Historic Highways of America/Volume 1/Part 2/Chapter 4

by Archer Butler Hulbert

CHAPTER IV

CONTINENTAL THOROUGHFARES

TURNING from a particular region, where, because of the close proximity of licks and feeding-grounds, the buffalo made local roads, it becomes of interest to look at the country at large and note the great continental routes.

For an animal credited with but little instinct, the buffalo found the paths of least resistance with remarkable accuracy.^[1]

Undoubtedly the migrations of the buffalo caused the opening of the great overland trails upon which the first white men came into the West. The nomadic trait which induced migratory movements was acquired through necessity. The animals moved in herds. The Central West, for instance, was, when white men first saw it, covered largely with forests; between the forests were open spots covered with rank grasses. These "opens" were of various sizes from little patches surrounded by forests to great treeless expanses miles in length and breadth.

However large these open prairies, the herds of buffalo would in a short time exhaust the supply of grass and then troop on to fresher fields. Fires, grasshoppers, and drouth also tended to destroy the buffaloes' feeding-ground and to send them on long pilgrimages. Thus it is probable that in the day when the eastern portion of the United States was included in the habitat of the buffaloes, these animals were continuously trooping along over their great roadways throughout the summer, one herd after another, in search of fresh licks and springs.

The buffaloes migrated annually from the north to the south, and throughout their habitat in the United States, their great trails were north and south trails. The rivers flowing mainly east or west into the Mississippi are crossed usually at right angles by the more important trails of the buffalo. The annual movement was caused not so much by the change of temperature (though buffaloes which remain sometimes in cold climates seek the warmer, secluded spots) as by the frozen condition of the ground and the depths of snow which buried the grasses upon which they fed. When, from various causes, the annual north and south migrations of the buffalo herds of the Far West were discontinued, an east and west migration took place—the herds moving westward to more protected portions of the country. As late as 1872, hunting parties made their headquarters during the summer at Hay's City, and in winter moved their quarters a hundred or a hundred and fifty miles westward of their fall camps; near Hay's City the grass was buried under ice and encrusted snow, while near Ellis the ground was bare. Thus unnaturally the migrations were turned east and west rather than north and south, and the trails which marked the former lines of migration were cut by deep-worn trails crossing them at right angles.^[2]

During the reign of the buffaloes in the Ohio basin their greater thoroughfares were undoubtedly made by their annual migrations, even though the extent of this movement did not exceed a few hundred miles. In this day the winters are appreciably milder along the Ohio river than even in the northern portions of the states of which it forms the southern boundary. And here, as in the Far West, the routes of the buffalo are north and south with here and there a great cross trail.

These greater trails lay largely on the watersheds which the buffalo found with great certainty. He was an agile climber despite his great size and weight. Writes Mr. Allen, "They will often leap down vertical banks where it would be impossible to urge a horse, and will even descend precipitous rocky bluffs by paths where a man could only climb down with difficulty, and where it would seem almost impossible for a beast of their size and structure to pass except at the cost of broken limbs or a broken neck. On the bluffs of the Musselshell river I found places where they had leaped down bare ledges three or four feet in height with nothing but ledges of rocks for a landing-place; sometimes, too, through passages between high rocks but little wider than the thickness of their own bodies, with also a continuous precipitous descent for many feet below. Nothing in their history ever surprised me more than this revelation of their expertness and fearlessness in climbing."^[3]

Ordinarily the buffalo laid out his road with commendable sagacity, "usually choosing the easiest grades and the most direct courses, so that a buffalo trail can be depended upon as affording the most feasible road possible through the region it traverses."^[4] This was because their weight demanded the most stable courses and they were thus very sure of avoiding low grounds, preferring even difficult climbs to passage-ways through soft ground; we have made one quotation, from Dr. Walker's Journal, which notes that one "Buffaloe Road" which he followed afforded an "Ascent and Descent tollerably easie."^[5]

The three great overland routes from the Atlantic seaboard into the Central West were undoubtedly first opened by the buffalo; one was the course through central New York followed afterward by the Erie canal and the New York Central railway; the second from the Potomac through southwestern Pennsylvania to the headwaters of the Ohio; the third the famous route through Cumberland Gap into Kentucky.

These three routes led to the northern, the central, and the southern portions of the great Ohio basin. It is certain that the two latter routes were great buffalo migration routes and there is little doubt that the route through New York was a buffalo thoroughfare. There were lesser thoroughfares which, though latterly known as Indian trails, were undoubtedly paths of the buffalo. One of these was the famous Kittaning Path from the headwaters of the Juniata to the Allegheny, the route of the Pennsylvania railway across the Alleghanies; another was the old trail through Carlisle and Bedford, Pennsylvania, later known as Forbes's route to Pittsburg. Still another was the well-worn path over the Alleghany divide by way of Hot Springs, the present route of the Chesapeake and Ohio railway.^[6]

In the Central West the greater migratory routes were, in Kentucky the route from Cumberland Gap to the Ohio by way of the great licks; in West Virginia the course from the head of New River down the valley of the Great Kanawha, also on the watershed from the Monongahela to the Ohio by way of Middle Island creek and Dry Ridge; in Ohio the great trail from the "Forks of the Ohio" (Pittsburg) across the watershed which divides the streams (in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois) which flow into the Ohio from those which flow into the lakes; the trails up the Muskingum and Scioto and Miami to the lakes, in Pennsylvania the great trail running north and south on the western spurs of the Alleghanies, Chestnut Ridge and its prolongation, Laurel Hill; in Tennessee the great Warrior's Path through Cumberland Gap to the country of the Cherokees and Catawbas.

The great routes of the buffaloes were north and south routes. The Ohio was the only river which greatly facilitated westward migration in the pioneer period. Most of the smaller streams in the Central West run approximately north and south—in general alignment with the known thoroughfares of the bison. For the Indians the north and south trails were exceedingly convenient, since, throughout the period of intertribal Indian wars with which we are acquainted, the major portion were between foes who needed north and south roads upon which to reach each other quickly; the great war trails of Indian history in the Central West led north and south, and were usually on the general alignment of, if not over, buffalo routes. In the earliest of historic days we find the Iroquois fighting the confederacies of the South—and that warfare kept up until Europeans allied the various Indian nations with them in their wars. When the Shawanese were driven from the South they came northward to the Cumberland, doubtless on the routes made by buffalo migrations, for these would have brought them just where they were first found by geographers.

The subsequent migrations of the Shawanese into the Alleghanies were also undoubtedly made over buffalo routes across the Great Kanawha and Monongahela valleys. At least, from the beginning to the end of the strange wanderings of these "Bedouins of American Indians" they remained within the habitat of the buffalo and the lesson of history clearly states that within that habitat man has found the routes of the buffalo the most practicable. Of the Wyandots, who according to their legends came into the Central West by the Great Lakes, buffalo routes cannot be said to have determined their distribution, but the Delawares, fleeing from the valley whose name they bore, no doubt came westward to the Muskingum on prehistoric routes used by the buffalo.

Thus buffalo traces must have influenced, to some extent, at least, the distribution of the Indian nations who were found occupying the Ohio basin when, about the middle of the eighteenth century, white men came to know it. A significant proof of this is found in the fact that no Indian nation permanently occupied the region now embraced in the state of Kentucky, to which, because of the unusual quantity of licks and meadow lands, the buffaloes were manifestly partial and where their roads are best known. Thither came all the Indian nations and here all contended in the immemorial conflict for possession of this land which they, as well as the buffalo, loved.

The buffalo, because of his sagacious selection of the most sure and most direct courses, has influenced the routes of trade and travel of the white race as much, possibly, as he influenced the course of the red-men in earlier days. There is great truth in Thomas Benton's figure when he said that the buffalo blazed the way for the railways to the Pacific. That sagacious animal undoubtedly "blazed"—with his hoofs on the surface of the earth—the course of many of our roads, canals, and railways. That he found the points of least resistance across our great mountain ranges there can be little doubt. It is certain that he discovered Cumberland Gap and his route through that pass in the mountains has been accepted as one of the most important on the continent. It is also obvious that the buffalo found the course from Atlantic waters to the head of the Great Kanawha, and that he opened a way from the Potomac to the Ohio. How important these strategic points are now considered is evident from the fact that a railway crosses the mountains at each of them; the New York Central, the Baltimore and Ohio, the Pennsylvania, and the Chesapeake and Ohio cross the first great divide in the eastern portion of our country on routes selected centuries ago by the plunging buffalo. One of the most interesting of specific examples of a railway following an ancient highway of buffalo and Indian is to be found on the Baltimore and Ohio Southwestern railway line between Grafton and Parkersburg. While searching for the old highway from the Monongahela to the Ohio, an explorer asked an old resident to describe its course. "From Parkersburg," said the informant, "it goes on to Ewing's Station, Turtle Run, and Kanawha Station; it goes over Eaton's Tunnel, follows Dry Ridge into Dodridge county and passes through Martin's Woods, just north of Greenwood, to Center Station where it turns east, crossing Gorham's Tunnel, and goes down Middle Island Creek."

"The Indians must have patronized the railroad well," observed the student, "since their trail passes by all the stations and tunnels."

"Law, no," broke out the disappointed old man, "they wa'n't no railroad them days, but when they come to build it they follered the trail the hull way." It is nothing less than wonderful that the old highway selected by the instinct of the bison should be found in two instances, in a space of twenty miles, immediately above the railway tunnel.

Other strategic lines of travel perhaps first opened by the buffalo were the portage paths between the heads of streams, especially those of the Ohio basin and the lake streams on the north and the Atlantic streams on the south. Undoubtedly in his migrations north and south the buffalo deeply wore the river trails, for here he was close to water and the river meadows which constantly offered all the nourishment he needed. At least, when white men first came into the West they found great paths over the portages which were more of the nature of buffalo roads than Indian trails. Certain of these portages have been noted; others were between the French Creek and Lake Erie—a portage undoubtedly well known to the buffalo—which the French named Rivière aux Bœufs in honor of these monarchs of the forests; others again between the Cuyahoga and the Muskingum, the Scioto and Sandusky, the Wabash and Maumee, St. Joseph and Kankakee, Fox and Illinois, etc. The prehistoric use of portages has elsewhere been noticed in connection with the mound-building Indians. They were perhaps the earliest of traveled ways of the continent.

1. "The stupidity of the buffalo, as well as its sagacity, has been by some writers overstated. A herd of buffaloes certainly possesses . . . the sheep-like propensity of blindly following its leaders. . . . A little reflection, however, will show that in such instances as the rushing of a herd over a precipice or into a pond . . . is not wholly an act of stupidity, but comparable to that of a panic-stricken crowd of human beings."—"History of the American Bison," Ninth Annual Report, Department of the Interior, p. 472.
2. Ninth Annual Report, Department of the Interior, p. 466.
3. Ninth Annual Report, Department of the Interior, p. 467. On this point see further Dr. Coues's communication given in Part II.
4. Id., p. 467.
5. First Explorations of Kentucky (Filson Club Pub. No. 13), p. 47.
6. Walker's Journal (Filson Club Pub. No. 13), p. 73, note.

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