dragged fifty times by actual count.[1] Another exulted that he had "travelled three leagues up the river without finding any portage!"[2]
The river trails, as the name suggests, were the thoroughfares which followed the river valleys. Some of these were of great importance; many were not. It is surprising how the Indian ignored certain of the finest of our river valleys as village sites. No river of the second class in all the Central West today is more important than the lower Muskingum on which the government has spent millions for slack-water navigation. Yet, while the upper and narrower portion of the river was dotted with Indian villages and lodges, there is no evidence to show that the splendid stretch of seventy-five miles from the mouth of the Licking to the Ohio contained a single Indian village, though an ancient clearing was found by early explorers near Beverly. Accordingly, the Muskingum trail, which was a route of greatest impor-
