 8 miles from Louisville,
on the eastern side of the Ogeechee.79

LOWNDES COUNTY, GEORGIA: Ruins of
an "old town" within a few miles of
Troupville, " with roads discernible, which
are wide and straight."80

FAYETTE COUNTY, INDIANA: Camping
grounds and traces of old trails in Sees. 34
and 36, T. 13 N., R. 13 E.81

FRANKLIN COUNTY, INDIANA: Traces of
camp sites and old trails are observable on

78 American Antiquarian, vol. viii., pp. 369, 370.
19 Smithsonian Report, 1879, p. 443.

80 White's Historical Collections of Georgia, p. 541.

81 Smithsonian Report, 1882, pp. 737-749.

HIGHLAND LOCATION OF REMAINS 91

Sec. 31, T. 10 N., R. i W. ; Sec. 33, T. 10
N., R. 2 W.; Sec. 10, T. 12 N., R. 13 E.82

UNION COUNTY, INDIANA : Traces of camp
sites and old trails are observable on Sees.
8 and 11, T. u N., R. 2 W. ; Sees. 34 and
36, T. 13 N., R. 13 E. ; and Sec. 7, T. 14
N., R. 14 E.83

MADISON COUNTY, LOUISIANA: Group of
earthworks, consisting of seven large and
regular mounds and an elevated roadway,
half a mile in length, on the right bank of
Walnut Bayou, 7 miles from the Missis
sippi river.84

BALTIMORE COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS:
Old Indian trail in same county, leading
from the rocks of Deer Creek (Hartford
county) to an ancient settlement near Sweet
Air.85

LICKING COUNTY, OHIO: Work on Col-
ton's place on Newark and Flint Ridge
road — a conical hill which has had a road
way ' ' cut entirely around it ; the dirt is
thrown up the hill, leaving a level track

^Smithsonian Report, 1882, pp. 730-749.
83 Id., pp. 728-749.

84Squier and Davis's Ancient Monuments of the
Mississippi Valley, pp. 115, 116, plate xxxix.
^Smithsonian Report, 1881, p. 682.

92 PATHS OF MOUND-BUILDING INDIANS

with a wall on the upper side." Two
miles and a half northeast of Amsterdam.

WEST VIRGINIA : Indian trail from Grave
Creek mound to the lakes, passing over
Flint Ridge.86

PIKE COUNTY, OHIO: Ancient works at
Piketon, consisting of parallel walls, graded
way and mounds.87

It is not, however, on this slight evidence
of local roadways that one would wish to
base belief that the early Indians opened
the first land highways in America. It is
possible that they had great, graded roads
near their towns and no roads elsewhere,
but it is hardly conceivable.

We have seen that the mound-building
Indians occupied, in many instances, the
heads of the lesser streams, and the argu
ment in favor of their having opened the

86 Catalogue of Prehistoric Works East of the Rocky
Mountains, p. 177.

81Atwater, Transactions of the American Antiqua
rian Society, vol. i. (1820), pp. 193, 194; Howe's Histor
ical Collections of Ohio (1847), p. 413; Squier and
Davis's Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley,
pp. 88-90, fig. 20 and plate xxxi., No. i, and p. 171, fig.
57, No. 3; MacLean's Mound Builders, pp. 37-38, fig. 4;
Shepherd's Antiquities of the State of Ohio, p. 61.

HIGHLAND LOCATION OF REMAINS 93

first land highways has been based on this
interior situation which, unless the lesson
of history in this case tends to false reason
ing, necessitated landward routes of travel.
There is, fortunately, one last piece of
evidence which will more than make up
for any lack of conclusiveness which inay
be laid to the charge of the preceding
arguments.

CHAPTER V

WATERSHED MIGRATIONS

A FEW descriptions of the local road
ways of the mound-building Indians
have been cited ; reasons for believ
ing that they used the watersheds, to a
greater or less degree, as highways for
passage from one part of the country to
another, have been described. Let us look
at the matter of their migrations.

That these people did migrate there is
no doubt among archaeologists. The many
kinds of archaeological remains now found
indicate that they were divided into many
different tribes, and the great distances
between works of similar character show
that the various tribes labored at divers
times in divers places. " The longest
stretch where those apparently the works
of one people are found on one bank [of the
Mississippi river] is from Dubuque, Iowa,
to the mouth of Des Moines river. As we

WATERSHED MIGRATIONS 95

move up and down [the Mississippi] we
find repeated changes from one type to
another. ' ' 88

The direction from which these mound-
builders entered the regions where their
works are found, and their migrations
within this region, must be decided by a
careful study of the varying character of
the mounds and a classification of them.

This work has not been done, save in
the most general way possible, though one
highly important conclusion has been defi
nitely reached. It is that the generally
received opinion heretofore held by archae
ologists that the lines of migration were
along the principal water-courses is not
found to be correct, and that these lines of
migration were across the larger water
courses, such as the Mississippi, rather
than up and down them.89

* ' One somewhat singular feature is found
in the lines of former occupancy indicated
by the archaeological remains. The chief
one is that reaching from New York

88 Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnol-

°gy> p- 526.

89 Id., p. 526.

96 PATHS OF MOUND-BUILDING INDIANS

through. Ohio along the Ohio river and
onward in the same direction to the north
eastern corner of Texas ; another follows the
Mississippi river ; another extends from the
region of the Wabash to the headwaters of
the Savannah river, and another across
southern Michigan and southern Wiscon
sin. The inference, however, which might
be drawn from this fact — that these lines
indicate routes of migration — is not to be
taken for granted. It is shown by the
explorations of the Bureau, and a careful
study of the different types of mounds and
other works, that the generally received
opinion that the lines of migration of the
authors of these works were always along
the principal water-courses, cannot be
accepted as entirely correct. Although the
banks of the Mississippi are lined with pre
historic monuments from Lake Pepin to the
mouth of Red river, showing that this was
a favorite section for the ancient inhab
itants, the study of these remains does not
give support to the theory that this great
water highway was a line of migration
during the mound-building period, except
for short distances. It was, no doubt, a

WATERSHED MIGRATIONS 97

highway for traffic and war parties, but the
movements of tribes were across it rather
than up and down it This is not asserted
as a mere theory or simple deduction, but
as a fact proved by the mounds themselves,
whatever may be the theory in regard to
their origin or uses." 90

It is for future scholarship to point out
to us the origin, movements, and destiny
of this earliest race after a careful compara
tive study of the remains which contain
all we know of them. But may we not
believe that the great watersheds were to
them what they have been for every other
race which has occupied this land? We
submit : the greater watersheds should be
carefully considered in connection with the
study and classification of the various kinds
of prehistoric remains with a view to solv
ing the question of the movements of the
mound-building Indians in America. The
purpose of the first part of this monograph
has been accomplished by pointing out
some reasons for the belief that these early
people opened the first landward passage-

90 Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnol-

- 525-526.

98 PATHS OF MOUND-BUILDING INDIANS

ways of the continent on these watersheds.
These may be summed up as follows:

(i). The mound-building Indians, like
the later Indians, were partial to interior
locations ; some of their greatest forts and
most remarkable mounds are found beside
our smaller streams.

(2). These works are scattered widely
over such regions; if there was any com
munication it must have been on the water
sheds, land travel here always having been
most expeditious and practicable through
all historic times.

(3). They were acquainted with some of
our most famous mountain passes, showing
that they were not ignorant of the law of
least resistance ; and, to a marked degree,
their works are found beside, and in gen
eral alignment with, our modern roads —
which to a great degree followed the
ancient routes of the Indians which so
invariably obeyed this law.

(4). The comparative study of the
mound-building Indians' works proves that
the migrations of that race did not follow
even the larger streams by which they
labored most extensively.

PART II
Paths of the Great Game Animals

("BUFFALO ROADS")

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

, T T THEN the first Europeans visited the
VV Central West two sorts of land thor
oughfares were found by which the
forests could be threaded: paths of the
aborigines and paths of the great game
animals such as the buffalo. These paths
were familiarly known for half a century as
Indian Roads and Buffalo Roadsrj1 That
these two kinds of thoroughfares were
easily distinguishable one from the other
and that both were ways of common pass
age through the land will be made plain
later.

Many varying theories regarding the
coming of the buffalo into the central and
eastern portions of this continent have been
devised, but of one thing we are sure,
namely that, among all the relics exhumed
from the mounds of the pre-Columbian

102 PATHS OF GREAT GAME ANIMALS

mound building Indians, very few bones of
the buffalo have been found. Bones of
other animals are frequently, even com
monly, brought to light, but the remarkable
fact remains that almost no buffalo bones
are discovered. Considering that the buf
falo was the most useful animal possible
to aboriginal tribes like those in prehis
toric America, there is but one conclusion
to be reached, and that is that the mound-
building Indians had but little acquaintance
with the buffalo.

For this reason it has seemed altogether
best to treat the routes of the mound-build
ing Indians first, and the routes of the
great game animals, which were known as
Buffalo Roads, second — on the theory that
the buffalo came into the Central West
sometime between the mound-building era
and the arrival of the first European ex
plorers.91

91 A most ingenious theory regarding the advent of the
buffalo into the Central West will be found in Prof.
Shaler's Man and Nature in America.

CHAPTER II

RANGE AND HABITS OF THE BUFFALO

THE range of the buffalo or bison in
the United States formerly extended
from Great Slave Lake on the north to
the northeastern provinces of Mexico on the
south — from 62° latitude to 25°. Its west
ward range extended beyond the Rocky
mountains and embraced quite a large area,
remains having recently been discovered as
far west as the Blue mountains in Oregon ;
farther south, herds roamed over the region
occupied by the Great Salt Lake basin and
grazed westward as far as the Sierra Neva
da mountains. East of the Rocky moun
tains the feeding-grounds embraced all the
area drained by the Ohio river and its
tributaries, extending southward beyond
the Rio Grande and northward to the Great
Lakes as far as the eastern extremity of
Lake Erie. The southeastern range prob
ably did not extend beyond the Tennessee

104 PATHS OF GREAT GAME ANIMALS

river, and only in the upper portions of
North and South Carolina did it extend
beyond the Alleghanies.

The habitat of the buffalo included feed
ing-grounds, stamping-grounds, wallows
and licks. Their feeding-grounds em
braced the meadow valleys where the
choicest grazing was to be found.92 The
habit of keeping together in immense herds
while feeding soon exhausted the food in
any single locality and rendered a slow,
constant movement necessary. A herd
so immense that it remained in the sight of
a traveler for days required a vast area of
feeding-ground to sustain it during a season.

When a herd rested to ruminate the
buffaloes arranged themselves in a peculiar,
characteristic manner — the young always
in the center with the mothers, the males
forming a compact circle around them. By
such a conformation were the ' ' stamping-
grounds ' ' made — each animal crowding
and pushing from the outside of the herd,
where flies and insects were more trouble
some, toward the center.

92 Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Kentucky,
vol. i., part ii.

RANGE AND HABITS 105

A peculiar custom of the buffalo was
* * wallowing. ' ' In the pools of water the old
fathers of the herd lowered themselves on
one knee, and with the aid of their horns,
soon had an excavation into which the
water trickled, forming a cool, muddy
bath. From his ablutions each arose,
coated with mud, allowing the patient suc
cessor to take his turn. Each entered the
" wallow," threw himself flat upon his
back, and, by means of his feet and horns,
violently forced himself around until he
was completely immersed. After many
buffaloes had thus immersed themselves
and, by adhesion, had carried away each his
share of the sticky mass, a hole two feet
deep and often twenty feet in diameter was
left, and, even to this day, marks the spot
of a buffalo wallow. The " delectable
laver of mud " soon dried upon the buffalo
and left him encased in an impenetrable
armor secure from the attacks of insects.

While the actions of a herd of buffaloes
were very similar to those of a herd of cattle,
yet very dissimilar to the habit of domestic
cattle was their propensity to roll upon
the ground. Though a bulky, ungraceful

106 PATHS OF GREAT GAME ANIMALS

animal in appearance, the buffalo rolled
himself completely over, apparently with
more ease than a horse. A buffalo, by
rolling over in this manner, often dusted
himself in what was known as a " dry wal
low."

The buffaloes' licks, which afforded salt,
that mineral so necessary to their health,
were the foci of all their roads, the favor
ite spots about which the herds gyrated
and between which they were continually
passing. So important were these consid
ered when white men first entered the West
that every lick was carefully included in all
the maps of the first geographers. Filson's
map of Kentucky, for instance, made during
the Revolutionary period, contains a large
number of circles with dots about them
which were the signs of "Salt Springs &
Licks," all of them being connected, by
trails, " some cleared, others not."

The saline materials of these licks are
derived from imprisoned sea-water which
has been stored away in the strata below
the action of surface waters. When these
rocks lie nearer the surface than the line of
drainage, the saline materials are leached

RANGE AND HABITS 107

away. The saline materials increase with
the depth until the level is reached where
we find the water saturated with the ingredi
ents of old sea-water. The displacement
of these imprisoned waters is induced by
the sinking of surface water through the
vertical interstices of soil and rock, and the
natural tendency of the water to restore
the hydrostatic balance. This action is
much more likely to occur when the rocks
above the drainage are limestone or shale
with an underlying bed of rock composed
of sandstone or other rock through which
water may permeate. That such a pressure
exists and that some such process is at work
is shown by the waters rising ten feet or
more above the surface when enclosed in a
pipe.

The endurance and speed of the buffalo
far exceeded that possessed by domesticated
cattle. With a good start a swift horse
could only with difficulty overtake a herd
of buffaloes. Their gait was an awkward,
lumbering gallop, and the speed which
they attained was much greater than it
appeared to be. When running at full
speed, rough ground and an occasional

108 PATHS OF GREAT GAME ANIMALS

tumble were taken in a matter-of-fact way
and seemed scarcely to retard trie progress
of the herd. If a ravine intersected its
trail, the herd dashed down the vertical,
rocky sides and on up the opposite slope,
resuming its onward rush as if no obstacle
had appeared.

The extensive courses of the buffaloes
necessitated the crossing of large streams.
This often caused a loss of many of the old
and young members of the herds, especially
if the stream was swift or swollen. Often,
after having successfully battled their way
entirely across the stream, a bluff or a
miry landing-place beyond proved disas
trous. Buffalo herds boldly crossed rivers
on the ice. Large numbers have been
known to be drowned, when crowding too
closely together, by the breaking of the ice
beneath their weight. Herds have even
been known to cross upon floating ice,
when they fell an easy prey to the Indians,
and many were drowned.

The following incident is related by Col
onel Dodge: " Late in the summer of 1867
a herd of probably four thousand buffaloes
attempted to cross the South Platte near

RANGE AND HABITS 109

Plum Creek. The river was rapidly sub
siding, being nowhere over a foot or two
in depth, and the channels in the bed were
filled or filling with loose quicksand. The
buffaloes in front were hopelessly stuck.
Those immediately behind, urged on by the
horns and pressure of those yet further in
the rear, trampled over their struggling
companions to be themselves engulfed in
the devouring sand. This was continued
until the bed of the river, nearly half a
mile broad, was covered with dead or dying
buffaloes. Only a comparative few actually
crossed the river, and these were soon
driven back by hunters. It was estimated
that considerably more than half the herd,
or over two thousand buffaloes, paid for
this attempt with their lives. 'v 93

911 Chicago Inter Ocean, August 5, 1875.

CHAPTER III

EARLY USE OF BUFFALO ROADS

THE first explorers that entered the
interior of the American continent
were dependent upon the buffalo and
Indian for ways of getting about. Few
of the early white men who came westward
journeyed on the rivers, as the journals of
Gist and Walker attest, and to the trails of
the buffalo and Indian they owed their
success in bringing to the seaboard the
first accounts of the interior of the conti
nent.

From Gist, Walker, and Boone the world
learned the most it knew of the trans- Alle-
ghany country prior to the Revolution.
Gist pierced central Ohio and came around
homeward through eastern Kentucky which
Dr. Walker had explored, and Boone hunted
from the Holston to the Kentucky river.

To these men three routes of travel
were feasible — Indian thoroughfares, buf-

EARLY USE OF BUFFALO ROADS 111

falo roads, and the beds of dry streams.
It seems that of the two former routes
those of the Indian were easily distin
guished from those of the buffalo. In Dr.
Walker's Journal (1750) this is made clear
from the frequent mention of the several
kinds of roads he found. Of the Indian
thoroughfares he writes as follows:

" April i4th. We kept down the Creek
5 miles Chiefly along the Indian Road.

" i$th. Easter Sunday. Being in bad
grounds for our Horses we moved 7 miles
along the Indian Road, to Clover Creek.

11 1 8th. Still cloudy. We kept down
the Creek to the River along the Indian
Road to where it crosses." 94

On the other hand such specific mention
of buffalo roads as the following may be
noted :

" Our horse being recover'd, we travelled
to the Rocky Ridge [Clinch Mountain]. I
went up to the top, to look for a Pass, but
found it so Rocky that I concluded not to
Attempt it there. This Ridge may be
known by Sight, at a distance. To the

94 First Explorations of Kentucky (Filson Club Pub.
No. 13), p. 50.

112 PATHS OF GREAT GAME ANIMALS

Eastward are many small Mountains, and
a Buffaloe Road between them and the
Ridge."95

"We kept down the Creek 2 miles
further, where it meets with a large Branch
coming from the South West, and thence
runs through the East Ridge making a very
good Pass ; and a large Buffaloe Road goes
from that Fork to the Creek over the West
Ridge, which we took and found the Ascent
and Descent tollerably easie." m

"In the Fork of Licking Creek is a Lick
much used by Buffaloes and many large
Roads lead to it." 97

" We went up Naked Creek to the head
and had a plain Buffaloe Road most of the

9 i QQ

way.

" I blazed several trees four ways on the
outside of the low Grounds by a Buffaloe
Road, and marked my Name on Several
Beech Trees."99

Boone, while relating the opening of his

96 First Explorations of Kentucky (Filson Club Pub.
No. 13), pp. 44-45-
96 Id., p. 47.
97 Id., p. 51.
98 Id., p. 61.
99 Id., p. 66.

EARLY USE OF BUFFALO ROADS 113

great road westward by way of " Warrior's
Path " through Cumberland Gap, distinctly
states in his autobiography that as he left
the Gap in the distance he came to a point
where the Warrior's Path and the buffalo
road diverged. The former ran westward
through what is now Danville and Louis
ville, while the latter went northward.
Boone followed the buffalo road to the
mouth of Otter creek where Boonesborough
was founded.100 Colonel Logan afterward
opened a road westward toward Danville
and Louisville on the general course of the
Indian trail.

Thus it is plain that in the earliest days
there was a marked distinction between
the roads of the buffalo and the Indian,
though each undoubtedly used, at times,
the other's track, and in some places, such
as Cumberland Gap, the buffalo and Indian
tracks were identical. Dr. Walker in the
quotation given above, " We went up Naked
Creek to the head and had a plain Buffaloe
Road most of the way," was speaking prob
ably of the ll Warrior's Path " leading
directly to Cumberland Gap though not
100 Boone 's Autobiography,

114 PATHS OF GREAT GAME ANIMALS

aware that the road he traveled was more
than a buffalo path.101

That buffaloes were accustomed to trav
eling Indian routes is clearly proved by a
number of incidents. It is said that when
the Catawbas came up to Ohio in search of
the hated Iroquois they cut off buffalo hoofs,
tied them to their own feet, pursued the
Indian trail and ambushed themselves.
The Iroquois, following the fresh buffalo
tracks, soon found themselves the victims
of their own credulity.

Two instances of travelers meeting buf
faloes on Indian thoroughfares and the quar
rel for the right of way are to the point :

Joseph Buell, in a journey from Vincennes
to the Ohio, relates this incident in his jour
nal under date of October 4th: " In our
march today, came across five buffaloes.
They tried to force a passage through cur
column. The general ordered the men to
fire on them. Three were killed and the
others wounded." 102

101 Fjrst Explorations of Kentucky (Filson Club Pub.
No. 13), p. 61, note.

102Buell's Journal, Hildreth's "Pioneer History," p.
157-

EARLY USE OF BUFFALO ROADS 115

Dr. Walker writes the following tinder
the date of June ipth, 1750: " We got to
Laurel Creek early this morning, and met
so impudent a Bull Buffaloe that we were
obliged to shoot him, or he would have
been amongst us." 103

Buffalo roads should be divided into two
classes — local and transcontinental. The
former were the short roads which con
verged from the feeding and stamping-
grounds, brakes and meadows, to the licks
where the animal's natural craving for salt
was satisfied. The transcontinental routes
were those used in migrating from one por
tion of the country to another, like the
great route through Cumberland Gap.

Such regions as Kentucky, where there
were numerous salt licks and great areas
of meadow-land near by, became favorite
haunts for herds of buffalo, and here their
local roads are of such a nature as to be
reckoned among " the national curiosities
of the state. ' ' Broad, hard, and often deep,
these great roads were adopted immedi
ately by Indians and white men alike as

103 First Explorations of Kentucky (Filson Club Pub.
No. 13), p. 70.

116 PATHS OF GREAT GAME ANIMALS

highways of travel. They are thus de
scribed by some early writers:

" The roads opened by these animals
may be reckoned among the national curi
osities of the state [Kentucky], being
generally wide enough for a carriage or
waggon way, in which trees, shrubs, etc.,
are all trampled down, and destroyed by
the irresistible impetus of the mighty
phalanx."104

Croghan wrote in his Journal (1765):
" We came to a large road which the
buffaloes have beaten spacious enough for
a wagon to go abreast, and leading straight
into the Lick."105

In the MS. autobiography of General
James Taylor of Newport, Kentucky, is
found this statement "Big Bone Lick . . .
has been a great resort of the buffalo, and
the roads . . . were larger than any
common ones now [1794] in the State,
and in many places were worn five or six
feet deep." 106

104M'Murtrie's Sketches of Louisville, p. 58.
105 First Explorations of Kentucky (Filson Club Pub.
No. 13), p. 169.
>°6/</., p. 170.

EARLY USE OF BUFFALO ROADS 117

" A foot-path, zigzagging through the
freshly made stumps of trees and past some
saplings of dogwood and pawpaw, led down
from the station [Bryant's] to this spring,
while a much broader track sloped from
the main gate on the southeastern side of
the stockade to a road a little distance away
and nearly fronting the fort, that was a
priceless boon to the pioneers. It seemed
an ancient product of human skill, but was,
in fact, a ' trace,' hard and firm, made by
the buffaloes alone which had thundered
over it for a thousand years in their jour
neys to the Salt Licks." 107

From the time Boone led the van of the
pioneer hosts into the southern portion of
the Ohio basin until the present day, the
buffalo routes have perceptibly influenced
the course of travel. Writes a Kentucky
historian :

" Exploring the country from the head
waters of Cumberland river to the Ohio,
they discovered its main streams, and its
variety of soil and surface. By following
its trodden roads, or ' traces ' as the

107 Bryant' s Station (Filson Club Pub. No. 12), pp.

74-75-

118 PATHS OF GREAT GAME ANIMALS

pioneers called them, which the buffaloes
made from their grazing fields and brakes,
they [Boone and his brother] found a num
ber of the great ' licks ' to which wild
animals in countless multitudes commonly
resorted in hunt of salt. These buffalo
traces are plainly marked out to the present
day."108

One or two references will show how
common it was to refer to buffalo " traces "
as the main thoroughfares of Kentucky:
" Hardly had the plaudits of the pioneers
for the women of Bryant's Station died on
the stillness of the sultry August air ere
summer breezes carried the story of the
awful carnage and destruction at the Battle
of the Blue Licks, from the valley of the
Licking, by the buffalo traces, to the set
tlements on the Kentucky River."109
" . . . It was the 1 6th of August when
Caldwell and McKee, piloted by Simon
Girty, assailed the place [Bryant's Station].
They had surrounded it during the previous
night. They came like the pestilence that
walks in darkness, unexpected and un-

108 Smith's History of Kentucky, p. 7.

109 Bryant's Station (Filson Club Pub. No. 12), p. 131.

EARLY USE OF BUFFALO ROADS 119

seen. They had marched along the buffalo
traces or stolen through the forests without
having given to any one any notice of
their intention."110

The course of one of these famous
' ' traces ' ' is thus described :

" From Big Bone Lick buffalo roads led
to Blue Licks, and also southwest to Dren-
non's Lick, in Henry County, thence to
the crossing of the Kentucky just below
Frankfort. From the valley of the river
they then passed to the high ground east
of Frankfort by a deeply worn road yet
visible, known as the Buffalo Trace, to the
Stamping Ground, in Scott County, a town
named from the fact that the animals in
vast herds would tread or stamp the earth
while crowded together and moving around
in the effort of those on the outside to get
inside and thus secure protection from the
flies. Thence they passed by the Great
Crossings, so called from its being the place
where they crossed Elkhorn, two miles
west of Georgetown, and thence eastward
to Blue Lick, May's Lick, and across the
river into Ohio. Their roads formed in

110 Bryant' 's Station (Filson Club Pub. No. 12), p. 135.

120 PATHS OF GREAT GAME ANIMALS

the comparatively level country the routes
of the immigrants through the dense for
ests, impenetrable from the heavy cane,
peavines, and other undergrowth. They
also determined in many portions of the
State not only the lines of travel and trans
portation, but also of settlement, as particu
larly shown between Maysville and Frank
fort, a distance of about eighty miles,
where the settlements were first made
along the Buffalo road, and later the turn
pike and railroad followed in close prox
imity to the route surveyed by this sagacious
animal, which Mr. Bent on said blazed the
way for the railroad to the Pacific. The
same idea is embodied in the vernacular of
the unlettered Kentuckian who said that
the then great roadmakers were ' the
buffler, the Ingin, and the Ingineer. ' " m
" May 3ist, 1765. Early in the morning
we went to the great Lick, where those
bones are only found, about four miles
from the river, on the south-east side.
In our way we passed through a fine tim
bered clear wood; we came into a large

111 First Explorations of Kentucky (Filson Club Pub.
No. 13), pp. 184-185,

EARLY USE OF BUFFALO ROADS 121

road which the buffaloes have beaten,
spacious enough for two wagons to go
abreast, and leading straight into the Lick.
It appears that there are vast quantities of
these bones lying five or six feet under
ground, which we discovered in the bank,
at the edge of the Lick. We found here
two tusks above six feet long; we carried
one, with some other bones, to our boats,
and set off."112

" Monday, Oct. i;th, 1785. Here Mr. Zane
found the drove of Buffaloes which he pur
sued; they took up this creek to the licks.
Here are large roads to the licks. Below
this creek is a large bottom of fine timber.
Three miles down Mr. Zane killed a fine
buffalo, which induced me to encamp. " 113

Another historian, after describing the
bold attack of the British and Indian horde
on Bryant's Station, speaks of the route of
the retreating army and its pursuers :

" It was not difficult to find the road on
which the departing enemy had marched.

119Croghan's Journal, "The Olden Time," vol. i., pp.
407-408.

113 Gen. Butler's Journal, " The Olden Time," vol. ii.
p. 450.

122 PATHS OF GREAT GAME ANIMALS

They had taken what was known as the
middle buffalo trace, leading along near
where Paris and Millersburg now stand, to
the salt springs at Blue Licks. It was easy
to follow these roads which the buffalo, the
pioneer engineers of the great West, had
laid down as best for travel. Once having
ascertained the route which the Indians
pursued, the marching was rapid. . . .
The enemy in front of them had showed
no haste in their journey to their own land.
Leaving on the morning of the i/th, they
had camped some twenty miles away.
During the day of the i8th they had
marched about eighteen miles more, and
now, on the morning of the igth, they
were only three miles in advance of their
pursuers, on the east side of the Licking,
at the point where the Maysville and Lex
ington road now crosses that stream over a
suspension bridge. . . . Forming in
line and riding in the narrow trace, which
rarely exceeded seven or eight feet in width,
two or three abreast, the pioneers soon
struck a little branch, along which the trace
wound its way to the bottom of the Licking
River. About a mile from the ford the

EARLY USE OF BUFFALO ROADS 123

trace left the hillside and turned north
westwardly into this branch and followed
it down to the mother stream. At this
point some consultation was held among
the officers, and it was here that Boone,
whose great experience and whose thorough
knowledge of the country gave his opinion
much weight, suggested that, instead of
following this trace and going down the
river, they should follow the ridge and
strike the Licking two miles above, cross
at Abnee's or Bedinger's mills, and thus
come down to the banks of the Licking
some two and a half miles above Blue Licks,
and cross the Licking into a wide valley
from which, a mile eastwardly, they would
gain the ridge along which the trace pur
sued its way into Fleming and Mason coun
ties. . . . The command ' Forward ! '
rang through the woods and echoed along
the hillsides, and down the fateful trace to
the Blue Licks ford the cavalcade pursued
its march. At the point where the trace
strikes the Licking the valley is a quarter
of a mile wide. It is two hundred feet on
the western side, where the Kentucky
pioneers emerged from the forest, and some

124 PATHS OF GREAT GAME ANIMALS

eight hundred feet wide on the east side,
where the foe for hours had been waiting
the advance df the pursuers, whose pres
ence by this time was thoroughly known
to them. . . . Across the Licking the
trace followed up the hillside of the ridge,
which was rocky and barren of all trees and
vegetation. For ages the buffaloes had
come to these licks to find salt. Instinct
had taught them the necessity of periodical
visitations to these saline springs, where
nature had provided this essential for
animal life, and for hundreds of years,
along these narrow paths, cut out of the
woods by the ceaseless trampings of these
mighty herds of buffalo, had come millions
of these animals to find health and life in
the waters which gushed from the Licking
bottom. When they had satisfied nature's
call for salt, these herds would climb the
adjacent hills to lie down and rest through
the day and sleep through the night. On
these eminences thousands of them would
stand and watch the incoming buffaloes as
they emerged from the trace on the west
ern side, and, plunging into the waters of
the Licking, swim across the stream and

EARLY USE OF BUFFALO ROADS 125

slake nature's demand for this necessary
product, which here the Great Provider for
all animal life had laid up in unlimited
quantity. . . . The backbone of the
ridge along which the fight was to occur
was about four hundred and fifty feet in
width. Trigg was ordered to the right,
and his route was close to the edge of the
ravine which comes up from the bank of the
Licking and reaches the top of the hill close
to the point where the Sardis turnpike leaves
the Lexington and Maysville road." 114
, The favorite paths of the settlers were
these li traces " made hard as modern roads
by the herds which had traversed them.
Even the first main street of Lexington was
almost impassable in bad weather, and was
deserted for the road of the buffalo near
by.115 With the passing of the buffalo,
their old routes became clogged in time
with wind-strewn brush and fallen trees;
but, so good was the course and so solid
the footing, that the pioneers cleared these
routes in preference to opening roads of

114 Bryant's Station (Filson Club Pub. No. 12), pp.
159-172.

ll*Ranck's History of Lexington, Kentucky, p. 105.

126 PATHS OF GREAT GAME ANIMALS

their own. A specific illustration of this
is noted by a Lexington historian :

" A buffalo ' trace ' fortunately ran from
this station [Bryant's] close to Lexington,
and the settlers of both places joined forces
in clearing it of logs, undergrowth, and
other obstructions ; a wise measure as subse
quent events proved, for, owing to it, the
troops from Lexington that went to the
assistance of the besieged station, in 1782,
were enabled to reach it much sooner than
they could otherwise have done." 116

" ... The main road from Louis
ville to Lexington [Kentucky] passed
through it [Leestown] about a mile below
Frankfort. This road had been originally
made by the buffaloes, and crossed the
Kentucky River at one of the few places
along its extended course where it was
practicable to make the passage." 117

' ' The roads [in Kentucky] first made by
the buffaloes and adopted by the pioneers,
are laid down with such accuracy that the
position of those old historic places may be
ascertained at this distant day by measure-

116Ranck's History of Lexington, Kentucky, p. 29.
™John Filson (Filson Club Pub. No. i), p. 18.

EARLY USE OF BUFFALO ROADS 127

ment from known objects whose positions
have not changed." 118

The important part played by buffalo
roads in the development of Kentucky is
noted by Mr. James Lane Allen in The
Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky;™ two notices
of early road-making in that region are
found in General Butler '$> Journal. •

" Sunday, Oct. 3Oth. This morning sev
eral of the inhabitants came to visit us.
Capt. Johnston, a sensible man, proposes he
will apply to the general Court for an order
to mark a road from Lexington to this place
[mouth of the Miami river], which Gen.
Clark and myself recommend warmly." 12°

" Sunday, Nov. 2Oth. We were this day
informed by people from the station that the
inhabitants of the Lexington and other set
tlements had blazed a road to the Big Bone
Lick, agreeable to the proposition of Capt.
Johnston of October 3Oth, approved and
recommended by Gen. C. and myself." 121

™John Ftlson (Filson Club Pub. No. i), pp. 18-19.

119 The Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky, pp. 245, 261-
262, 267, 283.

180 Gen. Butler's Journal, " The Olden Time," vol. ii.,
P- 458.

191 /rf., p. 484.

CHAPTER IV

CONTINENTAL THOROUGHFARES

TURNING from a particular region,
where, because of the close proximity
of licks and feeding-grounds, the buf
falo made local roads, it becomes of interest
to look at the country at large and note
the great continental routes.

For an animal credited with but little
instinct, the buffalo found the paths of least
resistance with remarkable accuracy.122

Undoubtedly the migrations of the buffalo
caused the opening of the great overland
trails upon which the first white men came

122 <« The stupidity of the buffalo, as well as its sagac
ity, has been by some writers overstated. A herd of
buffaloes certainly possesses . . . the sheep-like pro
pensity of blindly following its leaders. ... A little
reflection, however, will show that in such instances
as the rushing of a herd over a precipice or into a
pond ... is not wholly an act of stupidity, but
comparable to that of a panic-stricken crowd of human
beings." — "History of the American Bison," Ninth
Annual Report, Department of the Interior, p. 472.

CONTINENTAL THOROUGHFARES 129

into the West. The nomadic trait which
induced migratory movements was acquired
through necessity. The animals moved in
herds. The Central West, for instance,
was, when white men first saw it, covered
largely with forests; between the forests
were open spots covered with rank grasses.
These " opens " were of various sizes from
little patches surrounded by forests to great
treeless expanses miles in length and
breadth.

However large these open prairies, the
herds of buffalo would in a short time ex
haust the supply of grass and then troop
on to fresher fields. Fires, grasshoppers,
and drouth also tended to destroy the
buffaloes' feeding-ground and to send them
on long pilgrimages. Thus it is probable
that in the day when the eastern portion
of the United States was included in the
habitat of the buffaloes, these animals were
continuously trooping along over their
great roadways throughout the summer, one
herd after another, in search of fresh licks
and springs.

The buffaloes migrated annually from the
north to the south, and throughout their

130 PATHS OF GREAT GAME ANIMALS

habitat in the United States, their great
trails were north and south trails. The
rivers flowing mainly east or west into the
Mississippi are crossed usually at right
angles by the more important trails of the
buffalo. The annual movement was caused
not so much by the change of temperature
(though buffaloes which remain sometimes
in cold climates seek the warmer, secluded
spots) as by the frozen condition of the
ground and the depths of snow which buried
the grasses upon which they fed. When,
from various causes, the annual north and
south migrations of the buffalo herds of the
Far West were discontinued, an east and
west migration took place — the herds mov
ing westward to more protected portions
of the country. As late as 1872, hunting
parties made their headquarters during the
summer at Hay's City, and in winter moved
their quarters a hundred or a hundred and
fifty miles westward of their fall camps;
near Hay's City the grass was buried under
ice and encrusted snow, while near Ellis
the ground was bare. Thus unnaturally
the migrations were turned east and west
rather than north and south, and the trails

CONTINENTAL THOROUGHFARES 131

which marked the former lines of migra
tion were cut by deep- worn trails crossing
them at right angles.123

During the reign of the buffaloes in the
Ohio basin their greater thoroughfares
were undoubtedly made by their annual
migrations, even though the extent of this
movement did not exceed a few hundred
miles. In this day the winters are appre
ciably milder along the Ohio river than
even in the northern portions of the states
of which it forms the southern boundary.
And here, as in the Far West, the routes of
the buffalo are north and south with here
and there a great cross trail.

These greater trails lay largely on the
watersheds which the buffalo found with
great certainty. He was an agile climber
despite his great size and weight. Writes
Mr. Allen, " They will often leap down
vertical banks where it would be impos
sible to urge a horse, and will even descend
precipitous rocky bluffs by paths where a
man could only climb down with difficulty,
and where it would seem almost impossible

123 Ninth Annual Report, Department of the Inte
rior, p. 466.

132 PATHS OF GREAT GAME ANIMALS

for a beast of their size and structure to
pass except at the cost of broken limbs or
a broken neck. On the bluffs of the Mus-
selshell river I found places where they
had leaped down bare ledges three or four
feet in height with nothing but ledges of
rocks for a landing-place ; sometimes, too,
through passages between high rocks but
little wider than the thickness of their own
bodies, with also a continuous precipitous
descent for many feet below. Nothing in
their history ever surprised me more than
this revelation of their expertness and fear
lessness in climbing." 124

Ordinarily the buffalo laid out his road
with commendable sagacity, '' usually
choosing the easiest grades and the most
direct courses, so that a buffalo trail can be
depended upon as affording the most feas
ible road possible through the region it
traverses." 125 JThis was because their
weight demanded the most stable courses
and they were thus very sure of avoiding

124 Ninth Annual Report, Department of the Inte
rior, p. 467. On this point see further Dr. Coues's
communication given in Part II.

125 Id., p. 467.

CONTINENTAL THOROUGHFARES 133

low grounds, preferring even difficult
climbs to passage-ways through soft ground ;
we have made one quotation, from Dr.
Walker's Journal, which notes that one
"Buff aloe Road" which he followed afforded
an " Ascent and Descent tollerably easie."126

The three great overland routes from the
Atlantic seaboard into the Central West
were undoubtedly first opened by the
buffalo ; one was the course through central
New York followed afterward by the Erie
canal and the New York Central railway;
the second from the Potomac through south
western Pennsylvania to the headwaters
of the Ohio; the third the famous route
through Cumberland Gap into Kentucky.

These three routes led to the northern,
the central, and the southern portions of
the great Ohio basin. It is certain that the
two latter routes were great buffalo migra
tion routes and there is little doubt that the
route through New York was a buffalo
thoroughfare. There were lesser thor
oughfares which, though latterly known
as Indian trails, were undoubtedly paths of

126 First Explorations of Kentucky (Filson Club Pub.
No. 13), p. 47.

134 PATHS OF GREAT GAME ANIMALS

the buffalo. One of these was the famous
Kittaning Path from the headwaters of
the Juniata to the Allegheny, the route of
the Pennsylvania railway across the Alle-
ghanies ; another was the old trail through
Carlisle and Bedford, Pennsylvania, later
known as Forbes 's route to Pittsburg.
Still another was the well-worn path over
the Alleghany divide by way of Hot
Springs, the present route of the Chesa
peake and Ohio railway.127

In the Central West the greater migra
tory routes were, in Kentucky the route
from Cumberland Gap to the Ohio by way
of the great licks; in West Virginia the
course from the head of New River down
the valley of the Great Kanawha, also on
the watershed from the Monongahela to
the Ohio by way of Middle Island creek
and Dry Ridge; in Ohio the great trail
from the ' ' Forks of the Ohio ' ' (Pittsburg)
across the watershed which divides the
streams (in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois)
which flow into the Ohio from those which
flow into the lakes ; the trails up the Mus-

127 Walker' s fournat (Filson Club Pub. No. 13), p. 73,
note.

CONTINENTAL THOROUGHFARES 135

kingum and Scioto and Miami to the lakes,
in Pennsylvania the great trail running
north and south on the western spurs of the
Alleghanies, Chestnut Ridge and its prolon
gation, Laurel Hill; in Tennessee the great
Warrior's Path through Cumberland Gap to
the country of the Cherokees and Catawbas.
The great routes of the buffaloes were
north and south routes. The Ohio was the
only river which greatly facilitated west
ward migration in the pioneer period.
Most of the smaller streams in the Central
West run approximately north and south —
in general alignment with the known thor
oughfares of the bison. For the Indians
the north and south trails were exceedingly
convenient, since, throughout the period of
intertribal Indian wars with which we are
acquainted, the major portion were between
foes who needed north and south roads upon
which to reach each other quickly ; the great
war trails of Indian history in the Central
West led north and south, and were usually
on the general alignment of, if not over,
buffalo routes. In the earliest of historic
days we find the Iroquois fighting the con
federacies of the South — and that warfare

136 PATHS OF GREAT GAME ANIMALS

kept up until Europeans allied the various
Indian nations with them in their wars.
When the Shawanese were driven from
the South they came northward to the Cum
berland, doubtless on the routes made by
buffalo migrations, for these would have
brought them just where they were first
found by geographers.

The subsequent migrations of thej^jiawa-
nese into the Alleghanies were also un
doubtedly made over buffalo routes across
the Great Kanawha and Monongahela val
leys. At least, from the beginning to the
end of the strange wanderings of these
" Bedouins of American Indians" they
remained within the habitat of the buffalo
and the lesson of history clearly states that
within that habitat man has found the
routes of the buffalo the most practicable.
Of the Wyandots, who according to their
legends came into the Central West by the
Great Lakes, buffalo routes cannot be said
to have determined their distribution, but
the Delawares, fleeing from the valley
whose name they bore, no doubt came
westward to the Muskingum on prehistoric
routes used by the buffalo.

CONTINENTAL THOROUGHFARES 137

Thus buffalo traces must have influ
enced, to some extent, at least, the dis
tribution of the Indian nations who were
found occupying the Ohio basin when,
about the middle of the eighteenth century,
white men came to know it. A significant
proof of this is found in the fact that no
Indian nation permanently occupied the
region now embraced in the state of Ken
tucky, to which, because of the unusual
quantity of licks and meadow lands, the
buffaloes were manifestly partial and where
their roads are best known. Thither came
all the Indian nations and here all con
tended in the immemorial conflict for pos
session of this land which they, as well as
the buffalo, loved.

The buffalo, because of his sagacious
selection of the most sure and most direct
courses, has influenced the routes of trade
and travel of the white race as much, pos
sibly, as he influenced the course of the red-
men in earlier days. There is great truth
in Thomas Benton's figure when he said
that the buffalo blazed the way for the rail
ways to the Pacific. That sagacious animal
undoubtedly "blazed" — with his hoofs

138 PATHS OF GREAT GAME ANIMALS

on the surface of the earth — the course of
many of our roads, canals, and railways.
That he found the points of least resistance
across our great mountain ranges there can
be little doubt. It is certain that he dis
covered Cumberland Gap and his route
through that pass in the mountains has been
accepted as one of the most important on the
continent. It is also obvious that the buffalo
found the course from Atlantic waters to the
head of the Great Kanawha, and that he
opened a way from the Potomac to the
Ohio. How important these strategic points
are now considered is evident from the fact
that a railway crosses the mountains at each
of them; the New York Central, the Balti
more and Ohio, the Pennsylvania, and the
Chesapeake and Ohio cross the first great
divide in the eastern portion of our country
on routes selected centuries ago by the
plunging buffalo. One of the most interest
ing of specific examples of a railway follow
ing an ancient highway of buffalo and Indian
is to be found on the Baltimore and Ohio
Southwestern railway line between Grafton
and Parkersburg. While searching for
the old highway from the Monongahela to

CONTINENTAL THOROUGHFARES 139

the Ohio, an explorer asked an old resident
to describe its course. "From Parkers-
burg," said the informant, " it goes on to
Ewing's Station, Turtle Run, and Kanawha
Station ; it goes over Eaton's Tunnel, follows
Dry Ridge into Dodridge county and passes
through Martin's Woods, just north of
Greenwood, to Center Station where it turns
east, crossing Gorham's Tunnel, and goes
down Middle Island Creek."

" The Indians must have patronized the
railroad well," observed the student,
" since their trail passes by all the stations
and tunnels."

" Law, no," broke out the disappointed
old man, " they wa'n't no railroad them
days, but when they come to build it they
follered the trail the hull way." It is
nothing less than wonderful that the old
highway selected by the instinct of the
bison should be found in two instances, in
a space of twenty miles, immediately above
the railway tunnel.

Other strategic lines of travel perhaps
first opened by the buffalo were the portage
paths between the heads of streams, espe
cially those of the Ohio basin and the lake

140 PATHS OF GREAT GAME ANIMALS

streams on the north and the Atlantic
streams on the south. Undoubtedly in his
migrations north and south the buffalo
deeply wore the river trails, for here he was
close to water and the river meadows which
constantly offered all the nourishment he
needed. At least, when white men first came
into the West they found great paths over
the portages which were more of the nature
of buffalo roads than Indian trails. Certain
of these portages have been noted ; others
were between the French Creek and Lake
Erie — a portage undoubtedly well known
to the buffalo — which the French named
Riviere aux Bceufs in honor of these mon-
archs of the forests; others again between
the Cuyahoga and the Muskingum, the
Scioto and Sandusky, the Wabash and Mau-
mee, St. Joseph and Kankakee, Fox and
Illinois, etc. The prehistoric use of portages
has elsewhere been noticed in connection
with the mound-building Indians. They
were perhaps the earliest of traveled ways
of the continent.

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