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PATHS OF GREAT GAME ANIMALS

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.