CHAPTER III

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 continent.

From Gist, Walker, and Boone the world learned the most it knew of the trans-Alleghany 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, buffalo roads, and the beds of dry streams. It seems that of the two former routes those of the Indian were easily distinguished from those of the buffalo. In Dr. Walker’sJournal(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 14th. We kept down the Creek 5 miles Chiefly along the Indian Road.

“15th. Easter Sunday. Being in bad grounds for our Horses we moved 7 miles along the Indian Road, to Clover Creek.

“18th. 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 theEastward 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.”[96]

“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 way.”[98]

“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 hisgreat 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 Louisville, 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 probably of the “Warrior’s Path” leading directly to Cumberland Gap though notaware that the road he traveled was more than a buffalo path.[101]

That buffaloes were accustomed to traveling 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 buffaloes on Indian thoroughfares and the quarrel for the right of way are to the point:

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

Dr. Walker writes the following under the date of June 19th, 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 converged 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 portion 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 immediately by Indians and white men alike ashighways of travel. They are thus described by some early writers:

“The roads opened by these animals may be reckoned among the national curiosities 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 hisJournal(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]

“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 journeys 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 headwaters 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 thepioneers called them, which the buffaloes made from their grazing fields and brakes, they [Boone and his brother] found a number 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 settlements on the Kentucky River.”[109]“... It was the 16th 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 unseen. 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 Drennon’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 inthe comparatively level country the routes of the immigrants through the dense forests, 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 transportation, but also of settlement, as particularly shown between Maysville and Frankfort, a distance of about eighty miles, where the settlements were first made along the Buffalo road, and later the turnpike and railroad followed in close proximity to the route surveyed by this sagacious animal, which Mr. Benton 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.’”[111]

“May 31st, 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 timbered clear wood; we came into a largeroad 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. 17th, 1785. Here Mr. Zane found the drove of Buffaloes which he pursued; 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.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 17th, they had camped some twenty miles away. During the day of the 18th they had marched about eighteen miles more, and now, on the morning of the 19th, they were only three miles in advance of their pursuers, on the east side of the Licking, at the point where the Maysville and Lexington 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 thetrace 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 pursued its way into Fleming and Mason counties.... 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 someeight hundred feet wide on the east side, where the foe for hours had been waiting the advance of the pursuers, whose presence 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 western side, and, plunging into the waters of the Licking, swim across the stream andslake 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 “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 oftheir 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 subsequent 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 Louisville 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 measurement 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 inThe Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky;[119]two notices of early road-making in that region are found in General Butler’sJournal:

“Sunday, Oct. 30th. This morning several 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.”[120]

“Sunday, Nov. 20th. We were this day informed by people from the station that the inhabitants of the Lexington and other settlements had blazed a road to the Big Bone Lick, agreeable to the proposition of Capt. Johnston of October 30th, approved and recommended by Gen. C. and myself.”[121]

Turning from a particular region, where, because of the close proximity of licks and feeding-grounds, the buffalo 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 cameinto 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 exhaust 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 theirhabitat 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 moving 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 trailswhich marked the former lines of migration 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 appreciably 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 impossible 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 impossiblefor 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 Musselshell 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 fearlessness 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 feasible road possible through the region it traverses.”[125]This was because their weight demanded the most stable courses and they were thus very sure of avoidinglow grounds, preferring even difficult climbs to passage-ways through soft ground; we have made one quotation, from Dr. Walker’sJournal, which notes that one “Buffaloe 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 southwestern 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 migration routes and there is little doubt that the route through New York was a buffalo thoroughfare. There were lesser thoroughfares which, though latterly known as Indian trails, were undoubtedly paths ofthe 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 Alleghanies; 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 Chesapeake and Ohio railway.[127]

In the Central West the greater migratory 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 Muskingum 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 prolongation, 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 westward 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 thoroughfares 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 confederacies of the South—and that warfarekept 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 Cumberland, 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 the Shawanese into the Alleghanies were also undoubtedly made over buffalo routes across the Great Kanawha and Monongahela valleys. 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.

Thus buffalo traces must have influenced, to some extent, at least, the distribution 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 Kentucky, 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 contended in the immemorial conflict for possession 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, possibly, 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 railways to the Pacific. That sagacious animal undoubtedly “blazed”—with his hoofson 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 discovered 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 Baltimore 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 interesting of specific examples of a railway following 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 tothe Ohio, an explorer asked an old resident to describe its course. “From Parkersburg,” 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, especially those of the Ohio basin and the lakestreams 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 Rivière aux Bœufs in honor of these monarchs of the forests; others again between the Cuyahoga and the Muskingum, the Scioto and Sandusky, the Wabash and Maumee, 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.

[1]Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, p. 601.

[2]Id., p. 17, art. 7.

[3]Id., p. 645.

[4]Report of the Geological Survey of Ohio, vol. vii., part ii., p. 37.

[5]Bulletin, 1891.

[6]Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, p. 525.

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

[8]General Butler’sJournal, “The Olden Time,” vol. ii., pp. 455-456.

[9]Cf. Gist’s, Dr. Walker’s, Boone’s, Washington’s, Post’s, Zeisberger’s, Croghan’s, Heckewelder’s, journeys into the West as related in theirJournalsor letters; note the routes of such armies as those led by Bouquet and McIntosh 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 frequently 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’sJournal, “History of Western Pennsylvania,” appendix, pp. 389-391.

[10]Life and Times of Ephraim Cutler, p. 21.

[11]Hildreth’sPioneer History, p. 159.

[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.

[13]MacLean’sMound Builders, p. 145.

[14]Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, p. 52.

[15]Id., pp. 54-55.

[16]Id., p. 54.

[17]Id., p. 56.

[18]Id., p. 58.

[19]Id., p. 58.

[20]Id., p. 59.

[21]Id., p. 60.

[22]Id., p. 62.

[23]Id., p. 184.

[24]Id., p. 192.

[25]Id., pp. 198-215.

[26]Id., p. 449.

[27]Id., p. 451.

[28]Id., p. 452.

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