Other strategic lines of travel perhaps first opened by the buffalo were the portage paths between the heads of streams, especially those of the Ohio basin and the lake 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 Boeufs 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. FOOTNOTES: [1] _Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology_, p. 601. [2] _Id._, p. 17, art. 7. [3] _Id._, p. 645. [4] _Report of the Geological Survey of Ohio_, vol. vii., part ii., p. 37. [5] _Bulletin_, 1891. [6] _Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology_, p. 525. [7] _Life and Times of Ephraim Cutler_, p. 23. [8] General Butler's _Journal_, "The Olden Time," vol. ii., pp. 455-456. [9] Cf. Gist's, Dr. Walker's, Boone's, Washington's, Post's, Zeisberger's, Croghan's, Heckewelder's, journeys into the West as related in their _Journals_ or letters; note the routes of such armies as those led by Bouquet and McIntosh which went from Fort Pitt to the interior of Ohio, or by Lewis which marched from Virginia to the mouth of the Great Kanawha, or by Harmar, St. Clair, and Wayne, which went northward from the Ohio river toward the Great Lakes. Troops were shipped frequently from Pittsburg and Detroit westward by water, but is there one instance where they were transported into the interior on the smaller rivers? Cf. Pentland's _Journal_, "History of Western Pennsylvania," appendix, pp. 389-391. [10] _Life and Times of Ephraim Cutler_, p. 21. [11] Hildreth's _Pioneer History_, p. 159. [12] Gen. Moses Cleaveland, on coming to the site of the city which bears his name, found he could not ascend the Cuyahoga because of the vast quantity of deadwood which filled it. [13] MacLean's _Mound Builders_, p. 145. [14] _Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology_, p. 52. [15] _Id._, pp. 54-55. [16] _Id._, p. 54. [17] _Id._, p. 56. [18] _Id._, p. 58. [19] _Id._, p. 58. [20] _Id._, p. 59. [21] _Id._, p. 60. [22] _Id._, p. 62. [23] _Id._, p. 184. [24] _Id._, p. 192. [25] _Id._, pp. 198-215. [26] _Id._, p. 449. [27] _Id._, p. 451. [28] _Id._, p. 452. [29] _Id._, p. 458. [30] _Id._, p. 458.