Archer Butler Hulbert

“ 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 reputation gives figures from which it can be shown that four thousand men, each transporting 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ For centuries this path had been a famed thoroughfare, 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 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 important pioneer routes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 and slake nature's demand for this necessary product, which here the Great Provider for all animal life had laid up in unlimited quantity. ”

“ The great Indian trails, covering the land as with a network, and leading by the straightest practicable courses to all strategic points, became of momentous importance 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. ”

“ 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 lake 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. ”

“ 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 tumble were taken in a matter-of-fact way and seemed scarcely to retard the progress of the herd. ”

“ 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 expression 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 Platte. The watersheds have been the highways and highestways of the world's travel. The farther back we go in our history, the more conclusive does the evidence become that the first ways were the highestways. ”

“ But not only in the mountain passes have our tripods placed their stern stamp of approval 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 follow the alignment of a pioneer road which was laid out on an Indian trail. ”

“ The habitat of the buffalo included feeding-grounds, stamping-grounds, wallows and licks. Their feeding-grounds embraced the meadow valleys where the choicest grazing was to be found. [1] 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. ”

“ It is very wonderful that the buffalo's instinct should have found the very best courses across a continent upon whose thousand 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 aërial navigation is solved, human intercourse will move largely on paths first marked by the buffalo. ”

“ This series of monographs will treat of the history of America as portrayed in the evolution of its highways of war and immigration and commerce. The more important highways, both land and water, will be specifically treated with reference to the national needs which they temporarily or [Pg 32] 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ And so, throughout historic times, one rule has held true in the region now under [Pg 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 infrequently 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. ”

“ 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 defined. 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 connected. ”

“ A rare instance of this is the course of the Baltimore and Ohio railway between Grafton and Parkersburg 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. ”

“ 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 large proportion of remains in Kentucky 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 profusely on the smaller streams than on larger ones. ”

“ 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 as highways of travel. ”

“ 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 prehistoric 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is surely significant that a modern road should pass so near the very track which evidently was a highway in prehistoric times. [64]
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. ”

“ 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. 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. ”