Portage Paths: The Keys of the ContinentHulbert, Archer Butler
History
Portage Paths: The Keys of the Continent
Hulbert, Archer Butler
Portages -- North America
This portage is not of more than purely local interest save only that it
was the first western boundary of territory west of the Ohio to be
secured by the United States from the Indians. The treaties of Fort
McIntosh, Fort Harmar and Greenville designate this portage as the
western boundary line between white and red men. The path was surveyed
in July 1797--one year after the arrival of the Connecticut pioneers in
the Western Reserve--by Moses Warren Jr. Its total length was given as
eight miles, four chains, and fifty-five links.
The path was, undoubtedly, of great importance in the earliest days.
This route, if the rivers were passable, was certainly the most
practicable of all routes from Lake Erie to the lower Ohio. The portage
was comparatively easy and the Muskingum was a swift, clear river. The
Cuyahoga was probably almost impassable except at floodtide. The
Connecticut pioneers found it so in 1796. Pioneer settlers on the upper
Tuscarawas received much of their merchandise from the east by way of
Buffalo and the Cuyahoga-Tuscarawas portage.[65]
The Scioto and Miami rivers were not as large as the Muskingum but were
easily plied at most seasons by the light canoe. The Sandusky and
Auglaize (emptying into the Maumee) offered a waterway which, with
portages, took the traveler from Lake Erie to the Ohio by these routes.
That they were uncertain and difficult courses is shown by the records
of Croghan and Bonnécamps.[66]
The spot of ground at the head of the Great Miami (from the source of
Loramie Creek to the head of the St. Mary and Auglaize) was a more
important point than one would believe without considerable
investigation. Looking at the matter from the olden view-point it seems
that this was one of the strategic points in the West in the canoe age.
Here on Loramie Creek three routes focused--those of the St. Mary,
Auglaize, and Miami rivers. Here, near the mouth of Loramie Creek,
English traders erected a trading station almost contemporaneous with
Céloron's journey; from their point of vantage the French drove them
away, and here the earliest French store was built. This stood near the
mouth of the creek in Miami County (Ohio) while sixteen miles up the
creek at the beginning of the shortest portage was the location of famed
Loramie's Store of later date and known to half a continent for half a
century. The carrying place across to Girty's town (George not Simon
Girty) was five miles to what is now St. Marys, Shelby County on the St.
Mary River. Toward this point Harmar and Wayne both struck in 1790 and
1794, Wayne building Fort Loramie at that end of the portage path
mentioned. A stone raised near the mouth of Loramie Creek was one of the
corner stones of the old Indian treaty line mentioned in the treaties of
Fort Stanwix (1784), Fort McIntosh (1786), Fort Harmar (1789) and
Greenville (1795). Loramie Creek was known thereby as the "Standing
Stone fork of the Great Miami." One of the remarkable features of the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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