Historic Highways of America/Volume 2/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
EARLY THOROUGHFARES WESTWARD
THE first great Indian thoroughfares westward offered connection from tide-water to the streams and valleys of the Mississippi basin. In part they were portage paths, the destination of each being really on a lake or river of the West. All were probably used over some portion of their extent as actual portages with the exception of the last. All marked out the paths of least resistance across the first divide as is significantly shown by the adoption of these routes by the greatest of our modern railway systems. There is no trunk railway across the Appalachian system today which is not in general alignment with one of these prehistoric thoroughfares. The route and prospective destinations of these cannot be presented better or more quickly to the eye than by means of simple charts:
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Early Thoroughfares Westward, No. 5.
While lacking the definiteness usual in a preliminary presentation, there is something gained in instant prospective offered by the foregoing tables. Consider them briefly in the order given.
THE OLD CONNECTICUT PATH
The Old Connecticut Path ran from Boston and Cambridge through Marlborough, Grafton, Oxford, Springfield, to Albany, the capital of New York. A portion of the course was covered by the historic Bay Path at Wayland, Massachusetts, and ran through Worcester and rejoined the Old Connecticut Path, east of Springfield. A parallel path was known as the New Connecticut Path which started at Cambridge and ran through Worcester to Albany.
The Bay Path is best known.[1] In Holland's novel bearing that title is a description which should be preserved:
"It was marked by trees a portion of the distance and by slight clearings of brush and thicket for the remainder. No stream was bridged, no hill was graded, and no marsh drained. The path led through woods which bore the marks of the centuries, over barren hills that had been licked by the Indian's hounds of fire, and along the banks of streams that the seine had never dragged. . . . A powerful interest was attached to the Bay Path. It was the channel through which laws were communicated, through which flowed news from distant friends, and through which came long, loving letters and messages. . . . That rough thread of soil, chopped by the blades of a hundred streams, was a bond that radiated at each terminus into a thousand fibres of love and interest, and hope and memory. Every rod had been prayed over, by friends on the journey and friends at home."[2]
Alice Morse Earle also writes entertainingly of the Bay Path:
"Born in a home almost by the wayside of the old Bay Path, I feel deeply the inexplicable charm which attaches itself to these old paths or trails. I have ridden hundreds of miles on these various Indian paths and I ever love to trace the roadway where it is now the broad travelled road, and where it turns aside in an overgrown and narrow lane which is today almost as neglected and wild as the old path. There still seems to cling to it something of the human interest ever found in a foot-path across a pasture, or up a wooded hill, full of charm, of suggestion, of sentiment."[3]
The Old Connecticut Path was centuries old, no doubt, when it was established as a permanent thoroughfare by the General Court which occurred after the establishment of the Plymouth Path (between the capitals of the two colonies) in 1639.
IROQUOIS TRAIL
The great Iroquois Trail ran from the Hudson to Niagara through the territory of the Six Nations. It marked out what has been since time prehistoric, and is now, one of the great thoroughfares of America. Following the Mohawk river valley it found, near Fort Stanwix (Rome, New York), the great watershed between the heads of the lake rivers and those flowing southward into Susquehanna and Allegheny. This watershed was followed westward two hundred miles to Fort Sclosser (as Guy Johnson's map gives it) on Niagara river just south of the falls, making the Iroquois trail one of the longest independent thoroughfares on the continent.
Clearing the valley of the Mohawk, the Iroquois trail entered the "Long House," as the territory of the Six Nations was familiarly known in pre-Revolutionary days. It ran first through Oneida, the capital of the country of the Oneidas, situated just south of the lake bearing that name. Passing along the watershed, Onondaga (near Syracuse, New York), the capital of the Onondagas, was the next village of importance. This was the great meeting-place of the Six Nations where, through many years, the orator's appeal so often decided for peace or war. From Onondaga the great trail turned southward to keep clear of the valley of the Seneca until that river was crossed in the country of the Cayugas, a little west of their capital, Cayuga (near Auburn, New York). Keeping north of Seneca and Cayuga lakes, the trail bore straight west into the country of the famed Senecas who kept well the western door of the "Long House," and then turned slightly north to the watershed between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario which it pursued to the Niagara river. The main villages passed in the Seneca country were Canadasegy (Canandaigua, New York), Canadaragey (near Batavia), Chenufsio and Canawagus.[4]
Some of the trails of the Seneca country have been traced by Mr. George H. Harris, who also describes the great Iroquois trail and has interesting words on Indian trails in general:
"While the march of civilization had advanced beyond the Genesee to the north and west, the hunting-grounds of the Senecas were still in their primitive state, and the cycle of a century is not yet complete [1884] since the white man came into actual possession of the land and became acquainted with its topographical features. To the pale-faced adventurer of the seventeenth century to whom all this vast territory was an unexplored blank, viewing the land from his birchen canoe on Lake Ontario, the bays, rivers and larger creeks presented the only feasible routes by which it could be entered and traversed, yet, once within its borders, the hardy explorer found the country marked by an intricate net-work of foot paths which spread in every direction. These dark wood lanes unknown to civilized man, their soil heretofore pressed only by the feet of Indians and wild beasts, will ever be known in history as the 'trails of the Genesee.' They were the highways and byways of the native inhabitants, the channels of communication between nations, tribes and scattering towns, in which there was a never-ceasing ebb and flow of humanity.
"The origin of these trails and the selection of the routes pursued were natural results of the every-day necessities and inclinations of the nomadic race first inhabiting the land, and time had gradually fashioned the varying interests of successive generations into a crude system of general thoroughfares to which all minor routes led. To find the beginning and end of these grand trails one might traverse the continent in a fruitless search, for, like the broader roads of the present population, many of which follow the old trail courses, the beaten paths extended from ocean to ocean, from the southern point of Patagonia to the country of the Eskimos, where they were lost in the ever-shifting mantle of snow covering the land of ice—and the trails of the Genesee were but a local division of the mighty complication.
"In general appearance these roads did not differ in any particular from the ordinary woods or meadow paths of the present day. They were narrow and winding, but usually connected the objective points by as direct a course as natural obstacles would permit. In the general course of a trail three points were carefully considered—first, seclusion; second, directness; and third, a dry path. The trail beaten was seldom over fifteen inches wide, passing to the right or left of trees or other obstacles, around swamps and occasionally over the apex of elevations, though it generally ran a little one side of the extreme top, especially in exposed situations. Avoiding open places save in the immediate neighborhood of towns and camps, it was universally shaded by forest trees. A somber silence, now and then interrupted by the notes of birds or the howling of beasts, reigned along these paths. Fallen trees and logs were never removed, the trail was either continued over or took a turn around them. The Indians built no bridges, small streams were forded or crossed on logs, while rivers and lakes were ferried on rafts or in canoes.
"The main trail of the Iroquois extended from Hudson, on the Hudson river below Albany, westwardly to Buffalo, crossing the Genesee at Cannawaugus—now Avon. From Canandaigua lake a branch ran northwest to the head of Irondequoit bay, then to the Genesee falls, and along the lake ridge to the Niagara river at Lewiston. This was the grand line of communication between the Five Nations, and the ultimate destination of every other trail in the present state of New York. Along its silent course the swiftest runners of the Iroquois bore their messages of peace or war with a speed and physical endurance incredible. . . .
"Their wandering, hunter life and habit of intent observation rendered the Iroquois familiar with every foot of land in their territory, enabling them to select the choicest locations for abode. Towns were frequently moved from place to place, new trails worn and old ones abandoned to stray hunters and wild animals. Trails leading to or along the edge of water were usually permanent. Hardly a stream but bore its border line of trail upon either bank. From the shore of Lake Ontario to the headwaters of the Genesee, trails followed every curve of the river as closely as natural obstacles would permit, and branches led up the sides of tributary creeks.
"Trails converged on the Genesee in the vicinity of Rochester at two places, the ridge north of lower falls, and the rapids some eighty rods below the mouth of Red creek. The passage of the river north of the lower falls was effected in canoes or on rafts; in the absence of either or both, the aboriginal traveller plunged into the water and stemmed the strong current with his brawny arm. Before the white man obstructed its channel with dams the Genesee was one continuous rapid from Red creek to the south line of the present Erie canal aqueduct. An Indian ford existed at a shallow place near the immediate line of the present race-dam, between the jail and the weigh-lock, but was never in such general use as the upper ford below Red creek where the river could be more easily crossed by footmen.
"The great trail coming west from Canandaigua on the present route of the Pittsford road divided a few rods east of Allen's creek. The main trail turned to the north over a low ridge, across the present [1884] farm of the venerable Charles M. Barnes and down a gully to Allen's creek. The ford was exactly at the arch through which the waters now pass under the great embankment of the New York Central railroad. Following the west bank to a point where the creek turned directly to the right, the trail left the stream and curving gradually to the west along the base of a high bluff ran up a narrow gully to the table-land. Taking a northwest course from this point it passed the brick residence of D. McCarthy, crossed a trail running to the fishing resort on Irondequoit creek and at the distance of one hundred rods again curved to the west along a short slope, striking the line of the present road on the farm of Judge Edmund Kelley. In the side of this slope were numerous springs near which the Indians frequently camped. . . . From these springs a trail ran directly north half a mile and turned east down the hillside to the famous Indian landing on Irondequoit creek. Along this road, between the springs and the landing, was located the famed Tyron's Town, of Gerundegut, founded by Judge John Tyron about 1798. From Tyron's Town the main trail continued its northwest course to the Thomas road, some rods north of University avenue [Rochester]. . . . A trail came from Caledonia Springs east by way of Mumford, Scottsville, Chili and Gates to Red creek ford in South Rochester. This was the general thoroughfare from the Indian towns near the Canaseraga creek to the lower Genesee and Lake Ontario. It was down this trail that Butler's rangers fled, after the massacre of Boyd and Parker at Little Beard's Town in 1779, on their way to the mouth of the river."[5]
It is interesting to notice that the most famous ford of the Genesee was at the mouth of a creek and bore the name "Red Creek ford."
THE KITTANNING PATH
One of the main thoroughfares westward was a trail leading from Philadelphia up the Susquehanna and Juniata and over the mountains at Kittanning gorge—which takes its name from the destination of the road through it, Kittanning, on the Allegheny.
The name is a corruption of "Kit-hanne," signifying "the main stream." Though the name referred originally to the Allegheny river as a whole, it soon came to be applied to the Indian villages that covered both banks of the river at the spot where the great boundary line between the northern colonies and the Six Nations (established at Fort Stanwix—Rome, New York—November 5, 1768) struck the Allegheny river. Kittanning, therefore, came at once into prominence as the most northernly village in the territory of the colonies, and the worn path thither came at once into a position of utmost importance.
Writes one who has studied the route of this old thoroughfare:
"Aughwick Valley is in the extreme southern part of Huntingdon county (Pennsylvania), and, if not a regular continuation of the Tuscarora Valley, it is at least one of the chain of valleys through whose entire length ran the celebrated Indian path from Kittanning to Philadelphia,—the great western highway for footmen and packhorses.
"This path, traces of which can yet (1856) be plainly seen in various places, and especially in the wilds of the mountains, must have been a famous road in its day. It commenced at Kittanning on the Allegheny River, and crossed the Alleghany Mountains in a southeastern direction, the descent on the eastern slope being through a gorge, the mouth of which is five or six miles west of Hollidaysburg, at what is well known as Kittanning Point. From this it diverged in a southern direction until it led to the flat immediately back of Hollidaysburg, from thence east, wound around the gorge back of the Presbyterian graveyard, and led into Frank's Old Town. From thence it went through what is now called Scotch Valley, Canoe Valley, and struck the river at Water street. From thence it led to Alexandria, crossed the river, and went into Hartsog Valley; from thence to Woodcock Valley, across the Broadtop Mountain, into Aughwick; from thence into the Tuscarora Valley, and from thence into Sherman's Valley, by Sterritt's Gap.
"At Kittanning Point, this path, although it is seldom that the foot of any one but an occasional hunter or fisher threads it, is still the same path it was when the last dusky warrior who visited the Juniata Valley turned his face to the west, and traversed it for the last time. True, it is filled up with weeds in summer-time, but the indentations made by the feet of thousands upon thousands of warriors and packhorses which travelled it for an unknown number of years are still plainly visible. We have gone up the Kittanning gorge two or three miles, repeatedly, and looked upon the ruins of old huts, and the road, which evidently never received the impression of a wagon-wheel, and were forcibly struck with the idea that it must once have been traversed, without knowing at the time that it was the famous Kittanning trail. In some places, where the ground was marshy, close to the run, the path is at least twelve inches deep, and the very stones along the road bear the marks of the iron-shod horses of the Indian traders. . . . The path can be traced in various other places, but nowhere so plain as in the Kittanning gorge. This is owing to the fact that one or two other paths led into it, and no improvement has been made in the gorge east of "Hart's Sleeping Place," along the line of the path."[6]
A branch of this great path through central Pennsylvania ran by way of Rea's Town[7] (Raystown) to the Forks of the Youghiogheny and on to the site of Fort Duquesne. This branch became the historic route through this region, but the Kittanning path was probably the important Indian thoroughfare. The upper Allegheny contained a far heavier Indian population than the lower Allegheny; Céloron found no Indian village at the junction of the Monongahela and Allegheny.
The Iroquois Trail was, in the main, a war trail rather than a trading path. On the other hand, the Kittanning path was preëminently a traders' route.[8] It was over the Kittanning Path and its branches that Post came in 1758 with "a large white belt, with the figure of a man at each end, and streaks of black representing the road from the Ohio to Philadelphia."[9]
NEMACOLIN'S PATH
One of the most important Indian paths in America, if indeed it was not the most important, in so far as Europeans were concerned, ran from the Potomac valley to the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela. It was early known as Nemacolin's Path, from a Delaware Indian chieftain.
Nemacolin's Path, which was trod by many armies and might well be called the "bloody thoroughfare," was originally a trade route over which the Indians of the "Ohio country" were reached. When the first Ohio Company was formed in 1749 and a grant of land between the Monongahela and Kanawha was received from the king, the Virginian capitalists at the head of the company turned at once to this path through the lower Alleghanies as their route of approach. Their farthest outpost was erected at the mouth of Wills Creek on the Potomac—the point at which Nemacolin's Path left the Potomac. They there employed Captain Michael Cresap to blaze the course of the trail that their traders might not miss the course. Then drew on apace the remarkable series of events which mark this mountain thoroughfare as the most historic, perhaps, on this continent. The story of this trail and its campaigns will form the subject of several volumes of the present series; our purpose, here, is achieved by recognizing the route and properly classifying it.
THE VIRGINIA WARRIORS' PATH
As though hollowed by the Creator's hand for the sole purpose of opening a way from the seaboard to the interior of the continent, the trough between the Blue Ridge and Cumberland ranges was early found to lead surely but circuitously westward.
This trough between the mountain ranges was the course of the great path from Virginia to Kentucky and Illinois which played so great a part in the history of the Central West.
Two great branches from the Warriors' Path ran into what is now Tennessee and West Virginia. The main trail held steadily onward to Cumberland Gap. Passing this point it ran onward through Crab Orchard, Kentucky, to the "Falls" of the Ohio at Louisville. The great route onward to St. Louis may be said to have been this same roadway making for the Mississippi.
"Warriors' Path" was the early name of this route, as, for a distance at least near Cumberland Gap, the trail was a link in the great war path from the north to the south. The old "War Trail of Nations"[10] which descended the Great Kanawha and came into the New River valley was a branch trail. At a later date Daniel Boone heroically opened a road over this route to Kentucky which took the appropriate title of "Wilderness Road." Of this Wilderness Road, which played a mighty part in the opening of the first settlement in the West, Kentucky, a particular study will be made in an independent monograph.
Dr. Walker, from whose Journal extracts were made while discussing buffalo trails,[11] made his journey of exploration to Kentucky in part over the Virginia Warriors' Path. This path was also a famous traders' path by which packhorses went and came from all parts of the great expanse between the Tennessee, Cumberland, and Illinois rivers.
Thus, briefly, may be outlined the more important Indian thoroughfares which led from the seaboard into the central interior of the continent. It is impossible to more than suggest here the great part these trails and the roads that were built over them played in the development of the land. They were the routes of the explorers of the West. Walker, Gist, Boone, Croghan, Clark, Washington, owed what they knew of the interior of the continent to these trails of the Indian. The missionaries knew them all; Post, Heckewelder, Zeisberger, Jones, wore out their lives plodding over them even as did the brave "Black Robes" on the "roads of iron" in the country of the lakes to the north.
"Whither is the paleface going?" asked an old Seneca chieftain of Zeisberger.
"To the Allegheny river," he replied.
"Why does the paleface travel such unknown roads? This is no road for white people, and no white man has come this trail before."
"Seneca," said Zeisberger, sternly, "the business I am on is different from that of other white men, and the roads I travel are different, too. I am come to bring the Indians great and good words." And nothing bears out more strongly the brave hero's words than the rough map left us of the "roads of iron" beyond the Ohio.[12]
The conquest of the continent was made over these Indian thoroughfares which offered access to it. Army after army marched over the old Iroquois trail throughout the old French and Revolutionary wars. Washington led the first army into the West over Nemacolin's Path, built the first English fort erected in the West beside it, and there fought the first battle of the old French war. Braddock followed Washington's trail, building his great road from Fort Cumberland to within seven miles of the Ohio river—a deed which should have brought him more credit than his defeat brought him disgrace. Forbes, truly a "Head of Iron," plowed his way over the Ohio branch of the Kittanning trail, building his road as he went, until the flag of his king floated from the remnants of dismantled Fort Duquesne. From Fort Watanga Daniel Boone opened his "Wilderness Road" along the Warriors' Path to Kentucky, over which soon marched the best and bravest army that ever went west—the army of Virginian and Carolinian pioneers which dyed redder a land called "dark and bloody" since even the Indians knew it; and by them the feeble American republic laid its hands on the Mississippi river and held it. Bouquet, a Swiss as wily as any Indian, followed Forbes's rough track in the desperate days of Pontiac's rebellion and extended that road onward into Ohio in the crowning victory he achieved in 1764. Andrew Lewis, who put an end to Dunmore's war and secured the country south of the Ohio to Virginia by his victory at the mouth of the Great Kanawha in 1774, led his men over the "War Trail of Nations" from Virginia.
And after war came the deluge—of pioneers! If these old Indian routes had never been made famous in war they would be forever famous for the part they played in a later time of peace. The hosts of pioneers crowded onward the way the explorers and the armies had gone. They wore a great, deep road through the Mohawk valley and the land of the Iroquois; they jostled each other in Cumberland Gap; millions poured through the Alleghanies by Great Meadows and Braddock's Bloody Ford, to get to the Ohio river. These three became the great routes of the pioneer period, as they have more recently become the course of three great trunk railway lines.
A great work for the local historian may be found here. Each foot of the earliest Indian thoroughfares should be traced and mapped, together with the springs, licks, fords, ferries, and Indian village sites which may be found beside them. There is no newer, fresher, more important field for outdoor study.
- ↑ For map of Bay Path, together with an article on its route, see "Interpretation of Woodward's and Saffery's Map of 1642, or the earliest Bay Path," New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. lv., p. 155.
- ↑ Holland's Bay-Path, p. 70.
- ↑ Earle's Stage Coach and Tavern Days, p. 225.
- ↑ Following Guy Johnson's map "of the Country of the VI. Nations, 1771," see O'Callaghan's Documentary History of New York, vol. iv., p. 1090.
- ↑ Harris's Aboriginal Occupation of the Lower Genesee Country, pp. 36–40; for additional mention of local trails near Rochester, see id., pp. 40–47.
- ↑ Jones's Juniata Valley, pp. 134–136.
- ↑ See "A Map of Part of the Province of Pennsylvania west of the Susquehannah," in Frontier Forts of Pennsylvania, vol. ii., p. 80.
- ↑ Post's Journal, entry of Nov. 9, 1758.
- ↑ Id., entry of Nov. 24, 1758.
- ↑ Catalogue of Prehistoric Works East of the Rocky Mountains, p. 223.
- ↑ Historic Highways of America, vol. i., part ii.
- ↑ Heckewelder's "Map of Northeastern Ohio, 1796."