Paths of the Mound-Building Indians and Great Game Animals

by Archer Butler Hulbert

From the time Boone led the van of the pioneer hosts into the southern portion of the Ohio basin until the present day, the buffalo routes have perceptibly influenced the course of travel. Writes a Kentucky historian:

“Exploring the country from the headwaters of Cumberland river to the Ohio, they discovered its main streams, and its variety of soil and surface. By following its trodden roads, or ‘traces’ as the pioneers called them, which the buffaloes made from their grazing fields and brakes, they [Boone and his brother] found a number of the great ‘licks’ to which wild animals in countless multitudes commonly resorted in hunt of salt. These buffalo traces are plainly marked out to the present day.”[108]

One or two references will show how common it was to refer to buffalo “traces” as the main thoroughfares of Kentucky: “Hardly had the plaudits of the pioneers for the women of Bryant’s Station died on the stillness of the sultry August air ere summer breezes carried the story of the awful carnage and destruction at the Battle of the Blue Licks, from the valley of the Licking, by the buffalo traces, to the settlements on the Kentucky River.”[109] “... It was the 16th of August when Caldwell and McKee, piloted by Simon Girty, assailed the place [Bryant’s Station]. They had surrounded it during the previous night. They came like the pestilence that walks in darkness, unexpected and unseen. They had marched along the buffalo traces or stolen through the forests without having given to any one any notice of their intention.”[110]

The course of one of these famous “traces” is thus described:

“From Big Bone Lick buffalo roads led to Blue Licks, and also southwest to Drennon’s Lick, in Henry County, thence to the crossing of the Kentucky just below Frankfort. From the valley of the river they then passed to the high ground east of Frankfort by a deeply worn road yet visible, known as the Buffalo Trace, to the Stamping Ground, in Scott County, a town named from the fact that the animals in vast herds would tread or stamp the earth while crowded together and moving around in the effort of those on the outside to get inside and thus secure protection from the flies. Thence they passed by the Great Crossings, so called from its being the place where they crossed Elkhorn, two miles west of Georgetown, and thence eastward to Blue Lick, May’s Lick, and across the river into Ohio. Their roads formed in the comparatively level country the routes of the immigrants through the dense forests, impenetrable from the heavy cane, peavines, and other undergrowth. They also determined in many portions of the State not only the lines of travel and transportation, but also of settlement, as particularly shown between Maysville and Frankfort, a distance of about eighty miles, where the settlements were first made along the Buffalo road, and later the turnpike and railroad followed in close proximity to the route surveyed by this sagacious animal, which Mr. Benton said blazed the way for the railroad to the Pacific. The same idea is embodied in the vernacular of the unlettered Kentuckian who said that the then great roadmakers were ‘the buffler, the Ingin, and the Ingineer.’”[111]

“May 31st, 1765. Early in the morning we went to the great Lick, where those bones are only found, about four miles from the river, on the south-east side. In our way we passed through a fine timbered clear wood; we came into a large road which the buffaloes have beaten, spacious enough for two wagons to go abreast, and leading straight into the Lick. It appears that there are vast quantities of these bones lying five or six feet under ground, which we discovered in the bank, at the edge of the Lick. We found here two tusks above six feet long; we carried one, with some other bones, to our boats, and set off.”[112]

“Monday, Oct. 17th, 1785. Here Mr. Zane found the drove of Buffaloes which he pursued; they took up this creek to the licks. Here are large roads to the licks. Below this creek is a large bottom of fine timber. Three miles down Mr. Zane killed a fine buffalo, which induced me to encamp.”[113]

Another historian, after describing the bold attack of the British and Indian horde on Bryant’s Station, speaks of the route of the retreating army and its pursuers:

“It was not difficult to find the road on which the departing enemy had marched. They had taken what was known as the middle buffalo trace, leading along near where Paris and Millersburg now stand, to the salt springs at Blue Licks. It was easy to follow these roads which the buffalo, the pioneer engineers of the great West, had laid down as best for travel. Once having ascertained the route which the Indians pursued, the marching was rapid.... The enemy in front of them had showed no haste in their journey to their own land. Leaving on the morning of the 17th, they had camped some twenty miles away. During the day of the 18th they had marched about eighteen miles more, and now, on the morning of the 19th, they were only three miles in advance of their pursuers, on the east side of the Licking, at the point where the Maysville and Lexington road now crosses that stream over a suspension bridge.... Forming in line and riding in the narrow trace, which rarely exceeded seven or eight feet in width, two or three abreast, the pioneers soon struck a little branch, along which the trace wound its way to the bottom of the Licking River. About a mile from the ford the trace left the hillside and turned north-westwardly into this branch and followed it down to the mother stream. At this point some consultation was held among the officers, and it was here that Boone, whose great experience and whose thorough knowledge of the country gave his opinion much weight, suggested that, instead of following this trace and going down the river, they should follow the ridge and strike the Licking two miles above, cross at Abnee’s or Bedinger’s mills, and thus come down to the banks of the Licking some two and a half miles above Blue Licks, and cross the Licking into a wide valley from which, a mile eastwardly, they would gain the ridge along which the trace pursued its way into Fleming and Mason counties.... The command ‘Forward!’ rang through the woods and echoed along the hillsides, and down the fateful trace to the Blue Licks ford the cavalcade pursued its march. At the point where the trace strikes the Licking the valley is a quarter of a mile wide. It is two hundred feet on the western side, where the Kentucky pioneers emerged from the forest, and some eight hundred feet wide on the east side, where the foe for hours had been waiting the advance of the pursuers, whose presence by this time was thoroughly known to them.... Across the Licking the trace followed up the hillside of the ridge, which was rocky and barren of all trees and vegetation. For ages the buffaloes had come to these licks to find salt. Instinct had taught them the necessity of periodical visitations to these saline springs, where nature had provided this essential for animal life, and for hundreds of years, along these narrow paths, cut out of the woods by the ceaseless trampings of these mighty herds of buffalo, had come millions of these animals to find health and life in the waters which gushed from the Licking bottom. When they had satisfied nature’s call for salt, these herds would climb the adjacent hills to lie down and rest through the day and sleep through the night. On these eminences thousands of them would stand and watch the incoming buffaloes as they emerged from the trace on the western side, and, plunging into the waters of the Licking, swim across the stream and slake nature’s demand for this necessary product, which here the Great Provider for all animal life had laid up in unlimited quantity.... The backbone of the ridge along which the fight was to occur was about four hundred and fifty feet in width. Trigg was ordered to the right, and his route was close to the edge of the ravine which comes up from the bank of the Licking and reaches the top of the hill close to the point where the Sardis turnpike leaves the Lexington and Maysville road.”[114]

The favorite paths of the settlers were these “traces” made hard as modern roads by the herds which had traversed them. Even the first main street of Lexington was almost impassable in bad weather, and was deserted for the road of the buffalo near by.[115] With the passing of the buffalo, their old routes became clogged in time with wind-strewn brush and fallen trees; but, so good was the course and so solid the footing, that the pioneers cleared these routes in preference to opening roads of their own. A specific illustration of this is noted by a Lexington historian: