Portage Paths: The Keys of the Continent

by Archer Butler Hulbert

“Its starting point was on the west side of Chautauqua creek at Barcelona, within a few rods of the lake. Its course from this point was southerly along the bank of the creek, passing the afterward location of the first grist mill built in the county, by John McMahon, not far from the mouth of the creek, in 1804 or 1805, reached and crossed the now main road at the ancient cross roads, one mile west of the centre of the village of Westfield, at the monument erected there a few years since by Hon. E. T. Foote (1870). From this point by a south easterly course it soon reached the steep bank of the creek Chautauqua, along which it ran for a mile when it passed into a deep gorge of a hundred feet or more in depth, through which the creek ran, by an extensive dugway still plainly to be seen on the lands owned by Miss Elizabeth Stone, where it crossed the creek and by another dugway on lands for many years owned by Wm. Cummings, it reached the high banks a few rods from the present Glen Mills. The passage of this gorge was a work of considerable magnitude. The west bank was so very precipitous that the passage of teams would seem nearly impossible, yet it is said that in later years, before the road on the east side of the creek through the now village of Westfield was opened, vast quantities of salt and merchandise were transported over it from Lake Erie to Lake Chautauqua for Pittsburgh and other points in the Ohio Valley.

“On the east side of the gorge the road was less precipitous and is now a public highway. After reaching a point above Glen Mills on the south side of the gorge through which the east branch of the Chautauqua creek now runs, and where the Mayville road is now located at that point, to avoid the rugged section over the hill it passed up the east branch for some distance and continued to the east of the present thoroughfare to Mayville, and reached Chautauqua lake at or near the present steamboat landing.”

By 1752—the year of Marin’s expedition to the Ohio—the old road was well overgrown. In the primeval forests it did not take long for a road to become impassable if unused. Braddock’s Road over the Alleghenies, cut in 1755, was impassable in 1758. This road cut in 1749 was cut out again in 1752.[62] In each case three years had elapsed. Marin reached the portage (Barcelona) in April 1752, but, warned perhaps by Céloron, was unfavorably impressed with the practicability of the route and decided to push on and find another portage to the Allegheny. Of this matter we have the testimony of Stephen Coffin, an eye-witness:

“They [Marin’s vanguard] remained at the fort [Niagara] 15 days, and then set out by water, it being April, and arrived at Chadakoin, on Lake Erie [Barcelona], where they were ordered to fell timber and prepare it for building a fort, according to the Governor’s instructions, but Mons. Morang [Marin] coming up the next day with 500 men and 20 Indians, put a stop to the building of the fort, not liking the situation, the river chadakoin [Chautauqua Creek] being too shallow to carry out any craft with provisions, etc, to Belle Riviere.... The two commanders had a sharp debate, the first insisting on building the fort there in accordance with the instructions, but Morang gave him a writing to satisfy the Governor on that point; and then Mons. Mercier, who was commissary and engineer was directed to go along the lake and look for a situation, which he found, and returned in a few days, it being fifteen leagues to the southwest of chadakoin.”[63]

The portage chosen by Marin in preference to this Chautauqua route was that from Presque Isle (Erie, Pennsylvania) to Rivière aux Bœufs.

Marin did not accomplish the task of fort-building for which he was sent in the time prescribed, and his failure was attributed by some to his choice of route to the Allegheny. When returning to Niagara late in the fall a detachment of French from Presque Isle again landed at the Chautauqua portage. “On the 30th (October) they arrived,” Coffin testified, “at Chadakoin where they stayed four days, during which time Mons. Peon [Pean] with 200 men, cut a wagon road over the carrying place from Lake Erie to Lake chadakoin, viewed the situation which proved to their liking, so set off Nov. 3d for Niagara.”

We have one other glimpse of these impetuous Frenchmen widening this first portage path from the Great Lakes toward the Ohio. Samuel Shattuck was born in Deerfield, Massachusetts in 1741. In 1752 he went from his native town on a ranging expedition and was at Fort Oswego when Marin’s party went down Lake Ontario. An officer and five soldiers—one of whom was this eleven-year-old lad—were instantly sent out to watch the French squadron of canoes. They followed them to Niagara and into Lake Erie. An autobiographical story has been taken down by Dr. Taylor from the lips of Shattuck’s grandson. Soon after passing Niagara, the story goes, the boats were lost to sight; “but we expected to overtake them easily, and in fact did so sooner than was agreeable to us as we came near discovering ourselves to the Indians that belonged to the expedition scattered through the woods. They had landed at the mouth of Chautauqua creek, as now called, and were already felling trees on the west side of the Creek, apparently for some sort of fortification. We were confident they had chosen this as a carrying place to some waterway south of the highlands.... From some cause not apparent to us there was a cessation of work, and after three or four days the whole of both parties, with the exception of a few Indians, embarked in their boats and moved westward.” Young Shattuck went on with the party and remained near Presque Isle spying on the French movements until September, when his party returned to Oswego. In October—such was the anxiety of the English concerning this fort and road-building—the same scouts were sent back toward Presque Isle. In the meantime, as before stated, the French had started back for Niagara; landing at the Chautauqua portage to make a road. “On the seventh day out [from Oswego],” reads Shattuck’s autobiographical story, “or near October 30th, as near as I remember, in the afternoon we came upon a party of nearly or quite a hundred Frenchmen rolling logs into a ravine in the bottom of a deep gulf, and digging into the steep sides of the gulf for a road, apparently, at a point that I now (1826) know to have been on the south border of the village of Westfield.... We came upon this party very suddenly and unexpectedly, for we had supposed that the whole matter of a carrying place had been transferred to Erie.... As it was we escaped and witnessed the completion of the road from Lake Erie to Lake Chautauqua. on the third or fourth day the whole party embarked in their boats and moved eastward.”[64]

Passing west of Presque Isle, the first stream offering another passage way to the Ohio was the Cuyahoga River. Ascending this stream about twenty-five miles, an eight-mile portage, almost within the city limits of Akron, Ohio, offered the traveler a passage way to the Tuscarawas branch of the Muskingum River, which in turn offered a clear course to the Ohio at Marietta.

This portage is not of more than purely local interest save only that it was the first western boundary of territory west of the Ohio to be secured by the United States from the Indians. The treaties of Fort McIntosh, Fort Harmar and Greenville designate this portage as the western boundary line between white and red men. The path was surveyed in July 1797—one year after the arrival of the Connecticut pioneers in the Western Reserve—by Moses Warren Jr. Its total length was given as eight miles, four chains, and fifty-five links.

The path was, undoubtedly, of great importance in the earliest days. This route, if the rivers were passable, was certainly the most practicable of all routes from Lake Erie to the lower Ohio. The portage was comparatively easy and the Muskingum was a swift, clear river. The Cuyahoga was probably almost impassable except at floodtide. The Connecticut pioneers found it so in 1796. Pioneer settlers on the upper Tuscarawas received much of their merchandise from the east by way of Buffalo and the Cuyahoga-Tuscarawas portage.[65]