ries, or the Ottawas, who, while they lived near Detroit, came to the hunting-grounds on the Wabash and Miami to the south, which they claimed.[1]
Once on the ground, the parties separated and sought their quarry by various routes. In such a manner, it is easy to believe, many of the Indian thoroughfares which afterward were put to so many uses, were originally made. There is little doubt, however, that the routes broken long before by buffalo and pre-Columbian Indians were found and followed and served as main thoroughfares. With hunting-lodges built at convenient points on these thoroughfares, the minor cross-trails were broken to and fro along the watersheds and from the rivers upward and inland.
The war trails were what the name implies—routes to and from the home-lands of hostile confederacies, nations, or tribes. The higher a nation mounts in the plane of civilization the better it is known for its joys; the lower it sinks the more famous it becomes for its hatreds. If the Indian
- ↑ Croghan's Journal, "The Olden Time," vol. i., pp. 414–415.
