Portage Paths: The Keys of the Continent

by Archer Butler Hulbert

Coming down to the Revolutionary period, the battles fought upon these portages and the forts that were built show that these historic paths had lost little of their significance. All the way across the continent from the portage from the Kennebec to Quebec, over which Arnold led his army, to Fallen Timbers on the Maumee, near which Wayne built Fort Wayne, a significant portion of the struggle for a free America took place on portage paths. As in the French War, so in this later struggle, the paths between Lake Champlain and the Hudson and between the Mohawk and Lake Oneida were all-important passageways. Burgoyne was defeated not far from the spot where the French Dieskau was repulsed, and on the Oneida carrying-place, as has been said, the first United States flag was unfurled in battle in 1777. In the West, of course, Niagara never lost its importance, but the remainder of the portages had now lost something of their military significance, as the Revolution in the West was a series of raids and counter-raids on the settlements of the whites in Virginia and Kentucky, and upon the Indians in the valleys of the Muskingum, Scioto, Sandusky, Maumee, and Wabash. Cross-country land routes were well-worn at this date and few military movements were made which involved portages; such were Hamilton’s capture of Vincennes by way of the Maumee and the Wabash, and Burd’s keel-boat invasion up the Licking River into Kentucky. Savage strokes like those of Robertson and Sevier, Clark at Vincennes, McIntosh, Lewis, Brodhead, Bowman, Crawford, Harmar, St. Clair, and Wayne were distinctively land campaigns.

Yet in these, too, the value of the portage routes is most clearly seen, as for instance during the conquest of the northwestern Indians by General Anthony Wayne in 1793-94. The permanent headquarters of Wayne were at Fort Washington (Cincinnati), and temporary headquarters were at Fort Greenville (Greenville, O.) and Fort Defiance (Defiance, O.) The conquest was directed northward up the Great Miami Valley to the heads of the Wabash and Maumee. It was directed against the Indian villages, as was true of Harmar’s and St. Clair’s campaigns before it; and these villages, like so many others, were located in part at the portages between the Miami, Auglaize, St. Mary, and Wabash. At these places Wayne struck swiftly—building Forts Greenville, Recovery, Adams, and a fort on the headwaters of the Auglaize, the name of which is not known. From these points he made his heroic campaign of 1794 in the valleys of the Maumee, Auglaize and St. Mary. But with the successful prosecution of this campaign General Wayne’s work was not done. The country conquered must be held—the crops destroyed must not be resown—the villages destroyed must not be rebuilt. All this was as important a feat as the victory at Fallen Timber, and much more difficult.

And so, in the months succeeding his victory, Wayne did as valuable work for his country as at any time, and one of the most important of his plans was a movement which looked toward holding the northern portages from the Miami River to the St. Mary and Auglaize. In a letter to the Secretary of War, dated October 17, 1794, at the Miami villages, Wayne observes: “The posts in contemplation at Chillicothe, or Picque town, on the Miami of the Ohio, at Lormie’s stores, on the north branch, and at the old Tawa town, will reduce the land carriage of dead or heavy articles, at proper seasons, viz: late in the fall, and early in the spring, to thirty-five miles, and in times of freshets, to twenty in place of 175, by the most direct road to Grand Glaize, and 150 to the Miami villages, from fort Washington, on the present route, which will eventually be abandoned, as the one now mentioned will be found the most economical, and surest mode of transport, in time of war, and decidedly so in time of peace.”[27]

From Greenville on the twelfth of November he wrote again:

“As soon as circumstances will admit, the posts contemplated at Picque town, Lormie’s stores, and at the old Tawa towns, at the head of navigation, on Au Glaize river, will be established for the reception, and as the deposites, for stores and supplies, by water carriage, which is now determined to be perfectly practicable, in proper season; I am, therefore, decidedly of opinion, that this route ought to be totally abandoned, and that adopted, as the most economical, sure, and certain mode of supplying those important posts, at Grand Glaize and the Miami villages, and to facilitate an effective operation towards the Detroit and Sandusky, should that measure eventually be found necessary; add to this, that it would afford a much better chain for the general protection of the frontiers, which, with a block house at the landing place, on the Wabash, eight miles southwest of the post at the Miami villages, [southern end of the Maumee-Wabash portage path on Little River] would give us possession of all the portages between the heads of the navigable waters of the Gulfs of Mexico and St. Lawrence, and serve as a barrier between the different tribes of Indians....”[28] In the treaty of Greenville, signed by the confederated nations and the United States authorities, the reserved tracts indicate the line of policy previously suggested by General Wayne, and the following section emphasizes the strategic meaning of the portages of the interior of the West: “And the said Indian tribes will allow to the people of the United States, a free passage by land and by water, as one and the other shall be found convenient, through their country, along the chain of posts hereinbefore mentioned; that is to say, from the commencement of the portage aforesaid, at or near Loramie’s store, thence, along said portage to the St. Mary’s, and down the same to fort Wayne, and then down the Miami to lake Erie; again, from the commencement of the portage at or near Loramie’s store, along the portage; from thence to the river Auglaize, and down the same to its junction with the Miami at fort Defiance; again, from the commencement of the portage aforesaid, to Sandusky river and down the same to Sandusky bay and lake Erie, and from Sandusky to the post which shall be taken at or near the foot of the rapids of the Miami of the lake; and from thence to Detroit. Again, from the mouth of Chicago, to the commencement of the portage between that river and the Illinois, and down the Illinois river to the Mississippi; also, from fort Wayne, along the portage foresaid, which leads to the Wabash and then down the Wabash to the Ohio.”[29]

As a site for forts the old portage paths came to take an important place in the social order of things. In many parts settlements were safe only within the immediate vicinity of a fort. Often they were safe only within the palisade walls of upright logs;[30] and around these interior fortresses the first lands were cleared and the first grain sowed. They were trading posts as well as forts—indeed many of the portage forts were originally only armed trading stations located at the portages because these were common routes of travel. Around them the Indians raised their huts when the semi-annual hunting seasons were over. Thus on the portage, settlements sprang up about the forts to which the military régime had no objection—though such settlements were discouraged equally by those devoted to the earliest fur trade and to missionary expansion.[31] But military officers found their one hope of retaining the land lay in allying the Indians firmly with them. The attempts of the French so to shift the seats of the Indian tribes in the West that the English could not trade with them or deflect them from French interest forms an interesting chapter in the early rivalry for Indian support.[32] This never appeared more acute than at Fort Duquesne in 1758 when Forbes’s army was approaching and the brave missionary Post was among the Delawares urging them to leave the region about the fort and abandon the French.

These portage forts being, oftentimes, half-way places, were convenient points for conventions and treaties. The Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1768) was one of the most important in our national history; other conventions, such as at Fort Watauga (1775), Fort Miami (1791), Greenville (1795), and Portage des Sioux (1815), are instances of important conventions meeting at half-way fortresses on or near the portage passageways.

When the pioneer era of expansion dawned, these worn paths, in many cases, became filled with the eager throngs hastening westward to occupy the empire beyond the mountains. The roads the armies had cut during the era of military conquest became the main lines of the expansive movement and only the waterways which gave access to the Ohio River or the Great Lakes were of great importance. The two important roadways which served as portages were the Genesee Road from the Mohawk to Buffalo, and Braddock’s Road from Alexandria, Virginia to Brownsville (Redstone Old Fort), Pennsylvania. The heavier freight of later days tended to lengthen the old portages, as each terminus had to be located at a depth of water which would float many hundred-weight. But, as in the old days of canoes, the stage of water still determined the length of portage. Freight sent over the Alleghenies for the lower Ohio River ports of Indiana and Kentucky was shipped at Brownsville if the Monongahela contained a good stage of water; if not, the wagons continued onward to Wheeling with their loads. Old residents at such points as Rome, New York; Watertown, Pennsylvania; Akron, Ohio; Fort Wayne, Indiana remember vividly the pioneer day of the portages when barrels of salt and flour, every known implement of iron, mill stones, jugs and barrels of liquor, household goods, seeds, and saddles composed the heterogeneous loads that were dragged or rolled or hauled or “packed” over the portages of the West. Strenuous individuals have been known to roll a whiskey barrel halfway across a twenty-mile portage.

With the settling of the country and a new century came a new age of road-building. Travel until now had been on north and south routes—on portage paths, which usually ran north and south between the heads of rivers which flowed north or south, on routes of the buffalo, which the herds had laid on north and south lines during their annual migrations, and on Indian trails which had been worn deep by the nations of the north and those of the south during their immemorial conflicts. The main east and west land routes, such as Forbes’s and Braddock’s, were now to be replaced by well-made thoroughfares. In the building of certain of these, the dominating influence of water transportation, and, consequently, the strategic routes between them, were considered of utmost importance. This is emphasized strikingly in the building of the Cumberland National Road across the Alleghenies by the United States Government (1806-1818). In the Act passed by Congress enabling the people of Ohio to form a state we read: “That one-twentieth of the net proceeds of the lands lying within said State sold by Congress shall be applied to the laying out and making public roads leading from the navigable waters emptying into the Atlantic, to the Ohio.”[33] The Commissioners appointed according to law by President Jefferson surveyed the territory through which the road should pass and met at Cumberland, Maryland for consultation. In their report of 1806 they said: “In this consultation the governing objects were:

1. Shortness of distance between navigable points on the eastern and western waters.