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Paths of the Mound-Building Indians and Great Game Animals — Key Ideas to Explore

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Authors: Hulbert, Archer Butler, 1873-1933 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2012 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: American bison; Mound-builders; Indian trails -- United States Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

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Words 23,036

Reading time 101 min

Text sections 4

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Source: Project Gutenberg record #40873

Examines how mound-building Indians and bison shaped early American land routes, using archaeological evidence and historical accounts to argue that watersheds, not waterways, were the primary corridors for migration and travel.

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these Indians was probably true of any antecedent race.

Assuming, then, that the mound-building people lived (in these states more particularly noticed) on the lesser "inland" streams where the later Indians were found, there is no question but that they moved about the country more or less as the Indians themselves did. Although the former people were more nearly a stationary people, yet we know that they hunted, and it is not reasonable to believe that they did not have commercial intercourse. In fact, from the contents of their mounds, we know they did. We also know that the various tribes made war upon one another, or at least were made war upon by some enemy.

All this necessitated highways of travel. Any one who has studied the West during Indian occupancy does not need to be asked to remember that travel in the earliest days in the interior was by land as well as by water. Those making long journeys at propitious seasons, such as the Iroquois who went southward in war parties, the Moravians being transferred to Ohio from Pennsylvania, pioneers en route down the Ohio river to Kentucky, the Wyandots on their memorable hegira to the Detroit river, used the waterways. But the main mode of travel for explorers, war parties, pioneer armies and missionaries seems to have been by the paths which threaded the forests.[9]

Of the hundreds of Indian forays into Virginia and Kentucky there is perhaps not one, even those moving down the Scioto and up the Licking, that used water transportation. In their hunting trips the canoe was useless except for transporting game and peltry to the nearest posts, and this was done often on the little Indian ponies.

For long months the lesser streams were ice-bound in the winter; in the summer, for equally long periods, they must have been nearly dry, as in the present era of slack-water navigation the larger of them are frequently very low. Even travel on the Ohio in low-water months was exasperatingly slow. One pilgrim to Ohio spent ninety days en route from Killingly, Connecticut, to Marietta, Ohio--thirty-one of them being spent in getting from Williamsport, Pennsylvania, down the Monongahela and Ohio to Marietta! The journey from Connecticut in a cart drawn by oxen to the Monongahela took but twice the time needed to come down the rivers to Marietta on a "Kentucky" flatboat![10] With high-water, and going down stream, a hundred miles a day could be covered.[11]

That the first pioneers into the interior of Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana preferred land routes to water is plain to the most casual reader of the history of the pioneer period. Such great entrepots as Wellsburg, Ohio, Limestone, Kentucky, and Madison, Indiana (all on the Ohio), attest the fact that the travel to the interior was by land routes and not by the smaller rivers.

And so, throughout historic times, one rule has held true in the region now under survey: that the lesser streams have never been used to any large degree as routes of travel by the white race, or by the red race before them. It is thus reasonable to believe that the earliest people, who so largely inhabited the interior valleys, found land travel more sure and expeditious than water travel on the little streams. A great many mound-building people lived by these smaller streams where so many of their works now stand. That they had ways of getting about the country goes without saying. In some instances the earth and stone with which they worked was brought from a distance. This could not have been accomplished by any means by water. We know they fought great battles; it is exceedingly doubtful and all against the lesson taught in times that are historic, that these armies traveled water routes. True, there were watch "towers" along the river banks, and the rivers of real size were undoubtedly the routes of armies--but it has been the opinion of some archæologists that their enemies came from the north. There are no rivers flowing from the interior of Ohio, for instance, to Lake Erie that are even now when dammed of a size sufficient to warrant us the belief that great armies passed over them.[12] We cannot imagine a hostile army of power great enough to have necessitated the building of such a work as Fort Ancient ever coming to it on the little river on which it stands.

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Archer Butler Hulbert opens this first volume of Historic Highways of America with a bold claim: the earliest land routes across the continent were set not by European explorers or later settlers, but by the movements of mound-building Indians and great game animals, particularly the buffalo. Rather than following rivers, these paths ran along watersheds—the high, dry divides between drainage basins—a pattern that Hulbert argues is visible in the distribution of archaeological remains and in the habits of bison herds. The book is structured as a dual investigation: Part I examines the mound-builders’ settlements and migrations, while Part II turns to the buffalo’s range and the roads its trails created. Throughout, Hulbert relies on maps, site descriptions, and early travel accounts to build his case, though he acknowledges that much of the evidence is circumstantial.

Watersheds as Highways

Hulbert’s central argument is that the mound-building Indians located their settlements on the heads of lesser streams—the interior highlands—rather than along major rivers. He contends that this placement necessitated landward routes of travel, and that these routes followed the watersheds. To support this, he cites archaeological maps of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin, which show concentrations of mounds and earthworks in interior locations, away from the main watercourses. He also quotes an unnamed archaeologist who observed that the lines of former occupancy “crossed the larger water-courses, such as the Mississippi, rather than up and down them.” This reversal of the conventional riverine model is the book’s most distinctive contribution.

The Buffalo’s Role in Road-Making

In Part II, Hulbert turns to the buffalo, arguing that its seasonal migrations and habit of following the easiest grades created the first continental thoroughfares. He describes the buffalo as “a creature of habit,” whose trails were “the shortest and most direct routes between important points.” These paths, he claims, were later adopted by Indians and then by white settlers. The evidence includes early accounts of buffalo roads “wide enough for a wagon” and references to their use by pioneers. Hulbert’s treatment is methodical, but he is careful not to overstate: he notes that while buffalo trails were important, they were not the only influence on Indian routes.

Evidence from Local Roadways

Hulbert assembles a catalog of specific archaeological features that he interprets as remnants of ancient roads. These include “parallel walls, graded way and mounds” in Pike County, Ohio, and a “roadway cut entirely around” a conical hill in Licking County. He also lists traces of camp sites and old trails in Union County, Indiana, and an “elevated roadway, half a mile in length” in Madison County, Louisiana. While he admits that such local features alone do not prove a network of long-distance highways, he argues that they become significant when combined with the watershed theory. The cumulative effect is a mosaic of small clues pointing to a larger pattern.

Migration Across, Not Along, Rivers

A key piece of evidence for Hulbert’s thesis is the observation that archaeological remains of similar type are found on opposite sides of major rivers, rather than strung along their banks. He cites the Mississippi as an example: “the longest stretch where those apparently the works of one people are found on one bank is from Dubuque, Iowa, to the mouth of Des Moines river.” This suggests that mound-building groups moved across the river, not up or down it. Hulbert interprets this as support for his watershed migration model, though he concedes that a full classification of mound types has not been completed. The argument is intriguing but rests on a single, somewhat vague citation.

Limitations of the Evidence

Throughout the book, Hulbert is candid about the gaps in his evidence. He notes that “this work has not been done, save in the most general way possible,” referring to the classification of mounds needed to trace migration routes. He also acknowledges that the existence of local roadways does not prove a system of long-distance trails. The reader is left with a compelling hypothesis rather than a proven fact. Hulbert’s method is to accumulate suggestive details—maps, site descriptions, historical accounts—and let them point toward a conclusion he cannot fully demonstrate. This honesty gives the book a scholarly tone, but it also means that the argument remains provisional.

Hulbert’s study is best read as an early attempt to synthesize archaeology, geography, and history into a unified account of America’s first roads. The evidence is fragmentary, and the conclusions are often speculative, but the central insight—that watersheds, not waterways, were the primary corridors of prehistoric travel—remains provocative. Readers interested in the intersection of human and animal movement, or in the pre-Columbian landscape, will find much to consider, though they should be prepared for a work that raises as many questions as it answers.

Reading about watersheds as the quiet highways of the mound-builders, I remembered tracing an old map with my grandfather, his finger following the ridgelines, not the rivers. That same hush of layered history, of violent events leaving delicate traces, came back to me last winter with The Fall River Tragedy: A History of the Borden Murders — Edition Insights—the way a single house can hold an entire century's unease, much like a forgotten trail.