Archer Butler Hulbert

“ 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. ”

“ The most westernly portage from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi was of the greatest importance in the earliest years of white man's exploration. The French were the first explorers, and they were at first barred from Lakes Ontario and Erie—which offered the shortest courses to the Mississippi, via the Ohio—by the ferocious Iroquois; whose hostility Champlain had quickly incurred, toward himself and his people. Driven around, as has been shown, [33] by way of the Ottawa to Georgian Bay, the longest route to the Mississippi became one of the shortest. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The birch canoe was the universal vehicle of locomotion to the New Brunswick Indian; it was to him what the pony is to the Indian of the West.
"The labour of crossing the portages was always severe, but the Indians took, and take, it philosophically, as they do everything that cannot be helped. While canoe travel in good weather, on full and easy rivers, is altogether charming, it becomes otherwise when low water, long portages and bad weather prevail. ”

“ Yet up these rough steeps the missionaries of the Cross, soldiers, and traders forced their way, slipping, sliding, seizing now and again at any object which would offer assistance. Many of these climbs would tax a person free of baggage in this day of cleared fields and hills; fancy the toil of the old-time voyageurs weighed down by canoes, provisions, and baggage, assailed by the clouds of insects which greeted a traveler in the old forests, and perhaps enduring fears of unseen enemies and unknown dangers. ”

“ 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, Washing- and Clark and Wayne are lost in three hundred years of change and evolution. Therefore we cannot fully realize the precious duty that falls upon the present generation—and upon us particularly. ”

“ Old residents at such points as 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 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. The nearest point to Wood Creek is distant about one mile from Rome; by the old route it was crossed again two miles further west. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ After outlining the route of the road, the Commissioners summed up matters as follows: ". . it will lay about twenty-four and a half miles in Maryland, seventy-five and a half in Pennsylvania, and twelve miles in Virginia; . . this route . . has a capacity at least equal to any other in extending advantages of a highway; and at the same time establishes the shortest portage between the points already navigated, and on the way accommodates other and nearer points to which navigation may be extended, and still shorten the portage. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The conditions here make it almost possible to say, "All roads lead to Rome, New York." From one and the same point of observation it is possible to see the junction of the Erie and Black River Canals, the portage path from the Mohawk to Wood Creek, the New York Central Railway, and the terminus of the Utica and Mohawk Valley Electric Railway. Two canals, a highway, a railway, and an electric line converging within an air-rifle shot would not be found in a town of only a few thousand inhabitants were it not for some extraordinary geographical reason. ”

“ No doubt, an Indian in selecting his route of travel to a given point, where more than one offered, would average up, as a white man would do, the advantages and drawbacks of each for that particular season, taking account of the length of the routes, amount of falls and portaging, the height of the water, etc., and his decision would be a resultant of all the conditions and would be different in different seasons. ”

“ From Albany it was the new settlement on the Mohawk beyond the pines. . .
"From Schenectady the western trail ran up the Mohawk to what is now the city of Rome, where there was another carry of a mile in length, to the Wood Creek which flows into Oneida Lake. This carrying place, afterward the site of Fort Stanwix, was called by the Indian Da-ya-hoo-wa-quat (Carrying-place) . From it the old trail ran through the Oneida Lake, and down the Oswego River to Lake Ontario. At the mouth of the Oswego River, on Lake Ontario, was the old Indian village called Swa-geh, the lake-port of the Iroquois. . ”

“ In a letter written November 9, 1680, he says, 'There is at the end of Lake Erie ten leagues below the strait a river by which we could shorten the route to the Illinois very much. It is navigable to canoes to within two leagues of the route now in use.' [13] . . his [La Salle's] representations were the first to direct the attention of the French to the regions south and west of Lake Erie." [14]
Perhaps the most historic campaign in which the Wabash route played a part was Hamilton's journey across it in 1778 when he went to the recapture of Vincennes. ”

“ Thus on the portage, settlements sprang up about the forts to which the military régime had no objection—though such settlements were discouraged equally by those devoted to the earliest fur trade and to missionary expansion. [12] But military officers found their one hope of retaining the land lay in allying the Indians firmly with them. The attempts of the French so to shift the seats of the Indian tribes in the West that the English could not trade with them or deflect them from French interest forms an interesting chapter in the early rivalry for Indian support. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At many points in our journey we shall find a perfect network of modern routes of travel, converging perhaps on a teeming city which owes its growth and prosperity to its geographical situation at a strategic point on the watershed we are following. And where we find the largest population and the greatest activity today, just there, we may rest assured, human activity was equally noticeable in the old days. ”

“ 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. Of them all only three routes have received the attention they deserve; these are the Lake Erie–Lake Chautauqua portage, the Wabash route, and the St. Joseph–Kankakee portage. ”

“ Further west, the Maumee Valley was of early importance to the French because of the two portages which gave them access to the Miami River on the south and the Wabash on the southwest. The use to explorers of the latter portage has been mentioned. Here, near the present site of Maumee City, the first settlement of whites in the limits of the state of Ohio was made about 1679. The city of Fort Wayne, Indiana, marks the Maumee terminus of the important portage to the Wabash River—the modern name carrying the significance of fortification which we are emphasizing. ”

“ Many portages joined the lesser lakes; for example, such as Lake Simcoe, lying between Lake Ontario and Georgian Bay, or Lake Chautauqua lying between Lake Erie and the Allegheny River. The most common form of portage, however, was the pathway on a river's bank around rapids and waterfalls which impeded the voyageur's way. These were very important on such a turbulent river as the St. Lawrence, and on smaller rivers such as the Scioto or Rivière aux Bœufs which were almost dry in certain places in midsummer. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Leger never got fairly over the Oneida portage; he could not carry Fort Schuyler which guarded it, and at Herkimer he was completely routed. Burgoyne crossed safely the portage to the Hudson, but had hardly done more when Gates was upon him and Saratoga was the early turning point of the war. To all intents and purposes the great campaign was utterly thwarted because the Americans successfully held the strategic keys of the continent—the Lake George–Hudson and the Oneida carrying places. ”

“ The French could ascend the St. Lawrence to Lake Ontario and gain access to the entire rear of New York, and by a dozen minor waterways the Hudson again could be reached. The St. Lawrence had long been an avenue of French exploration and missionary activity. "The route thither (from Quebec up the St. Lawrence to Lake Ontario and Lake Simcoe to Georgian Bay to the land of the Hurons) is very easy, there being only two waterfalls where it is necessary to land and make a portage—a short one at that ”

“ From Cumberland to the intersection of the route with the Youghiogeny river, thirty-four miles. . . The point which this route locates, at the west foot of Laurel Hill, having cleared the whole of the Alleghany mountain, is so situated as to extend the advantages of an easy way through the great barrier, with more equal justice to the best parts of the country between Laurel Hill and the Ohio. Lines from this point to Pittsburg and Morgantown, diverging nearly at the same angle, open upon equal terms to all parts of the western country that can make use of this portage ”

“ Des Plaines route involved a 'carry' of from four to nine miles, according to the season of the year; in a rainy spring season, it might not be over a mile; and during a freshet, a canoe might be paddled over the entire route, without any portage." [31] When Marquette reached the Des Plaines, known as "Portage River" because it offered a pathway to the Illinois, he was compelled to make a portage of only "half a league." [32] The course of this portage is practically the present route of the famous Drainage Canal which joins the Chicago River with the Des Plaines at Elgin, Illinois. ”

“ The awakening in the Northwest is evidenced by the increasing importance of this pathway in the War of 1812. [39] This was the route of British trade with the Mississippi Indians until the very last. [40] The commercial and economic history of this route, the establishment of Fort Winnebago, the question of government ownership of land, the improvement of the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers, the Military Road across the portage, the days of the Durhams boats, and the building of the canal make this route more interesting than any other west of Niagara. ”

“ On the ninth of the following April the brave man stood at last at its mouth, and beside a column bearing the arms of France, a cross and a leaden plate claiming all the territory from which those waters came, he took possession of the richest four million square miles of earth for Louis XIV. "That the Mississippi Valley was laid open to the eyes of the world by a voyageur who came overland from Canada, and not by a voyageur who ploughed through the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico from Spain, is a fact of far-reaching import. ”

“ The St. Joseph River, emptying into Lake Michigan, was one of the earlier important roundabout routes to the Mississippi. The eastern fork headed with the Wabash, and with a short portage was the route La Salle described as being "within two leagues" of the Miami of Lake Erie. This St. Joseph–Wabash portage was extremely important, but was roundabout, and was probably abandoned at a comparatively early date.
The southern branch of the St. Joseph heads near the northwest branch of the Kankakee, a tributary of the Illinois, near South Bend, Indiana. ”

“ Portages are found wherever lakes or rivers lie, and our subject is therefore as broad as the continent. It is obvious that in a limited space it is possible to treat only of portages most used and best known—which most influenced our history. ”

“ Oswego, along the accustomed route, is computed to be about 300 miles west from Albany. The first sixteen, to the village of Schenectady, is land carriage, in a good waggon road. 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. ”

“ 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. The newness and value of reviewing historic movements from the standpoint of highways is strikingly emphasized in the case of portage paths. While studying them, one seems to rise on heights of ground like those these pathways spanned—and from that altitude, gazing backward, to get a better perspective of the military and social movements which made these little roads historic. ”

“ So Céloron made for the first portage southward in order to strike the Ohio on its headwaters. This was the Chautauqua Lake portage from Chautauqua Creek—which the French knew as "Rivière aux Pommes"—six miles by land from the present Barcelona, New York, to Lake Chautauqua. From the seventeenth to the twenty-second of July was spent in making the difficult march over what has long been known as the "Old Portage Road." Bonnécamps, who accompanied Céloron, wrote: "The road is passably good. The wood through which it is cut resembles our forests in France." ”