Historic Highways of America Volume VII Part 6

"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 Riviere aux Boeufs.

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, Ma.s.sachusetts 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 pa.s.sing 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]

Pa.s.sing west of Presque Isle, the first stream offering another pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sable, 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 impa.s.sable 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]

The Scioto and Miami rivers were not as large as the Muskingum but were easily plied at most seasons by the light canoe. The Sandusky and Auglaize (emptying into the Maumee) offered a waterway which, with portages, took the traveler from Lake Erie to the Ohio by these routes.

That they were uncertain and difficult courses is shown by the records of Croghan and Bonnecamps.[66]

The spot of ground at the head of the Great Miami (from the source of Loramie Creek to the head of the St. Mary and Auglaize) was a more important point than one would believe without considerable investigation. Looking at the matter from the olden view-point it seems that this was one of the strategic points in the West in the canoe age.

Here on Loramie Creek three routes focused--those of the St. Mary, Auglaize, and Miami rivers. Here, near the mouth of Loramie Creek, English traders erected a trading station almost contemporaneous with Celoron's journey; from their point of vantage the French drove them away, and here the earliest French store was built. This stood near the mouth of the creek in Miami County (Ohio) while sixteen miles up the creek at the beginning of the shortest portage was the location of famed Loramie's Store of later date and known to half a continent for half a century. The carrying place across to Girty's town (George not Simon Girty) was five miles to what is now St. Marys, Shelby County on the St.

Mary River. Toward this point Harmar and Wayne both struck in 1790 and 1794, Wayne building Fort Loramie at that end of the portage path mentioned. A stone raised near the mouth of Loramie Creek was one of the corner stones of the old Indian treaty line mentioned in the treaties of Fort Stanwix (1784), Fort McIntosh (1786), Fort Harmar (1789) and Greenville (1795). Loramie Creek was known thereby as the "Standing Stone fork of the Great Miami." One of the remarkable features of the Loramie portage was the deadened trees to be seen here--indicative of busy canoe-building.

At the head of the Maumee--the "Miami river of Lake Erie"--a portage path led to the Wabash. It began on the left bank of the St. Mary River, a short distance above its junction with the St. Joseph, and ran eight miles to Little River, the first branch of the Wabash. This route from the Lakes to the Mississippi, at first of least importance, became finally the most important of the five great French pa.s.sage ways southwest. It was discovered to be the shortest route from the capital of New France to the Mississippi and Illinois settlements and has been appropriately called "the Indian Appian Way." The importance of this route in the history of the Old Northwest has been effectively presented by Elbert Jay Benton.[67]

The voyager's canoes followed the Ottawa river from Montreal, then by portage to Lake Nip.i.s.sing, and to Georgian bay, an eastern arm of Lake Huron, and thence by the northern lakes to Green bay, the Fox, and by portage to the Wisconsin and Mississippi rivers. It was the most natural route because in every way it was the line of least resistance. It avoided the near approaches to the Iroquois Indian limits and led directly to the numerous Indian haunts around the greater lakes. As the objective point for the westward expeditions was gradually moved farther south into the Mississippi basin, shorter routes across the territory, later known as the Old Northwest, were used. The Wisconsin portage soon yielded in point of frequency of use to those at the South end of Lake Michigan. The route up the Illinois river and by portage into the Chicago river and Lake Michigan was followed by Joliet and Marquette on their return from the discovery of the Mississippi. A few years later La Salle followed the coast of Lake Michigan to the St. Joseph river and up that stream, thence by a portage to the Kankakee, and so again to the usual destination--points on the Illinois and the Mississippi.

"About this time, in the course of the evolution of new routes leading to the Mississippi, occurred the first use of the Wabash river by white explorers. This stream was occasionally reached in the earliest period by leaving Lake Michigan on the St. Joseph river and then by a short portage to the headwaters of a northern branch of the Wabash, but the more important way to reach it was by the 'Miami river of Lake Erie' and a short portage. Of the five great portage routes,[68] this was the last one to come into general use by the whites.... Many have tried to trace La Salle's voyage of 1670 by the Wabash river. Joliet's map of 1674, which locates La Salle's route by way of Lake Erie and the Wabash, has been used in support of this contention. But the route laid down is clearly a later interpolation and adds nothing directly to the argument.

It is, however, most significant that within a few years La Salle had become in some manner fully aware of this Wabash route and the advantages it offered. During the years that he was in command at Ft.

Frontenac, he appears to have been evolving great schemes for appeasing the Iroquois and for opening up an easy channel of trade to the Mississippi Valley by the Maumee and Wabash; but by 1682 he seems to have temporarily abandoned this plan, 'because,' he says, 'I could no longer go to the Illinois but by the Lakes Huron and Illinois, as the other routes which I have discovered by the head of Lake Erie and by the southern coast of the same, have become too dangerous by frequent encounters with the Iroquois who are always on that sh.o.r.e.' La Salle's description of the territory between Lake Erie and Lake Michigan indicates a familiarity with this region scarcely possible save from personal observation. In a letter written November 9, 1680, he says, 'There is at the end of Lake Erie ten leagues below the strait a river by which we could shorten the route to the Illinois very much. It is navigable to canoes to within two leagues of the route now in use.'[69]... his [La Salle's] representations were the first to direct the attention of the French to the regions south and west of Lake Erie."[70]

Perhaps the most historic campaign in which the Wabash route played a part was Hamilton's journey across it in 1778 when he went to the recapture of Vincennes.[71] From the standpoint of this present study this campaign is of particular interest, as it was one of the exceedingly few instances in which a military movement was made by water on the lesser rivers of the West. It is remarkable that though the two important posts west of the Alleghenies, Detroit and Pittsburg, were through many years, in the possession of bitter enemies, neither one ever conquered or hardly attempted to conquer the other. A hundred plans for the capture of Detroit were conceived in Fort Pitt, and many a commander of Fort Detroit was determined to subdue Fort Pitt.[72] Yet it can almost be said that nothing of the kind was ever actually attempted, unless McIntosh's campaign be considered such an attempt.

This was because the journey between them could be accomplished only by a long, tedious land march over the Great Trail,[73] or by a desperate journey over small inland streams and the portages between them.

Difficult as the land journey over the Indian trail would seem, it is clear that it was considered preferable to any water route in Revolutionary days.[74]

Thus Hamilton's campaign over the Wabash route upon Vincennes was an exceptional feat, successfully accomplished after great hardships and delays. Clark's marvelously intrepid recapture of this fort by wading through the drowned lands of the Wabash has so far eclipsed all other events of that campaign that the heroism of other actors has been forgotten.

On October 28, 1778,[75] Hamilton left the Miamis' town, where he held conferences with the Indians, and proceeded to Pied-froid, on the other side of the river St. Joseph.

The day following the gun-boat was placed on the carriage with great difficulty. Two officers were left to forward the boats from the portage, and Hamilton walked to the further end of the carrying place, three leagues, where the provisions were collected. He ordered two officers with the six-pounder and ammunition to go down to carry in pirogues. "This carry is one of the sources of the Wabash," Hamilton wrote in his _Journal_, "and takes its rise on the level plain, which is a height of land near the Miamis town. The carry is called 'pet.i.te riviere.'[76] Where the pirogues were first launched, it is only wide enough for one boat, and is much embarra.s.sed with logs and stumps. About four miles below is a beaver dam,[77] and to these animals the traders are indebted for the conveniency of bringing their peltry by water from the Indian posts on the waters of the Ouabache.[78] On my return met Lieut. Du Vernet with seven pirogues loaded. Ordered him to proceed and join Lieut. St. Cosme, who was below the dam with some men employed to clear the chemin couvert, the narrow part of the carry, so narrow and embarra.s.sed with logs under water and boughs overhead that it required a great deal of work to make it pa.s.sable for our small craft."

On October 30, Hamilton sent Lieutenant De Quindre with seven pirogues loaded with provisions, and fourteen men, to follow Lieut. Du Vernet. In the evening he went to the dam which had been cut there to give a pa.s.sage for the pirogues; and by sinking a batteau in the gap, and stopping the water with sods and paddles, he raised the water.

"Lay in the wood this night. Wolves very numerous hereabout.

October 31. Returned to the camp at the Portage.

November 1. Left landing with seven batteaus and three pirogues loaded with provisions, and proceeded to the dam, which we opened and yet found the water so scanty that it was with the greatest difficulty we pa.s.sed the chemin couvert. At the end of this narrow pa.s.s came to the swamp called les Volets, from the water lilies in it.[79] The batteaus frequently rested on the mud, and we labored hard up to the knees in mud and entangled among the roots and rotten stumps of trees. At length got to the channel formed by the meeting of the Pet.i.te Riviere and the Riviere a Boete.[80] Here we encamped, having got but ten miles with great fatigue.

November 2. Small party sent down the river to clear away the logs, etc.

The rest of the men employed in damming the water of the two little rivers, to provide for our pa.s.sage downwards. Heard from Lieut. Du Vernet below that we could not proceed from the shallowness of the water.

November 3. Work on the dam continued. A light canoe sent to the landing for workmen and tools, which returned at half past twelve at night.

November 4. Water was raised three feet. At 8 P. M. Major Hay arrived with the remainder of the boats, provisions, etc.

November 6. Major Hay proceeded down the river, the water being let off, and made another dam a mile below Riviere a l'Anglais.[81]

November 7th. Broke up the dam and proceeded to the pays plat, where the bed of the river being very broad with almost continuous ledges of rock and large stones, found great difficulty. Men in the water from 10 A. M.

till after sunset, at which time only one batteau had got to the foot of the rifts (Pet.i.t Rocher). Most of the boats damaged.

November 8. Continued to work in the water to forward the boats. Sent down to Du Vernet, who was encamped at the fork of the Ouabache, for seven light pirogues and twenty-two men to a.s.sist in lightening the boats.

November 9. Set off from Pet.i.t Rocher. Arrived at the forks of the Ouabache at 3 P. M.

November 10. Repairing the boats and airing the bales which had got wet. Sent back to Pet.i.t Rocher for the provisions, which had been left there to lighten the boats. After this the river began to rise on account of the heavy rains, and snow and cold weather also came on, which increased the difficulties of the journey."

From the returns of Henry Du Vernet, second Lieutenant of Artillery, the number of perogues used by Hamilton was forty-two, and of batteaux ("and a very large French one"), ten. Ten two-wheeled carts were employed at the portage, two carriages "with 4 wheels for the Batteaus," and four "with 2 wheels for the peroques."[82]

The St. Joseph River, emptying into Lake Michigan, was one of the earlier important roundabout routes to the Mississippi. The eastern fork headed with the Wabash, and with a short portage was the route La Salle described as being "within two leagues" of the Miami of Lake Erie. This St. Joseph-Wabash portage was extremely important, but was roundabout, and was probably abandoned at a comparatively early date.

The southern branch of the St. Joseph heads near the northwest branch of the Kankakee, a tributary of the Illinois, near South Bend, Indiana.

This historic path has been made the subject of a monograph by Secretary George A. Baker of the Northern Indiana Historical Society.[83] The seal of this Society is appropriately inscribed: "This region before the advent of the white man was occupied by the Miamis and Pottawatomies. It was made historic by the early explorers and missionaries who used the Kankakee-St. Joseph River Portage." A few of Mr. Baker's paragraphs should be included in this catalogue:

"Shortly after Easter Sunday, 1675, the sick and disheartened priest, Father Jacques Marquette, left the Indian village of Kaskaskia to return to his beloved St. Ignace by a new route, which many eminent authorities believe to have been via the Kankakee River. In that case it is very probable that he and his two faithful attendants, Pierre Porteret and Jacques, made use of the portage between the Kankakee and St. Joseph Rivers--a carrying place of between four and five miles. The portage landing on the St. Joseph River is two and three-quarters miles northwest of the court house, at South Bend, St. Joseph County, Indiana, and the portage extends in a southwesterly course to three small ponds which were the nearest sources of the Kankakee. The basins of these ponds are still clearly defined.... The earliest mention of this historic route is found in the writings of Father Louis Hennepin, Henry de Tonty and Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, who first made use of it ... in December, 1679. We are led to believe, however, that Louis Jolliet, companion of Marquette and co-discoverer of the Mississippi, knew of this portage as early as 1673.

"The portage landing ... is just to the east of the big red barn, on the Miller property, south of the residence, and at the foot of a beautiful ravine declining gently from the high ground. At the water's edge, stretching back at least one hundred feet, is a low sandy terrace of recent formation. The approach to this picturesque ravine is obscure and hard to locate from the river; the view being obstructed by the forest trees. Many of the original trees are still standing ... many red-cedars, the latter evidently being the progeny of a grand old cedar, a stately monarch of the portage landing, which reaches to the height of over sixty feet, with a girth of more than eight feet at its base....

The trunk ... has been covered by the sand and soil washed from above, to a depth of between seven and eight feet.... Recently, June, 1897, the soil around the old cedar was removed and the measurements as stated were made. As the trunk was laid bare ... three great blaze-marks [were found], forming a rude cross, made by a wide-bladed axe, such as were in common use in the French colonies. Here was what we had suspected, one of the witness trees marked no doubt in early days to locate the portage."[84]

Fort St. Joseph was located on the opposite side of the river from a Pottawatomie village, which was on the portage trail. The location of this fort and Indian settlement is never unanimously estimated to have been less than about sixty miles from the mouth of the St. Joseph River; Father Marest wrote Father German from "Cascaskias" November 9, 1712: "... we ascended the river Saint Joseph, in order to make a portage at 30 [20?] leagues from its mouth."[85]

This important route from Illinois to Detroit was first fortified by the building of the earliest "Fort Miami," near the mouth of the St. Josephs of Lake Michigan, by La Salle in 1679. "But this fort," Mr. Reuben Gold Thwaites writes, "was destroyed by La Salle's men in 1680. Father Jean Mermet, then at the river [St. Joseph] mouth, writes La Mathe Cadillac, April 19, 1702, that he proposes to establish a mission 'three journeys,' or about sixty miles up river, 'near a stream [Illinois]

which is the source of the Ouabache,' where there is a portage of half a league (_Margry_, v, p. 219). In 1711, Father Chardon had his mission sixty miles above the mouth. By 1712, there appears to have been a French military post at this mission. Charlevoix, in a letter dated 'River St. Joseph, Aug. 16, 1721,' writes, describing his approach to the fort from Lake Michigan: 'You afterward sail up twenty leagues in it [up the St. Josephs River] before you reach the fort, which navigation requires great precaution.'... The evidence is ample, that the fort on the St. Josephs, from about 1712 to its final destruction during the Revolutionary war, guarded the portage between the river of that name and the Kankakee, on the east bank of the St. Josephs, in Indiana, a short distance below the present city of South Bend."[86]

The Kankakee-St. Joseph route was a favorite one for travelers returning from Illinois to the Great Lakes and Canada. The favorite early "outward" route was from the western sh.o.r.e of Lake Michigan into the Illinois River. Here were two courses: by way of either the Calumet or the Chicago River to the Des Plaines branch of the Illinois. The latter portage was best known and most used. Perhaps no one of the western portages varied more than this in length, as on the best authority it is a.s.serted that sometimes no portage was necessary, and at others a portage of nine miles was necessary: "The Chicago--Des Plaines route involved a 'carry' of from four to nine miles, according to the season of the year; in a rainy spring season, it might not be over a mile; and during a freshet, a canoe might be paddled over the entire route, without any portage."[87] When Marquette reached the Des Plaines, known as "Portage River" because it offered a pathway to the Illinois, he was compelled to make a portage of only "half a league."[88] The course of this portage is practically the present route of the famous Drainage Ca.n.a.l which joins the Chicago River with the Des Plaines at Elgin, Illinois.

The most westernly portage from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi was of the greatest importance in the earliest years of white man's exploration. The French were the first explorers, and they were at first barred from Lakes Ontario and Erie--which offered the shortest courses to the Mississippi, via the Ohio--by the ferocious Iroquois; whose hostility Champlain had quickly incurred, toward himself and his people.

Driven around, as has been shown,[89] by way of the Ottawa to Georgian Bay, the longest route to the Mississippi became one of the shortest.

From Georgian Bay it is a straight course to Green Bay, and so the portage between the Fox and the Wisconsin Rivers became one of the earliest as well as one of the most important in America. By this route the discoverers of the Mississippi were destined to come--for there were many who found and lost this river. First in the line came Radissou and Groseilliers, at the end of that fifth shadowy decade of the seventeenth century. These daring men, possessed of the desire "to travell and see countreys" and "to be knowne w^{th} the remotest people," found the Fox-Wisconsin portage and pa.s.sed down the Wisconsin to the Mississippi, probably in the spring or early summer of 1659[90]--arriving on that river eleven years before La Salle, and fourteen years before Joliet and Marquette, to whom the discovery of the Mississippi is usually ascribed.

But though these men pa.s.sed over this route to the discovery of the Mississippi, they were not the first white men to traverse it. Jean Nicolet, the first of Europeans, came over this course in 1634, but did not descend the Wisconsin.[91]

Two score years later the bold missionaries, Joliet and Marquette, entered the Fox River and came to Maskoutens, "the fire Nation."

"Here," wrote Marquette, "is the limit of the discoveries which the french have made, for they have not yet gone any farther." Of Radissou and Groseilliers no memory was left among the savages, and of them Marquette had never heard. "No sooner had we arrived," Marquette wrote in his _Journal_, "than we, Monsieur Jollyet and I a.s.sembled the elders together; and he told them that he was sent by Monsieur Our Governor to discover New countries, while I was sent by G.o.d to Illumine them with the light of the holy Gospel. He told them that, moreover, the sovereign Master of our lives wished to be known by all the Nations; and that in obeying his will I feared not the death to which I exposed myself in voyages so perilous. He informed them that we needed two guides to show us the way; and We gave them a present, by it asking them to grant us the guides. To this they very Civilly consented; and they also spoke to us by means of a present, consisting of a Mat to serve us as a bed during the whole of our voyage. On the following day, the tenth of June two Miamis who were given us as guides embarked with us.... We knew that, at three leagues from Maskoutens, was a River which discharged into Mississippi. We knew also that the direction we were to follow in order to reach it was west-southwesterly. But the road is broken by so many swamps and small lakes that it is easy to lose one's way, especially as the River leading thither is so full of wild oats that it is difficult to find the Channel. For this reason we greatly needed our two guides, who safely Conducted us to a portage of 2,700 paces, and helped us to transport our Canoes to enter That river; ... Thus we left the Waters flowing to Quebeq, 4 or 500 Leagues from here, to float on Those that would thenceforward Take us through strange lands."[92]

By the feet of such undaunted heroes the Fox-Wisconsin portage path was made hallowed ground. But the importance of this route, in the days when Georgian Bay was the entering point of the French into the Great Lakes, did not rapidly diminish; through all pioneer history, when Mackinac and Detroit were the key of the Lakes, this route to the Mississippi was important. For instance, in the fur trade of the West and of Wisconsin in particular, this portage was of utmost moment.[93] In the preceding pages this matter of the fur trade on portages has not been sufficiently suggested; it is, however, a subject on which important and exhaustive histories should be written. The portages were, in numerous instances, the keys of the fur trade.