THE INDIAN THOROUGHFARES OF OHIO.*

BY ARCHER BUTLER HULBERT.

History tells of two Ohios the old and the new. The old Ohio was that portion of the American Hinterland drained by the Ohio and Allegheny rivers which, together, formed la Belle Riviere of New France. It included the territory between the Alleghenies, the Mississippi and the great lakes, save as we except the country of Illinois, which early in history became a territory distinct by itself, as the meadow lands of Kan-ta-kee became distinct later. As late as the Revolutionary war an English map printed "Ohio" south, as well as north, of the Ohio river.1

Of this old Ohio (including the Illinois country) only that part which lay north of the Ohio river contained a resident Indian population. That portion south of the river was the Korea of the central west- the "dark and bloody" battle ground of surrounding nations half a century before the white man gave it that name.

North of the Ohio river, in the valleys of the Alleghany, Beaver, Muskingum, Scioto, Sandusky, Miami, Maumee, Wabash and Illinois, more white men knew the redman intimately than perhaps anywhere in the United States in the eighteenth century. This knowledge of the Indian in his own home-land resulted in giving to the world a mass of material respecting his country, customs and character. Among other things this knowledge of the northern division of the old Ohio during the Indian regime made it possible to map it, and some of these maps are essentially correct.

The dismemberment of the great old Ohio was rapid, and in some instances spectacular. The extension of Virginian dominion by George Rogers Clark and the evolution of the state. of Kentucky, and especially the passage of the great Ordinance

Copyrighted 1900, by Archer Butler Hulbert.

1Map with Pownall's "Middle British Colonies in North America 1776," (London, 1776).

which once and forever divided the territory by the Ohio river - all combined to narrow down "Ohio," until now the present imperial commonwealth is but the core of the great empire once embraced under its name.

This new Ohio, or the portion of the northern division of the old Ohio contained between the Beaver and Miami rivers, offers special inducements to prosecute the study of the branch of Indian archæology herewith presented, that of Indian thoroughfares. Perhaps the more important conditions are not answered better in any portion of the continent than in what is now the state of Ohio: it contained a resident Indian population; it was extensively visited during Indian occupation by explorers, traders, spies, armies, missionaries, surveyors and geographers, who studied and knew the land as it then was; and, finally, a last and imperative condition is answered, it is in part a hilly country.

It is possible to believe that in the earliest times the Indians travelled only on rivers and lakes. When they turned inland we can be practically sure that they found, ready-made and deeply-worn, the very routes of travel which have since borne their name. For the beginning of the history of roadmaking in this central west, we must go back two centuries, when the buffalo, urged by his need of change of climate, newer feeding grounds and fresher salt licks, first found his way through the forests. Even if the first thoroughfares were made by the mastodon and the moundbuilder, they first came to white man's knowledge as buffalo "traces," and later became Indian trails.1

1 A vivid description of the trails of Darkest Africa as seen by Du Chaillu and Stanley has come recently from the pen of Julian Hawthorne and may be interesting in this connection:

"These trails, but two or three feet in width, traverse the vast expanse from one side to another; you walk in them single-file; if you step aside for a few rods, you may spend the rest of your life trying to find the route again. Around you on every side are the gigantic columns of the forest-trees; overhead, two hundred feet aloft, their boughs and dense foliage make a roof through which no sunshine ever falls; all is as nature made it, except that single narrow thread of thoroughfare, created by human footsteps, none can tell how many thousand years ago. For days, weeks, months, you follow such trails, over thousands of miles;

In Kentucky, which we have already noted as unoccupied by resident Indians, the word "trace" has come down from last century rather than "trail," which is the word generally used by the oldest inhabitants of Ohio.1

The routes of the plunging buffalo, weighing a thousand pounds and capable of covering two hundred miles a day, were well suited to the needs of the Indian. One who has any conception of the west as it was a century and a half ago, who can see the river valleys filled with the immemorial plunder of the river floods, can realize that there was but one practicable passage-way across the land for either beast or man, and that, on the summits of the hills. Here on the hilltops, mounting on the longest ascending ridges, lay the tawny paths of the buffalo and Indian. They were not only highways, they were the highest ways, and chosen for the best of reasons:2

I. The hilltops offered the driest courses; from them water was shed most quickly and least damage was caused by erosion.

2. The hilltops were windswept; the snow of winter and the leaves of summer were alike driven away, leaving little or nothing to block or obscure the pathway.

3. The hilltops were coigns of vantage for outlook and signalling.

they were laid out without a compass, by the unaided instinct of the savage; but they bring you by the shortest route from distant sea to sea." Cosmopolitan, November 1899, p. 127.

1 The two great thoroughfares in Kentucky were on buffalo traces. Boone's road led to the Blue Grass country where Lexington was built. Logan's road left Boone's at Rockcastle Creek and led to Crab Orchard, Bardstown, Bullittt's Lick and Louisville. Speed's "Wilderness Road," p. 27.

2 In such a study as the present nothing could be of more value than the testimony offered by the Catholic missionaries to New France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Citations will constantly be made to this great volume of testimony, sometimes as proof, sometimes in contrast, but always to depict the Indian custom and practice in reference to our subject. Our quotations will be from "Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents" edited by Mr. Reuben Gold Thwaites.

The great snow falls of Canada were not experienced south of Lake Erie. It is interesting to note the effect of much snow on the use of