CHAPTER I
THE OLD TRADING PATH
When, in the middle of the eighteenth century, intelligent white men were beginning to cross the Allegheny Mountains and enter the Ohio basin, one of the most practicable routes was found to be an old trading path which ran almost directly west from Philadelphia to the present site of Pittsburg. According to the Indians it was the easiest route from the Atlantic slope through the dense laurel wildernesses to the Ohio.[1] The course of this path is best described by the route of the old state road of Pennsylvania to Pittsburg built in the first half-decade succeeding the Revolutionary War. This road passed through Shippensburg, Carlisle, Bedford, Ligonier, and Greensburg; the Old Trading Path passed, in general, through the same points. Comparing this path, which became Forbes’s Road, with Nemacolin’s path which ran parallel with it, converging on the same point on the Ohio, one might say that the former was the overland path, and the latter, strictly speaking, a portage path. The Old Trading Path offered no portage between streams, as Nemacolin’s path did between the Potomac and Monongahela. It kept on higher, dryer ground and crossed no river of importance. This made it the easiest and surest course; in the wintry season, when the Youghiogheny and Monongahela and their tributaries were out of banks, the Old Trading Path must have been by far the safest route to the Ohio; it kept to the high ground between the Monongahela and Allegheny. It was the high ground over which this path ran that the unfortunate Braddock attempted to reach after crossing the Youghiogheny at Stewart’s Crossing. The deep ravines drove him back. There is little doubt he would have been successful had he reached this watershed and proceeded to Fort Duquesne upon the Old Trading Path.
As is true of so many great western routes, so of this path—the bold Christopher Gist was the first white man of importance to leave reliable record of it. In 1750 he was employed to go westward for the Ohio Company. His outward route, only, is of importance here.[2] On Wednesday, October 31, he departed from Colonel Cresap’s near Cumberland, Maryland and proceeded “along an old old Indian Path N 30 E about 11 Miles.”[3] This led him along the foot of the Great Warrior Mountain, through the Flintstone district of Allegheny County, Maryland. The path ran onward into Bedford County, Pennsylvania, and through Warrior’s Gap to the Juniata River. Here, near the old settlement Bloody Run, now Everett, the path joined the well-worn thoroughfare running westward familiarly known as the “Old Trading Path.” Eight miles westward of this junction, near the present site of Bedford, a well-known trail to the Allegheny valley left the Old Trading Path and passed through the Indian Frank’s Town and northwest to the French Venango—Franklin, Pennsylvania. Leaving this on his right, Gist pushed on west over the Old Trading Path. “Snow and such bad Weather” made his progress slow; from the fifth to the ninth he spent between what are now Everett in Bedford County and Stoyestown in Somerset County.[4] On the eleventh he crossed the north and east Forks of Quemahoning—often called “Cowamahony” in early records.[5] On the twelfth he “crossed a great Laurel Mountain”—Laurel Hill. On the fourteenth he “set out N 45 W 6 M to Loylhannan an old Indian Town on a Creek of Ohio called Kiscominatis, then N 1 M NW 1 M to an Indian’s Camp on the said Creek.”[6] The present town of Ligonier, Westmoreland County, occupies the site of this Indian settlement. “Laurel-hanne, signifying the middle stream in the Delaware tongue. The stream here is half way between the Juniata at Bedford and the Ohio [Pittsburg].”[7] Between here and the Ohio, Gist mentions no proper names. The path ran northwest from the present site of Ligonier, through Chestnut Ridge “at the Miller’s Run Gap, and reached the creek again at the Big Bottom below the present town of Latrobe on the Pennsylvania Central Railway; there the trail forked ... the main trail [traveled by Gist], led directly westward to Shannopin’s Town, by a course parallel with and a few miles north of the Pennsylvania Railway.”[8]
The following table of distances from Carlisle to Pittsburg was presented to the Pennsylvania Council March 2, 1754:
| MILES | |
| From Carlisle to Major Montour’s | 10 |
| From Montour’s to Jacob Pyatt’s | 25 |
| From Pyatt’s to George Croghan’s at Aucquick Old Town[9] | 15 |
| From Croghan’s to the Three Springs | 10 |
| From the Three Springs to Sideling Hill | 7 |
| From Sideling Hill to Contz’s Harbour | 8 |
| From Contz’s Harbour to the top of Ray’s Hill | 1 |
| From Ray’s Hill to the 1 crossing of Juniata[10] | 10 |
| From 1 crossing of Juniata to Allaquapy’s Gap[11] | 6 |
| From Allaquapy’s Gap to Ray’s town[12] | 5 |
| From Ray’s town to the Shawonese Cabbin[13] | 8 |
| From Shawonese Cabbins to the Top of Allegheny Mountain | 8 |
| From Allegheny Mountain to Edmund’s Swamp[14] | 8 |
| From Edmund’s Swamp to Cowamahony Creek[15] | 6 |
| From Cowamahony to Kackanapaulins | 5 |
| From Kackanapaulins To Loyal Hanin[16] foot Ray’s Hill | 18 |
| From Loyal Hanin to Shanoppin’s Town[17] | 50 |
By this early measurement the total distance between Carlisle to Pittsburg by the Indian path was one hundred and ninety miles; ninety-seven miles from Carlisle to Raystown and ninety-three miles from Raystown to Pittsburg.[18] When it is remembered that this was the original Indian track totally uninfluenced by the white man’s attention it is interesting to note that the great state road of Pennsylvania from Carlisle to Pittsburg, laid out in 1785, so nearly followed the Indian route that its length between those points (in 1819) was just one hundred and ninety-seven miles—seven miles longer[19] than that of the prehistoric trace of Indian and buffalo. Perhaps there is no more significant instance of the practicability of Indian routes in the United States than this. The very fact that the Indian path was not very much shorter than the first state road shows that it was distinctively a utilitarian course. One interested in this significant comparison will be glad to compare the courses of the old path and that of the state road as given by the compass.[20]
Other references to the Old Trading Path are made by such traders as George Croghan and John Harris. Croghan wrote to Richard Peters, March 23, 1754: “The road we now travel ... from Laurel Hill to Shanopens (near the forks of the Ohio), is but 46 miles, as the road now goes, which I suppose may be 30 odd miles on a straight line.”[21] In an “Account of the Road to Loggs Town on Allegheny River, taken by John Harris, 1754” this itinerary is given: