Turning from a particular region, where, because of the close proximity of licks and feeding-grounds, the buffalo made local roads, it becomes of interest to look at the country at large and note the great continental routes.
For an animal credited with but little instinct, the buffalo found the paths of least resistance with remarkable accuracy.[122]
Undoubtedly the migrations of the buffalo caused the opening of the great overland trails upon which the first white men came into the West. The nomadic trait which induced migratory movements was acquired through necessity. The animals moved in herds. The Central West, for instance, was, when white men first saw it, covered largely with forests; between the forests were open spots covered with rank grasses. These “opens” were of various sizes from little patches surrounded by forests to great treeless expanses miles in length and breadth.
However large these open prairies, the herds of buffalo would in a short time exhaust the supply of grass and then troop on to fresher fields. Fires, grasshoppers, and drouth also tended to destroy the buffaloes’ feeding-ground and to send them on long pilgrimages. Thus it is probable that in the day when the eastern portion of the United States was included in the habitat of the buffaloes, these animals were continuously trooping along over their great roadways throughout the summer, one herd after another, in search of fresh licks and springs.
The buffaloes migrated annually from the north to the south, and throughout their habitat in the United States, their great trails were north and south trails. The rivers flowing mainly east or west into the Mississippi are crossed usually at right angles by the more important trails of the buffalo. The annual movement was caused not so much by the change of temperature (though buffaloes which remain sometimes in cold climates seek the warmer, secluded spots) as by the frozen condition of the ground and the depths of snow which buried the grasses upon which they fed. When, from various causes, the annual north and south migrations of the buffalo herds of the Far West were discontinued, an east and west migration took place—the herds moving westward to more protected portions of the country. As late as 1872, hunting parties made their headquarters during the summer at Hay’s City, and in winter moved their quarters a hundred or a hundred and fifty miles westward of their fall camps; near Hay’s City the grass was buried under ice and encrusted snow, while near Ellis the ground was bare. Thus unnaturally the migrations were turned east and west rather than north and south, and the trails which marked the former lines of migration were cut by deep-worn trails crossing them at right angles.[123]
During the reign of the buffaloes in the Ohio basin their greater thoroughfares were undoubtedly made by their annual migrations, even though the extent of this movement did not exceed a few hundred miles. In this day the winters are appreciably milder along the Ohio river than even in the northern portions of the states of which it forms the southern boundary. And here, as in the Far West, the routes of the buffalo are north and south with here and there a great cross trail.
These greater trails lay largely on the watersheds which the buffalo found with great certainty. He was an agile climber despite his great size and weight. Writes Mr. Allen, “They will often leap down vertical banks where it would be impossible to urge a horse, and will even descend precipitous rocky bluffs by paths where a man could only climb down with difficulty, and where it would seem almost impossible for a beast of their size and structure to pass except at the cost of broken limbs or a broken neck. On the bluffs of the Musselshell river I found places where they had leaped down bare ledges three or four feet in height with nothing but ledges of rocks for a landing-place; sometimes, too, through passages between high rocks but little wider than the thickness of their own bodies, with also a continuous precipitous descent for many feet below. Nothing in their history ever surprised me more than this revelation of their expertness and fearlessness in climbing.”[124]
Ordinarily the buffalo laid out his road with commendable sagacity, “usually choosing the easiest grades and the most direct courses, so that a buffalo trail can be depended upon as affording the most feasible road possible through the region it traverses.”[125] This was because their weight demanded the most stable courses and they were thus very sure of avoiding low grounds, preferring even difficult climbs to passage-ways through soft ground; we have made one quotation, from Dr. Walker’s Journal, which notes that one “Buffaloe Road” which he followed afforded an “Ascent and Descent tollerably easie.”[126]
The three great overland routes from the Atlantic seaboard into the Central West were undoubtedly first opened by the buffalo; one was the course through central New York followed afterward by the Erie canal and the New York Central railway; the second from the Potomac through southwestern Pennsylvania to the headwaters of the Ohio; the third the famous route through Cumberland Gap into Kentucky.
These three routes led to the northern, the central, and the southern portions of the great Ohio basin. It is certain that the two latter routes were great buffalo migration routes and there is little doubt that the route through New York was a buffalo thoroughfare. There were lesser thoroughfares which, though latterly known as Indian trails, were undoubtedly paths of the buffalo. One of these was the famous Kittaning Path from the headwaters of the Juniata to the Allegheny, the route of the Pennsylvania railway across the Alleghanies; another was the old trail through Carlisle and Bedford, Pennsylvania, later known as Forbes’s route to Pittsburg. Still another was the well-worn path over the Alleghany divide by way of Hot Springs, the present route of the Chesapeake and Ohio railway.[127]