Historic Highways of America/Volume 2/Preface
PREFACE
THE brave missionaries in Canada called the Indian trails of the North "Roads of Iron" because they were so difficult to follow. Holland, writing of the famous Bay Path in Massachusetts, gave them the name "Threads of Soil." They were all that these names imply and much more. They opened a new continent to its explorers, conquerors, and pioneers.
This monograph purposes to show the routes of the more important Indian thoroughfares of America, to suggest the importance of study of them, to prove that the courses can be identified and followed today, and to induce readers whom this subject may attract to do some work along these lines. To one who is imaginative the old days will come back: the trail and forest are again peopled, border armies hurry by, and the long stream of immigration floods the land. The subject is of additional interest because of the acquaintance one must make with the earliest historical literature of the country—the journals and memoirs of brave men who saw this land as it will never again appear in human history. The field work required demands little or no expense, and is not without pleasure and fresh romance. It is safe to travel the Indian trails today; the poll-tax once collected by red-skinned highwaymen is not collected in these days. Not a lone Indian will be found overlooking "the place where he used to be born." Those who once pushed their horses down the Warriors' Path or went whooping down the Scioto or Mahoning are now hunting the souls of the moose and the beaver in the Land of the Souls, "walking on the souls of their snowshoes on the soul of the snow."
But they have left their trails behind them—and nothing else so interesting, so pregnant with varied memories, so rich in historical suggestion.
Marietta, O., September 3, 1902.