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- Herausgeber: DigiCat
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
Archer Butler Hulbert's 'Paths of the Mound-Building Indians and Great Game Animals' is a fascinating exploration of the ancient trails navigated by both Native American tribes and large animals across the American landscape. Through meticulous research and vivid descriptions, Hulbert delves into the historical significance of these pathways, shedding light on the cultural and environmental interactions that shaped the continent. Written in a detailed and informative style, the book provides a unique perspective on the interconnectedness of indigenous peoples and wildlife in pre-Columbian North America. Hulbert's work stands out for its blend of archaeological insights and natural history, offering readers a comprehensive understanding of the complex relationship between humans and nature in the region. Archer Butler Hulbert, a renowned historian and author, brings his expertise in American history and geography to 'Paths of the Mound-Building Indians and Great Game Animals'. His passion for uncovering the forgotten stories of the past drives his meticulous research and thoughtful analysis in this book. Hulbert's background in studying Native American cultures and early exploration influences his narrative, creating a rich and immersive reading experience for those interested in the history of the American West. I highly recommend 'Paths of the Mound-Building Indians and Great Game Animals' to anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the relationship between indigenous peoples and wildlife in North America. Hulbert's insightful exploration of ancient trails and their significance offers readers a unique perspective on the interconnected history of the region.
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Paths of the Mound-Building Indians and Great Game Animals
Table of Contents
PREFACE
Beginning with the first highways of America, the first monograph of the series will consider the routes of the mound-building Indians and the trails of the large game animals, particularly the buffalo, as having set the course of landward travel in America on the watersheds of the interior of the continent. The second monograph will treat of the Indian thoroughfares of America; the third, fourth, and fifth, the three roads built westward during the old French War, Washington’s Road (Nemacolin’s Path), Braddock’s Road, and the Old Glade (Forbes’s) Road. The sixth monograph will be a study of Boone’s Wilderness Road to Kentucky; the seventh and eighth, a study of the principal portage paths of the interior of the continent and of the military roads built in the Mississippi basin during the era of conquest; Vol. IX. will take up the historic water-ways which most influenced westward conquest and immigration; the famed Cumberland Road, or Old National Road, “which more than any other material structure in the land served to harmonize and strengthen, if not to save, the Union,” will be the subject of the tenth monograph. Two volumes will be given to the study of the pioneer roads of America, and two to the consideration of the history of the great American canals.
The history of America in the later part of the pioneer period, between 1810 and 1840, centers about the roads and canals which were to that day what our trunk railway lines are to us today. The “life of the road” was the life of the nation, and a study of the traffic on those first highways of land and water, and of the customs and experiences of the early travelers over them brings back with freshening interest the story of our own “Middle Age.” Horace Bushnell well said: “If you wish to know whether society is stagnant, learning scholastic, religion a dead formality, you may learn something by going into universities and libraries; something also by the work that is doing on cathedrals and churches, or in them; but quite as much by looking at the roads. For if there is any motion in society, the Road, which is the symbol of motion, will indicate the fact. When there is activity, or enlargement, or a liberalizing spirit of any kind, then there is intercourse and travel, and these require roads. So if there is any kind of advancement going on, if new ideas are abroad and new hopes rising, then you will see it by the roads that are building. Nothing makes an inroad without making a road. All creative action, whether in government, industry, thought, or religion, creates roads.” The days when our first roads and our great canals were building, were days when “new ideas were abroad and new hopes rising.” The four volumes of our series treating of pioneer roads and the great canals will be a record of those ideas and hopes and the mighty part they played in the social development of America. The final volume will treat of the practical side of the road question. An index will conclude the series.
HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF AMERICA
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Nothing is more typical of a civilization than its roads. The traveler enters the city of Nazareth on a Roman road which has been used, perhaps, since the Christian era dawned. Every line is typical of Rome; every block of stone speaks of Roman power and Roman will. And ancient roads come down from the Roman standard in a descending scale even as the civilizations which built them. The main thoroughfare from the shore of the Yellow Sea to the capital of Korea, used by millions for millenniums, has never been more than the bridle path it is today—fit emblem of a people without a hope in the world, an apathetic, hermit nation.
Every road has a story and the burden of every story is a need. The greater the need, the better the road and the longer and more important the story. Go back even to primeval America. The bear’s food was all about him, in forest and bush. He made no roads for he needed none, save a path into the valley. But the moose and deer and buffalo required new feeding-grounds, fresh salt licks and change of climate, and the great roads they broke open across the watersheds declare nothing if not a need.
The ancient Indian confederacies which tilled the soil of this continent and built great mounds for defense and worship—so great, indeed, that the people have even been known as “mound-builders”—undoubtedly first traveled the highest highways of America. Some of them may have known the water-ways better than any of the land-ways—for their signal stations were erected on the shores of many of our important rivers—but the location of their heaviest seats of population was where we find the richest lands and the heaviest populations today, and that is in what may be called the interior of the continent, or along the smaller rivers. Such stupendous works as Fort Ancient and Fort Hill are located beside very inferior streams, and between such works as these, placed without any seeming regard for the larger water-ways, these mound-building Indians must have had great thoroughfares along the summits of the watersheds. About these earthworks they constructed great, graded roadways, commensurate with the size of the works of which they were a necessary part, but so far as we know these early peoples built no roads between their forts or between their villages. They made no thoroughfares.
It was for the great game animals to mark out what became known as the first thoroughfares of America. The plunging buffalo, keen of instinct, and nothing if not a utilitarian, broke great roads across the continent on the summits of the watersheds, beside which the first Indian trails were but traces through the forests. Heavy, fleet of foot, capable of covering scores of miles a day, the buffalo tore his roads from one feeding-ground to another, and from north to south, on the high grounds; here his roads were swept clear of débris in summer, and of snow in winter. They mounted the heights and descended from them on the longest slopes, and crossed each stream on the bars at the mouths of its lesser tributaries.
Evidence remains today to show what great thoroughfares these buffalo roads were, for on the summit of many of the greater watersheds may be seen the remains of the old courses, and there the hoofprints of centuries of travel may yet be read. If the summit should be bare of trees, the very contour of the ground may suggest the old-time, deeply-trod roadway; where a forest lies over the summit a remarkably significant open aisle in the woods speaks yet more plainly of the ancient highway, where only shrubs and little trees are found in the center of the track.
It is very wonderful that the buffalo’s instinct should have found the very best courses across a continent upon whose thousand rivers such great black forests were thickly strung. Yet it did, as the tripod of the white man has proved; and until the problem of aërial navigation is solved, human intercourse will move largely on paths first marked by the buffalo. It is interesting that he found the strategic passage-ways through the mountains, so that the first explorers came into the West through gaps where were found broad buffalo roads; it is also interesting that the buffalo marked out the most practical portage paths between the heads of our rivers—paths that are closely followed today, for instance, by the Pennsylvania and Baltimore and Ohio railways through the Alleghanies, the Chesapeake and Ohio through the Blue Ridge, the Cleveland Terminal and Valley railway between the Cuyahoga and Tuscarawas rivers and the Wabash railway between the Maumee and Wabash rivers. In one instance (that of the Cuyahoga-Tuscarawas portage) the route of the ancient portage—most plainly to be discovered because it was for so long a time the boundary of the United States that lands on the west of it were surveyed by a different system from those on the east—is crossed by a modern road seven times in a distance of eight miles.
