Paths of the Mound-Building Indians and Great Game AnimalsHulbert, Archer Butler
History
Paths of the Mound-Building Indians and Great Game Animals
Hulbert, Archer Butler
American bison; Indian trails -- United States; Mound-builders
Joseph Buell, in a journey from Vincennes to the Ohio, relates this
incident in his journal under date of October 4th: "In our march today,
came across five buffaloes. They tried to force a passage through our
column. The general ordered the men to fire on them. Three were killed
and the others wounded."[102]
Dr. Walker writes the following under the date of June 19th, 1750: "We
got to Laurel Creek early this morning, and met so impudent a Bull
Buffaloe that we were obliged to shoot him, or he would have been
amongst us."[103]
Buffalo roads should be divided into two classes-local and
transcontinental. The former were the short roads which converged from
the feeding and stamping-grounds, brakes and meadows, to the licks where
the animal's natural craving for salt was satisfied. The
transcontinental routes were those used in migrating from one portion of
the country to another, like the great route through Cumberland Gap.
Such regions as Kentucky, where there were numerous salt licks and great
areas of meadow-land near by, became favorite haunts for herds of
buffalo, and here their local roads are of such a nature as to be
reckoned among "the national curiosities of the state." Broad, hard, and
often deep, these great roads were adopted immediately by Indians and
white men alike as highways of travel. They are thus described by some
early writers:
"The roads opened by these animals may be reckoned among the national
curiosities of the state [Kentucky], being generally wide enough for a
carriage or waggon way, in which trees, shrubs, etc., are all trampled
down, and destroyed by the irresistible impetus of the mighty
phalanx."[104]
Croghan wrote in his _Journal_ (1765): "We came to a large road which
the buffaloes have beaten spacious enough for a wagon to go abreast, and
leading straight into the Lick."[105]
In the MS. autobiography of General James Taylor of Newport, Kentucky,
is found this statement "Big Bone Lick ... has been a great resort of
the buffalo, and the roads ... were larger than any common ones now
[1794] in the State, and in many places were worn five or six feet
deep."[106]
"A foot-path, zigzagging through the freshly made stumps of trees and
past some saplings of dogwood and pawpaw, led down from the station
[Bryant's] to this spring, while a much broader track sloped from the
main gate on the southeastern side of the stockade to a road a little
distance away and nearly fronting the fort, that was a priceless boon to
the pioneers. It seemed an ancient product of human skill, but was, in
fact, a 'trace,' hard and firm, made by the buffaloes alone which had
thundered over it for a thousand years in their journeys to the Salt
Licks."[107]
From the time Boone led the van of the pioneer hosts into the southern
portion of the Ohio basin until the present day, the buffalo routes have
perceptibly influenced the course of travel. Writes a Kentucky
historian:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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