Archer Butler Hulbert

“ Rome, New York; Watertown, Pennsylvania; Akron, Ohio; Fort Wayne, Indiana remember vividly the pioneer day of the portages when barrels of salt and flour, every known implement of iron, mill stones, jugs and barrels of liquor, household goods, seeds, and saddles composed the heterogeneous loads that were dragged or rolled or hauled or “packed” over the portages of the West. Strenuous individuals have been known to roll a whiskey barrel halfway across a twenty-mile portage. ”

“ The portage paths from the Great Lakes, or streams entering them, to the tributaries of the Mississippi River were of great importance during the era when that river was the goal of explorers, conquerors and pioneers. So numerous were they, it is only possible to describe the most important briefly in this catalogue. The greater are worthy, each, of an exhaustive monograph, and even those of least prominence were of importance far beyond our ability to understand in these days. ”

“ Nowhere in the North can the heroism of the Catholic missionaries be more plainly read today in any material objects than in the deep-worn, half-forgotten portage paths which lay along their routes. The nobility of their ambitions, compared with those of explorers, traders, and military and civil officials, has ever been conspicuous, but the full measure of their self-sacrifice cannot be realized until we know better the intense physical suffering they here endured. ”

“ With the settling of the country and a new century came a new age of road-building. Travel until now had been on north and south routes—on portage paths, which usually ran north and south between the heads of rivers which flowed north or south, on routes of the buffalo, which the herds had laid on north and south lines during their annual migrations, and on Indian trails which had been worn deep by the nations of the north and those of the south during their immemorial conflicts. ”

“ The little portage pathways which connected the heads of our rivers and lakes or offered the voyageur a thoroughfare around the cataracts and rapids of our rivers were, as the subtitle of this volume suggests, the “Keys of the Continent” a century or so ago. The forts, chapels, trading stations, treaty houses, council fires, boundary stones, camp grounds, and villages located at these strategic points all prove this. The study of these routes brings one at once face to face with old-time problems from a point of view almost never otherwise gained. ”

“ Ten acres of trees blown down across the path had to be left there. A wet place half a mile wide could not be rooted up. Rocks, dead logs, gorges, and precipices had to be stumbled over. The snow, hiding pitfalls and stones, betrayed many a foot into a wrench and a bruise. Those who carried the boats—and no doubt all carried in turn—suffered still more, for bateaux and carriers often fell together pell-mell down a slope into the snow. ‘The Terrible Carrying-place’—that was the soldiers’ name for it. ”

“ This map must ever be of entrancing interest to the student who views it knowingly. The strategic nature of this little plot of ground was recognized, a century or so ago, by a continent—indeed by a world. In the Old French War there was not, perhaps, so important a spot on the continent as this, the path from the Hudson to Lake George alone excepted. And when it is recalled that the Oneida portage led to the West—to the Lakes and the Ohio Basin—the Oneida path, taken throughout the years, can but be considered of preëminent importance, commercially. ”

“ From thence to the Little Falls in the Mohawk River, at sixty five miles distance, the battoes are set against a rapid stream; which too, in dry seasons, is so shallow, that the men are frequently obliged to turn out, and draw their craft over the rifts with inconceivable labour. At the Little Falls, the portage exceeds not a mile: the ground being marshy will admit of no wheel-carriage, and therefore the Germans who reside here, transport the battoes in sleds, which they keep for that purpose. The same conveyance is used at the Great Carrying-Place, sixty miles beyond the Little Falls ”

“ The reason is evident: within a generation there will not be left in our land a single son of one of the genuine pioneers of, for instance, New York or Ohio. Even those of the second generation remember with really little distinctness and accuracy the days of which their fathers told; often their stories are entirely unreliable. ”

“ We can almost see them hurrying with uplifted eyes over these little paths, tortured by the luring suggestions of the glimmering waterways in the distance. Whether it is that bravest of brave men, La Salle, crossing from Lake Erie to the Allegheny, or Mar [Pg 22] quette striding over the little path to the stream which should carry him to the Mississippi, or Céloron bearing the leaden plates which were to claim the Ohio for France up the difficult path from Lake Erie to Lake Chautauqua, there is no moment in these heroes’ lives more interesting than this. ”

“ Indeed I doubt if anywhere else in the world is an equal extent of territory so completely watered by navigable streams, or whether in any other country canoe navigation was ever brought to such a pitch of perfection or so exclusively relied upon for locomotion. The principal streams of the Province lead together curiously in pairs, the country is almost invariably easy to travel between their sources, and a route may be found in almost any desired direction.... ”

“ Between the heads of the principal rivers were portage paths. Some of these are but a mile or two long—others longer. Some of these portages are still in use and uninfluenced by civilization. A good type is that between Nictor Lake and Nepisiguit Lake, which I have recently seen. The path is but wide enough to allow a man and canoe to pass. Where it is crossed by newly fallen trees the first passer either cuts them out, steps over them, or goes round, as may be easiest, and his example is followed by the next. ”

“ Lawrence or the Great Lakes, or southward to the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico. On the high ground between the heads of these water-courses our path lies.
For the greater portion of our journey we shall find neither road nor pathway; here we shall climb and follow long, ragged mountain crests, well nigh inaccessible, in some spots never trod by human foot save the wandering hunter’s; there we shall drop down to a lower level and find that on our watershed run roads, canals, and railways. ”

“ Passing westward from Niagara the first explorers of the West found the shortest route from the lakes to the Ohio was by a portage from Chautauqua Creek to Chautauqua Lake and from thence down the Conewango to the Allegheny River. Whether or not this was the most practicable route it was, at first, of major importance. The shortest route was all too long for men on missions such as that of Céloron bearing his leaden plates to the Ohio Valley in 1749. ”

“ Here the ground around either end of the path had [Pg 42] been cleared and trodden hard by a thousand campers, and if wood was scarce in the immediate locality there was abundance at no great distance. No one familiar with camping need be told the advantages, natural and artificial, to be found on an old camping ground.
But here it should be noted that the shortest portage between any two bodies of water was rather an arbitrary line, at least theoretically so. It was chosen as a good site, not for staying, but for passing. Usually it traversed some sort of watershed, more or less distinct ”

“ The country about Rome is very level, the declension in any direction being slight; water from one field is said to flow into the Gulf of the St. Lawrence and into New York Bay. The explorer on the Oneida portage will find it difficult to identify the historic sites. The Erie canals have completely drained the country, and the last course is, in part, in the very bed of Wood Creek—the stream to which the portage from the Mohawk led. ”

“ It is fair to believe that we cannot realize how precious every relic and every accurate piece of information—every monument and tablet—will seem when at last the days of Braddock and Johnson, Washington and Clark and Wayne are lost in three hundred years of change and evolution. ”

“ In concluding this review of portage paths the author finds a final opportunity to offer a plea for the wide study of historic sites and for placing there monuments of some kind for the purposes of identification before it be all too late.
We cannot realize in the slightest degree the great interest that will be felt in our historical beginnings one, two, and three centuries from now, as our nation grows richer and hundreds give themselves up to the study of the past where ten can do so today. ”

“ In the cases of such important works as the Erie Canal and the Ohio Canal the portages between the Mohawk and Wood Creek in New York and between the Cuyahoga and Tuscarawas in Ohio were of vital importance. In many instances, at the points where the old portages mark the spots of least elevation, two canals are found converging from three or four valleys.
It is quite impossible for us to realize the importance attached to the portage routes in days when steam navigation and locomotion were not dreamed of. ”

“ Lawrence River, or the great Lakes there is not another Communication by which an Army can be brought Sufficient to make any Conquest.”
The forts which guarded this historic route have been mentioned, and it is possible here only to hint of the remarkable story of the ebb and flow of the war tides which have made the “Grand Pass” perhaps the most alluring field of study in America. Under the specific title “Saratoga and the Northern War-path” an entertaining writer has sketched the place in history occupied by this water thoroughfare and its vital land connections. ”

“ Engineering art is now defying nature everywhere, and daring feats of bridge-building are daily accomplished; but the old routes and passes still remain the most practicable, and in the long run pay best. In spite of the fact that tunnels can go wherever money dictates, and bridges can be swung across the most baffling chasms, at the same time the fiercest struggles for rights of way (outside the cities) are being waged today for the portage paths first trod by the Indian. ”

“ It was while wintering on the Chicago portage that Marquette wrote memoirs of his voyages.
In some instances, too, peculiar relics of the old life in the heyday of the canoe have come down to us. The end of the portage path, besides being a camping spot, was the provisioning place. Here food was to be made or to be secured and properly seasoned and packed. At the old French portages stone ovens were erected, in which quantities of bread might be baked before starting on a journey. ”

“ There may be no better way to introduce the subject of the famous old portages of America, than to ask the reader to walk, in fancy, along what may be called a “Backbone of America”—that watershed which runs from the North Atlantic seaboard to the valley of the Mississippi River. ”

“ The story of Céloron’s climb up from Lake Erie to Lake Chautauqua, Hamilton’s struggle through the beaver dams and shoals of Petite Rivière on the Maumee-Wabash portage route, Arnold’s desperate invasion of Canada over “The Terrible Carrying Place” on the Kennebec-Chaudière route, and the history of the difficulties of the Oneida portage at Rome, New York, present to us pictures of the portages of America that can never fade from our eyes. ”

“ The location of Fort Laurens—the first American fort built west of the Ohio River—is pretty definitely [Pg 190] known. It is fair to say that in a generation or two the spots, if left unmarked, will never be located correctly. A small stone, with a plain legend, costing a mere trifle, would insure the future against such a misfortune.
The subject of portage paths naturally suggests the matter of locating historic sites and marking them for the reason that so many such points were on these portages. ”

“ Over these paths pushed the first explorers, the men who, first of Europeans, saw the Ohio and Mississippi. Possessing a better knowledge of their routes and their experiences while voyaging in an unknown land, we realize better the impetuosity of their ambition and the meaning of their discoveries to them. ”

“ When Céloron journeyed from Quebec to the Ohio Valley with his leaden plates, he paused at one of the portages to allow his Indian allies to jollify with certain comrades whom they met here. [15] There are cases where such meetings resulted more seriously than mere drunken sprees. [16]
The meeting-place was also the famous camping ground. To reach the portage path the tired paddler bent every energy as the red sun lay on the horizon. ”

“ On the third day of June, after four Canoes had left us to go and join their families, we made a portage which occupied an entire day spent now in climbing mountains and now in piercing forests. Here we had much difficulty in making our way, for we were all laden as heavily as possible—one carrying the Canoe, another the provisions, and a third what we needed in our commercial transactions. I carried my Chapel and my little store of provisions; there was no one who was not laden and sweating from every pore. ”

“ During the Revolutionary War the name of Fort Stanwix was changed to Fort Schuyler; but that name, with all its heritage of nobility and patriotism, was not retained, and “Fort” Schuyler has been dropped to make room for “Fort” Stanwix, which is exceedingly contradictory. When the deluge of classical names passed over central New York—Utica, Manlius, Troy, Syracuse, Rochester, etc.—that of Rome was deposited here.
A square block in the center of Rome, higher than the surrounding land, is the site of Forts Stanwix and Schuyler. ”