avoided the steeper hills and yet was compelled to lower his wagons from some hills with blocks and tackling—many being demolished at that. And yet to avoid the high ground was inevitably to run into bogs and swamps which were even worse than the hills. We do not have roads a mile wide nowadays, but this was not an unheard-of thing in the days of the pioneer roads. It was preferable to have them a mile wide rather than a mile deep, which would certainly have been the case in some places if one track had been used alone. And even with numberless side tracks, skirting in every direction around the more dangerous localities, horses were not infrequently drowned, and great wagons heavy with freight sometimes sank completely out of sight. The Black Swamp Road through Ohio south of Lake Erie was one of the most important in the West. It is recorded that on one occasion six horses were able to draw a two-wheeled vehicle but fifteen miles in three days. A newspaper of August 31, 1837, affirms that “the road through the Black Swamp has been much of the season impassable. A couple of horses were lost in a mud hole last week. The bottom had fallen out. The driver was unaware of the fact. His horses plunged in and ere they could be extricated were drowned.” It is comforting to think there has been some improvement in our country highways. Such accounts as this would have a tendency to influence the most skeptical.

The rivers were also great highways for emigration, particularly such streams as the Ohio which flowed west. With the building of the great canals new and more stable methods of travel were at the disposal of prospective travelers and there was an increase in the great tide of home-seekers. The smaller inland rivers were not likely so largely used by these armies of pioneers as some have thought. For instance, in a history of one of the interior counties of Ohio (which is divided by one of the best rivers in the West) is a twenty-five page description of the first immigrants, and of only one does it say: “James Oglesby was a very early settler ... and is said to have traveled up the Muskingum and Walhounding rivers in true Indian style in a canoe.” And, though the Ohio river was always a great highway to the West and Southwest, it was used less perhaps in the early days of the immigration than later. Flat and keel boats cost money, and money was a scarce article. In summer the river was very low, and one party of pioneers, at least, spent one-third of the entire time of journey from Connecticut to Marietta, Ohio, in coming down the Ohio from near Pittsburg. It took half as long to come those two hundred miles by river as to come all the way from Connecticut to the Ohio in a cart drawn by oxen. Moreover, even as late as the time of the starting of a regular line of steamer packets from Pittsburg to Cincinnati (1796) the passengers were assured in an advertisement that, in addition to being provided a place to sleep and something to eat, they would have each a loophole from which to shoot! The coming of steam navigation revolutionized river travel as later it revolutionized land travel.

This series of monographs will treat of the history of America as portrayed in the evolution of its highways of war and immigration and commerce. The more important highways, both land and water, will be specifically treated with reference to the national needs which they temporarily or permanently satisfied. The study of any highway for itself alone might prove of indifferent value, even though it were an Appian Way; but the story of a road, which shows clearly the rise, nature, and passing of a nation’s need for it, is of importance. It is not of national import that there was a Wilderness Road to Kentucky, but it is of utmost importance that a road through Cumberland Gap made possible the early settlement of Kentucky, in that Kentucky held the Mississippi river for the feeble colonies through days when everything in the West and the whole future of the American republic lay in a trembling balance. It is not of great importance that there was a Nemacolin’s Path across the Alleghanies; but if for a moment we can see the rough trail as the young Major Washington saw it while the vanguard of the ill-fated Fry’s army marched out of Wills Creek toward the Ohio, or if we can picture that terrible night’s march Washington made from Fort Necessity when Jumonville’s scouting party was run at last to cover by Half King’s Indians, we shall know far better than ever the true story of the first campaign of the war which won America for England, and realize as never before what a brave, daring youth he was who on Indian trails learned lessons that fitted him to become a leader of half-clothed, ill-equipped armies.

The first aim of these monographs is suggestiveness; there is a vast deal of geographic-historical work to be done throughout the United States. There is no more interesting outdoor work for local students than to trace, each in his own locality, the old land and water highways, Indian trails, portage paths, pioneer roads or early county or state roads. Maps should be made showing not only the evolution of road-making in each county in the entire land, but all springs and licks of importance should be correctly located and mapped; sites of Indian villages should be marked; frontier forts and blockhouses should be platted, including the surrounding defenses, covered ways, springs or wells, and paths to and fro; traders’ huts should all be placed, ancient boundary lines marked, old hunting-grounds mapped. Those who can assist students in such explorations are fast passing away. Much can be done this year that can never be done so well in all the years which will succeed.

In subsequent monographs the author will endeavor to thank such persons as have assisted him in their preparation. For the work already completed and for that yet to be done I am especially indebted to Mr. Arthur H. Clark, for encouragement and assistance; to the Hon. Rodney Metcalf Stimson, for the freedom of his splendid collection of Americana lately presented to Marietta College; and to the patient, devoted assistance and collaboration of my wife.

A. B. H.

Marietta, Ohio, July 1, 1902.

PART I

Paths of Mound-Building Indians

CHAPTER I

THE COMPARATIVE METHOD OF STUDY

The latest explorations of the mounds erected by those first Americans, known best as the mound-building Indians, have revolutionized our conceptions of the earliest race of which we know in America. Very many notions, founded upon the authority of the earlier archæologists, seem now to be either partly or wholly incorrect. Many assumptions as to the population of this country during the mound-building era, the degree of the civilization, and the perfection of the arts, have not been substantiated by the more accurate studies which have been made in the past decade.

The most important reason why so little progress has been made in unraveling the mystery of the mounds that abound in central North America is that “the authors who have written upon the subject of American archæology have proceeded upon certain assumptions which virtually closed the door against a free and unbiased