Historic Highways of America Volume VII Part 7

In the Revolutionary War, the Fox-Wisconsin portage bore a more or less important part in British plans of gaining the alliance of the Indians of the upper Mississippi Basin.[94] The awakening in the Northwest is evidenced by the increasing importance of this pathway in the War of 1812.[95] This was the route of British trade with the Mississippi Indians until the very last.[96] The commercial and economic history of this route, the establishment of Fort Winnebago, the question of government ownership of land, the improvement of the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers, the Military Road across the portage, the days of the Durhams boats, and the building of the ca.n.a.l make this route more interesting than any other west of Niagara.[97]

It would be a serious omission not to include in this catalogue at least a mention of the portages which completed the line of communication along the chain of the Great Lakes--or from the St. Lawrence across to the extremity of Lake Superior. The importance of the portage from the Ottawa to Lake Nip.i.s.sing and French River has been fully suggested, in our emphasis of the use of the Ottawa route, by which the French avoided the Iroquois and gained the western lakes. The historic and economic phase of the Niagara River offers a magnificent untouched field for historic study. The series of forts and their varying flags which defended this key of the Lakes; the struggle for their possession; the portage routes here that were of such vital importance to all the West; the earliest systems of transportation around Niagara Falls; the supplementary roundabout routes, such as up Grand River; and finally, the building of the Welland Ca.n.a.l, offer a splendid topic for study and field work. At the extremity of Lake Superior was the Grand Portage, which joined the Great Lakes with Hudson Bay, by way of Pigeon River and the Lake of the Woods. It was first found by Radissou and Groseilliers in 1662, fortified in 1737, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century was "the Headquarters or General Rendezvous, for all who trade in this part of the world."[98]

In concluding this review of portage paths the author finds a final opportunity to offer a plea for the wide study of historic sites and for placing there monuments of some kind for the purposes of identification before it be all too late.

We cannot realize in the slightest degree the great interest that will be felt in our historical beginnings one, two, and three centuries from now, as our nation grows richer and hundreds give themselves up to the study of the past where ten can do so today. It is fair to believe that we cannot realize how precious every relic and every accurate piece of information--every monument and tablet--will seem when at last the days of Braddock and Johnson, Washington and Clark and Wayne are lost in three hundred years of change and evolution. Therefore we cannot fully realize the precious duty that falls upon the present generation--and upon us particularly.

The reason is evident: within a generation there will not be left in our land a single son of one of the genuine pioneers of, for instance, New York or Ohio. Even those of the second generation remember with really little distinctness and accuracy the days of which their fathers told; often their stories are entirely unreliable. This very fact is in itself alarming, and is it not then the duty of all interested persons to secure immediately every item of information from such of that second generation as are found to be accurate and clear? In every State there are a hundred historic sites for which, in time, people generally will be inquiring. We speak easily of Fort Necessity and Fort Bull and Fort Laurens--but where are they? The sites of these historic embankments are known today, but of the New York and Pennsylvania sites doubts are beginning to pa.s.s current. The location of Fort Laurens--the first American fort built west of the Ohio River--is pretty definitely known.

It is fair to say that in a generation or two the spots, if left unmarked, will never be located correctly. A small stone, with a plain legend, costing a mere trifle, would insure the future against such a misfortune.

The subject of portage paths naturally suggests the matter of locating historic sites and marking them for the reason that so many such points were on these portages. A mere catalogue of the forts mentioned in preceding pages prove this conclusively. Add to these the mission houses, trading stations and treaty houses here erected and we have a sum total of vitally important historic sites which could be equalled only by looking to the river valleys. And very frequently indeed the real significance of many a fort at a river's mouth lay in the fact that at that river's head lay a strategic carrying place. What else did Fort Defiance, Fort Venango, Fort Oswego, Fort Niagara, Fort Miami on the St.

Joseph mean?

These portage routes should be presented to all local and State historical societies as important fields of study in the very immediate present if the many historic sites here are to be correctly marked. They are easy fields of investigation because as a rule a great amount of geographic lore is treasured up in a small compa.s.s; many a portage, like the Oneida portage at Rome, New York, was not over a mile in length; yet here are the sites of at least half a dozen forts, some of them of world-wide renown. Take the famous portage at Fort Wayne, Indiana, from the Maumee (St. Mary) to the Wabash (Little River); the field here is of great importance yet the ground to be covered is exceedingly limited. A few dollars invested in slight monuments could now establish markers along this route with some degree of accuracy and conscientious satisfaction. Later on this will not be possible. Each year lessens the probability of accuracy, takes from the neighborhood one and another of the aged men who would be of a.s.sistance, changes more and more the face of the landscape--in short tends to rob all future students of something of real value that we might confer upon them.

It may be due to a lack of antiquarian enthusiasm on the part of the present writer, but he is strongly of the opinion that our historical societies are losing an invaluable amount of information and data by not seizing the advantage of the advice of pioneers' sons who are now living concerning the location of historic sites; not a little money is being expended here and there on archaeological research which would produce exactly as fruitful returns a generation from now as it does today. The stone pipes and hammers will be found in as good condition in 1925 as 1903 but there are a hundred important sites that can never be marked correctly after a score of men now over seventy years of age have pa.s.sed away. At a recent centennial celebration on the site of one of the most important forts in the entire West the old fortress was reconstructed with life-like accuracy under scholarly direction. It was necessary, however, because of inundations of the neighboring river, to draw in one of the bastions. It will not be many years before the entire topography of that site will be altered by the same destructive force, unless it is stayed, and when the second centennial of the day when Mad Anthony Wayne unfurled his flag in the face of the British from the walls of Fort Defiance is celebrated, there is a question whether the site of that fort will be above or below the river's tide.

A pig-sty at Fort Recovery, Ohio, marks the Fort Recovery angle of the famous Greenville Treaty line. Underneath the pen lies the stone which marks the angle and the site of that historic fort and, consequently, St. Clair's battle-ground. The line runs twenty-one miles westward to the pillar raised on Loramie Creek, the historic site of the old French trading post in 40 16['] north lat.i.tude 7 15[''] west longitude; at the other angle on the Muskingum River the site of Fort Laurens is also a matter of record. In this way, it is true, many points of interest have a definite location but this is true in only a few cases. The writer, recently returning from a tour through Illinois on George Rogers Clark's old route to the conquest of Vincennes took his notes at once to Madison, Wisconsin to revise them from the correspondence carried on by Lyman C. Draper, a generation ago, with the oldest residents of Illinois concerning Clark's route. The remarkable contrast between testimony obtainable now and that secured a generation ago could not have been more strikingly impressive. Indecision, indefiniteness, inaccuracy grow more and more p.r.o.nounced as the days draw by and an actual experience such as this compels one interested in our country's development to cry out against permitting more time to be lost.

Pennsylvania has set a good example in forwarding a minute study of her frontier forts, two large volumes having been published by that state on the subject. There are signs that there is an awakening interest in definitely locating and marking historic sites. It need not be an expensive work. It is certainly an important one. And the courses of the important carrying places should be early considered.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] For an account of the portages in the dry season on the Scioto see _Historic Highways of America_, vol. ii, pp. 55-60.

[2] _The Jesuit Relations and Allied Doc.u.ments_, vol. x.x.xvii, pp.

211-213.

[3] _Id._, pp. 65-67.

[4] _Id._, vol. xlix, pp. 47-49.

[5] _Id._, pp. 261-263.

[6] _Id._, vol. viii, pp. 75-77.

[7] _Id._, vol. x.x.xix, pp. 47-49.

[8] _Id._, vol. xii, pp. 117-121.

[9] As outlined in _Historic Highways of America_, vol. iii, ch. iii.

This route of the French to the greater lakes took them away from the Ohio River and long delayed their occupation of the Allegheny and Ohio valleys.

[10] Hinsdale's _Old Northwest_, pp. 34-35.

[11] _Id._, p. 36.

[12] Celoron on his journey to the Ohio in 1749 did not cross Lake Ontario by the same route pursued by his Indian retinue (Celoron's Journal, in Darlington's _Fort Pitt_, p. 11).

[13] William E. Dodge's _Old New York_, p. 36.

[14] For a touching instance, see _Jesuit Relations ana Allied Doc.u.ments_, vol. lxvi, p. 281.

[15] _The Jesuit Relations and Allied Doc.u.ments_, vol. lxix, p. 159.

[16] _Doc.u.mentary History of New York_, vol. ii, p. 868.

[17] Sylvester's_ Northern New York_, p. 289; Celoron's Journal in Darlington's _Fort Pitt_, p. 12.

[18] Sir William Johnson's _Journal_, October 1, 1761; cf. Severance's _Old Trails of the Niagara Frontier_, p. 40.

[19] These names were copied from Nolin's "Carte du Canada" (1756) and Bellin's "Partie Occidentale de la Nouvelle France" (1755), both in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.

[20] _Jesuit Relations and Allied Doc.u.ments_, vol. xl, p. 219. The St.

Lawrence proved less easily navigated when it became better known.

[21] _Id._, note 10 (page 257).

[22] _Jesuit Relations and Allied Doc.u.ments_, vol. lxix, p. 161.

[23] Described in _Historic Highways of America_, vol. iii, pp. 74-78.

[24] Sparks's _Writings of Washington_, vol. ii, p. 21.

[25] Royal Orders to Braddock, _Historic Highways of America_, vol. iv, pp. 47, 48.

[26] Dunn's _Indiana_, p. 50.

[27] _American State Papers_, vol. iv, p. 525.

[28] _Id._, pp. 526-527.

[29] _Id._, p. 562.

[30] Sylvester's _Northern New York_, p. 279.

[31] Hinsdale's _Old Northwest_, p. 48; Benton's _The Wabash Trade Route_, p. 15.

[32] Dunn's _Indiana_, p. 47.

[33] _United States Statutes at Large_, vol. ii, p. 173.

[34] _Historic Highways of America_, vol. iii, ch. vi.