CHAPTER II. The Red Man's Trail

For the beginnings of the paths of our inland commerce, we must
look far back into the dim prehistoric ages of America. The
earliest routes that threaded the continent were the streams and
the tracks beaten out by the heavier four-footed animals. The
Indian hunter followed the migrations of the animals and the
streams that would float his light canoe. Today the main lines of
travel and transportation for the most part still cling to these
primeval pathways.

In their wanderings, man and beast alike sought the heights, the
passes that pierced the mountain chains, and the headwaters of
navigable rivers. On the ridges the forest growth was lightest
and there was little obstruction from fallen timber; rain and
frost caused least damage by erosion; and the winds swept the
trails clear of leaves in summer and of snow in winter. Here lay
the easiest paths for the heavy, blundering buffalo and the
roving elk and moose and deer. Here, high up in the sun, where
the outlook was unobstructed and signal fires could be seen from
every direction, on the longest watersheds, curving around river
and swamp, ran the earliest travel routes of the aboriginal
inhabitants and of their successors, the red men of historic
times. For their encampments and towns these peoples seem to have
preferred the more sheltered ground along the smaller streams;
but, when they fared abroad to hunt, to trade, to wage war, to
seek new, material for pipe and amulet, they followed in the main
the highest ways.