placed upon this contrivance would clear any stream that a diminutive Indian pony could ford. Oftentimes a fallen tree was made to serve as a bridge over a stream, though this of course could only be used by those traveling on foot.[1]
As has been remarked, road-building was a lost art among Indians of historic times—however much was known in the days of their mound-building ancestors. This was all in keeping with the law of need. The transportation of immense quantities of earth and stone, of which the mounds were built, necessitated the graded roads for which the mound-building Indians were celebrated. The deterioration of the civilization of the Indian is in nothing shown more plainly than in the study of the roads of the prehistoric and historic tribes. Living almost entirely on the generosity of the forest and stream, the later Indian needed thoroughfares only for hunting and for war. The little trail to the hunting-ground and the track which led to the enemy's country, were, when history
- ↑ Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, vol. xviii., p. 36.
