EARLY TRAVEL IN THE INTERIOR
It has been noted that a considerable portion of archæological remains
in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin are inland--or away from the
largest river valleys. The lands on the lesser streams were occupied in
some instances for the entire distance to the springs. For instance, in
Ohio and Kentucky we find only a fraction of the ancient works on the
shores of the Ohio river--either mounds or forts. In Ohio the largest
collections are found in the interior counties mentioned, as is the case
in Kentucky, at a distance varying from fifty to one hundred and fifty
miles from the great water highway which flows by these states on the
north or on the south.
As with these states, so with the counties within them--the
mound-building people seem to have been scattered widely. An
archæological map of Butler county, Ohio, shows that the remains are
found everywhere quite without reference to the largest streams. In this
county there are more works in Oxford township in the far corner of the
county than in Hanover township, which lies between Oxford and the Miami
river. Today there are six hundred more inhabitants in Oxford township
(exclusive of the population of Oxford village) than in Hanover
township. There are more remains in Reily township, which is separated
from the Miami by Ross township, than in Madison township, which is
bounded by the Miami and is drained by a larger stream than any in
Reily. St. Clair township contains several works in the western portion,
on the branches of the Miami river, and almost none at all in the
eastern portion which is bounded by that river itself.
Crawford county, Wisconsin, has also been mapped. Though bounded on the
south and west by the Wisconsin and Mississippi rivers, fifty per cent
of the ancient works are at a distance from those streams.
[Illustration: ARCHAEOLOGIC MAP OF ILLINOIS AND INDIANA
[_Showing interior location of remains_]]
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. In this they
differed in no wise from the red-men who were found living in these
regions mentioned when the whites first came to visit them, and we might
have held to our original line of reasoning to reach this same
conclusion. It might have been shown that the red-men in Ohio and some
of the neighboring states lived more on the smaller streams than on the
larger ones, and then made the deduction that the mound-building people
did the same.
For this was true. The three centers of Indian population in Ohio were
on the smaller streams. The Delawares made their headquarters on the
upper Muskingum; the Wyandots had their villages on the Sandusky river
and bay; the Shawanese were on the Scioto, and the Miamis on the rivers
that have borne their name. The well-known Indian settlements on the
Ohio and on Lake Erie can almost be counted on the fingers of one hand,
while the towns at Coshocton, Chillicothe, Piqua, Fremont, and Dresden
were of national importance during the era of conquest. Referring to the
location of the Indians of Ohio an early pioneer casually writes: "Their
habitations were at the heads of the principal streams."[7] There was
almost no exception to the rule.
The explanation of this may be found partly in the great floods which
were, doubtless, more menacing near the larger streams. While the floods
rise perhaps faster today, it is doubtful if they reach the height that
they did in earlier days. Then, at flood-tide, a thousand forest swamps,
licks, pools, and lagoons which do not exist today added their waters to
the river tides. General Butler, who was on the lower Ohio just after
the Revolution, was advised by a friendly Indian chief to locate Fort
Finney high up from the Ohio in order to be clear of high water. Under
the date of October 24, 1785, he wrote in his _Journal_: "Capt. George,
who had lived below the mouth of this river [Miami] assured me that all
the bank from the river for five miles did absolutely overflow, and that
he had to remove to the hill at least five miles back, which determined
me to take the present situation."[8]
Under such circumstances as these it is not surprising that the Indians
preferred the little rivers to the larger ones. The smaller streams amid
their hills did not rise so high, and when they did rise safe camping
spots could be found on high ground not far removed.
What was true of these Indians was probably true of any antecedent race.
Assuming, then, that the mound-building people lived (in these states
more particularly noticed) on the lesser "inland" streams where the
later Indians were found, there is no question but that they moved about
the country more or less as the Indians themselves did. Although the
former people were more nearly a stationary people, yet we know that
they hunted, and it is not reasonable to believe that they did not have
commercial intercourse. In fact, from the contents of their mounds, we
know they did. We also know that the various tribes made war upon one
another, or at least were made war upon by some enemy.
All this necessitated highways of travel. 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. But the main mode of travel for explorers,
war parties, pioneer armies and missionaries seems to have been by the
paths which threaded the forests.[9]
Of the hundreds of Indian forays into Virginia and Kentucky there is
perhaps not one, even those moving down the Scioto and up the Licking,
that used water transportation. In their hunting trips the canoe was
useless except for transporting game and peltry to the nearest posts,
and this was done often on the little Indian ponies.
For long months the lesser streams were ice-bound in the winter; in the
summer, for equally long periods, they must have been nearly dry, as in
the present era of slack-water navigation the larger of them are
frequently very low. Even travel on the Ohio in low-water months was
exasperatingly slow. One pilgrim to Ohio spent ninety days en route from
Killingly, Connecticut, to Marietta, Ohio--thirty-one of them being
spent in getting from Williamsport, Pennsylvania, down the Monongahela
and Ohio to Marietta! The journey from Connecticut in a cart drawn by
oxen to the Monongahela took but twice the time needed to come down the
rivers to Marietta on a "Kentucky" flatboat![10] With high-water, and
going down stream, a hundred miles a day could be covered.[11]
That the first pioneers into the interior of Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana
preferred land routes to water is plain to the most casual reader of the
history of the pioneer period. Such great entrepots as Wellsburg, Ohio,
Limestone, Kentucky, and Madison, Indiana (all on the Ohio), attest the
fact that the travel to the interior was by land routes and not by the
smaller rivers.
And so, throughout historic times, one rule has held true in the region
now under 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. That they had ways of getting about the
country goes without saying. In some instances the earth and stone with
which they worked was brought from a distance. This could not have been
accomplished by any means by water. We know they fought great battles;
it is exceedingly doubtful and all against the lesson taught in times
that are historic, that these armies traveled water routes. True, there
were watch "towers" along the river banks, and the rivers of real size
were undoubtedly the routes of armies--but it has been the opinion of
some archæologists that their enemies came from the north. There are no
rivers flowing from the interior of Ohio, for instance, to Lake Erie
that are even now when dammed of a size sufficient to warrant us the
belief that great armies passed over them.[12] We cannot imagine a
hostile army of power great enough to have necessitated the building of
such a work as Fort Ancient ever coming to it on the little river on
which it stands.
Speaking of the mound-building Indians, MacLean remarks: "In order to
warn the settlements [of mound-builders], where such a band should
approach, it was found necessary to have ... signal stations. Judging by
the primitive methods employed, these wars must have continued for ages.
If the settlements along the two Miamis and Scioto were overrun at the
same time before they had become weakened, it would have required such
an army as only a civilized or semi-civilized nation could send into the
field. It is plausible to assume that a predatory warfare was carried on
at first, and on account of this the many fortifications were gradually
built. During a warfare such as this, the regular parties of miners
would go to the mines, for the roads could be kept open, even should an
enemy cross the well-beaten paths."[13] 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.
Assuming, then, that overland routes of travel were used by this
earliest of American races of which we have any real knowledge, it is to
the purpose of our study to consider where such routes were laid.
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. Our first roads were ridge roads and
their day is not altogether past in many parts of the land. These first
roads were "run," or built, along the general alignment of the first
pioneer roads, which, in turn, were nothing more than "blazed" paths of
the Indian and buffalo. A single glance at one of the maps of the
Central West of Revolutionary times, for instance, will show how closely
the first routes clung to the heights of the watersheds. And for good
reason: here the ground suffered least from erosion; here the forests
were thinnest; here a pathway would be swept clear of snow in winter and
of leaves in summer by the swift, clean brooms of the winds. For the
Indians, too, the high lands were points of vantage both in hunting and
in times of war.
In every state there were strategic heights of land, generally running
westward; in Ohio, for example, the strategic watershed was that
between the heads of the lake rivers and the heads of those flowing
southward into the Ohio. Across this divide ran the Great Trail toward
Detroit and the lake country. In western Virginia a strategic watershed
was that formed between the heads of streams flowing northward into the
Ohio and southward into the Kanawha. And in a remarkable degree the
strategic points of a century and a half ago are the strategic points
today, a fact attested by the courses of the more important trunk
railway lines. The steady rise and importance of such a city as Akron,
Ohio, is due to a strategic situation at the junction of both an
important portage path and of a great watershed highway.
With all these facts in mind it is not presumptuous then to inquire
whether the mound-building Indians did not find the high lands and mark
out on them these first highways of America.