CHAPTER IV
PORTAGES TO THE MISSISSIPPI BASIN
The portage paths from the Great Lakes, or streams entering them, to the tributaries of the Mississippi River were of great importance during the era when that river was the goal of explorers, conquerors and pioneers. So numerous were they, it is only possible to describe the most important briefly in this catalogue. The greater are worthy, each, of an exhaustive monograph, and even those of least prominence were of importance far beyond our ability to understand in these days. Of them all only three routes have received the attention they deserve; these are the Lake Erie-Lake Chautauqua portage, the Wabash route, and the St. Joseph-Kankakee portage. Several other important portages present as interesting fields of study, if not more so, as these, and local historians living near these paths will do well to interest themselves in them, map their exact routes minutely, locate the old springs, licks, forts, and traders’ cabins, before all trace and recollection of them is lost.
Passing westward from Niagara the first explorers of the West found the shortest route from the lakes to the Ohio was by a portage from Chautauqua Creek to Chautauqua Lake and from thence down the Conewango to the Allegheny River. Whether or not this was the most practicable route it was, at first, of major importance. The shortest route was all too long for men on missions such as that of Céloron bearing his leaden plates to the Ohio Valley in 1749.[57]
There was, undoubtedly, an Indian portage between Lake Erie and Lake Chautauqua before Céloron’s expedition, but it would seem that now the first roadway was built here. Céloron reached Niagara River July 6, 1749. He departed on the fifteenth, and “on the 16th,” wrote Father Bonnècamps “we arrived early at the portage of Yjadakoin. It began at the mouth of a little stream called Rivière aux pommes [“apple River”],—the 3rd that is met after entering the lake, and thus it may be easily recognized.”[58]
On the seventeenth the party began the tedious portage and “made a good league.” On the day following “our people being fatigued, we shortened the intervals between the stations, and we hardly made more than half a league ... the 22nd, the portage was entirely accomplished.”
Six days were thus spent in crossing the nine-mile path—a very good indication of how difficult was the journey. And yet Bonnècamps affirms “The road is passably good.”[59] This road was opened by a detachment under Villiers and Le Borgne sent out by Céloron on the sixteenth—“nearly three-quarters of a league of road” being cleared the first day.[60]
A detailed study of this path has been made by Dr. H. C. Taylor of Brocton, New York.[61] From him we quote the following concerning the “Old Portage Road,” as the path is known locally: