Joseph Buell, in a journey from Vincennes to the Ohio, relates this incident in his journal under date of October 4th: “In our march today, came across five buffaloes. They tried to force a passage through our column. The general ordered the men to fire on them. Three were killed and the others wounded.”[102]
Dr. Walker writes the following under the date of June 19th, 1750: “We got to Laurel Creek early this morning, and met so impudent a Bull Buffaloe that we were obliged to shoot him, or he would have been amongst us.”[103]
Buffalo roads should be divided into two classes-local and transcontinental. The former were the short roads which converged from the feeding and stamping-grounds, brakes and meadows, to the licks where the animal’s natural craving for salt was satisfied. The transcontinental routes were those used in migrating from one portion of the country to another, like the great route through Cumberland Gap.
Such regions as Kentucky, where there were numerous salt licks and great areas of meadow-land near by, became favorite haunts for herds of buffalo, and here their local roads are of such a nature as to be reckoned among “the national curiosities of the state.” Broad, hard, and often deep, these great roads were adopted immediately by Indians and white men alike as highways of travel. They are thus described by some early writers:
“The roads opened by these animals may be reckoned among the national curiosities of the state [Kentucky], being generally wide enough for a carriage or waggon way, in which trees, shrubs, etc., are all trampled down, and destroyed by the irresistible impetus of the mighty phalanx.”[104]
Croghan wrote in his Journal (1765): “We came to a large road which the buffaloes have beaten spacious enough for a wagon to go abreast, and leading straight into the Lick.”[105]
In the MS. autobiography of General James Taylor of Newport, Kentucky, is found this statement “Big Bone Lick ... has been a great resort of the buffalo, and the roads ... were larger than any common ones now [1794] in the State, and in many places were worn five or six feet deep.”[106]
“A foot-path, zigzagging through the freshly made stumps of trees and past some saplings of dogwood and pawpaw, led down from the station [Bryant’s] to this spring, while a much broader track sloped from the main gate on the southeastern side of the stockade to a road a little distance away and nearly fronting the fort, that was a priceless boon to the pioneers. It seemed an ancient product of human skill, but was, in fact, a ‘trace,’ hard and firm, made by the buffaloes alone which had thundered over it for a thousand years in their journeys to the Salt Licks.”[107]