Madison County, Louisiana: Group of earthworks, consisting of seven large and regular mounds and an elevated roadway, half a mile in length, on the right bank of Walnut Bayou, 7 miles from the Mississippi river.[84]
Baltimore County, Massachusetts: Old Indian trail in same county, leading from the rocks of Deer Creek (Hartford county) to an ancient settlement near Sweet Air.[85]
Licking County, Ohio: Work on Colton’s place on Newark and Flint Ridge road—a conical hill which has had a roadway “cut entirely around it; the dirt is thrown up the hill, leaving a level track with a wall on the upper side.” Two miles and a half northeast of Amsterdam.
West Virginia: Indian trail from Grave Creek mound to the lakes, passing over Flint Ridge.[86]
Pike County, Ohio: Ancient works at Piketon, consisting of parallel walls, graded way and mounds.[87]
It is not, however, on this slight evidence of local roadways that one would wish to base belief that the early Indians opened the first land highways in America. It is possible that they had great, graded roads near their towns and no roads elsewhere, but it is hardly conceivable.
We have seen that the mound-building Indians occupied, in many instances, the heads of the lesser streams, and the argument in favor of their having opened the first land highways has been based on this interior situation which, unless the lesson of history in this case tends to false reasoning, necessitated landward routes of travel.
There is, fortunately, one last piece of evidence which will more than make up for any lack of conclusiveness which may be laid to the charge of the preceding arguments.