Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 7).djvu/71

This page has been validated.
EVOLUTION OF PORTAGES
67

tages and the forts that were built show that these historic paths had lost little of their significance. All the way across the continent from the portage from the Kennebec to Quebec, over which Arnold led his army, to Fallen Timbers on the Maumee, near which Wayne built Fort Wayne, a significant portion of the struggle for a free America took place on portage paths. As in the French War, so in this later struggle, the paths between Lake Champlain and the Hudson and between the Mohawk and Lake Oneida were all-important passageways. Burgoyne was defeated not far from the spot where the French Dieskau was repulsed, and on the Oneida carrying-place, as has been said, the first United States flag was unfurled in battle in 1777. In the West, of course, Niagara never lost its importance, but the remainder of the portages had now lost something of their military significance, as the Revolution in the West was a series of raids and counter-raids on the settlements of the whites in Virginia and Kentucky, and upon the Indians in the valleys of the Muskingum, Scioto, Sandusky, Maumee, and