Collection: Directories and Documents > Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection

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Title: The Powhatans and other Woodland Indians as Travelers Collection Type: Directories and Documents Collection Name: Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection Author: Helen C. Rountree # of Pages: 17 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2017-11-10 08:56:20 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 05:53:18 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 05:53:18

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

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34 POWHATAN FOREIGN RELATIONS f Fa f PEA Major Roule ta + Hy bio and : * Mississippi Pas 4, Valleys f fe ‘es “yt ; < ee ®. poni r -— a kha’ ¢ Catawba Fig. 1.3. Major Indian trails out of the Chesapeake region (after Myer 1927, Wallace 1965, and Tanner 1989) the only way to travel. Some paths were truly arterial routes. The Catawba or Great Indian Warpath was one: “With the connections it had at each end, it extended from Canada to Florida and west into the Mississippi Valley.” °° In its middle reaches, it ran down the Valley of Virginia, with connecting branches leading over the Blue Ridge toward the piedmont and thence to the coastal plain. Many of the trails were probably very ancient, connecting places such as river valleys where people had lived for millennia. There is a common myth thar Indian trails originally followed animal trails. Some did, but as Paul A. W. Wallace justly points out, animals’ destinations seldom coincide with those wanted by people, so people often made their own trails. Not only that, but because people’s needs in travel varied, there were often two or more The Powhatans as Travelers 35 trails connecting important places. There might be an easy one leading through friendly towns for slow, sociable progress, and one or more harder ones for rapid transit that skirted settlements and went fairly directly to their ultimate destination. There were also varying routes which either sought out streams, for levelness of route and availability of drinking water, or avoided such crossings, for safety during times of much rain or high water. In higher elevations, all trails had unpleasantly damp spots during the spring thaw.°° Thus it is no surprise that the English records mention multiple trails past or through strategic points.’ There were trails connecting all the Powhatan towns with one another, and it is likely that the major Powhatan towns (Powhatan and Appamattuck on the James, Pamunkey in the York River drainage, Rappahannock and later Portobacco on the Rappahannock, and Patawomeck on the Potomac) were focal! points in a much larger network of trails. Englishmen did not record such points until about 1670, when they began serious exploration and regular trading. Their records show only two such strategic points: Bermuda Hundred on the Appomattox River (successor to Appamattuck), which was the jumping-off point for the Carolina Indian trade, and the area from just above the fall line on the Potomac River to Harpers Ferry, where there lay several major northeast-southwest Indian routes, one of them being the Great Indian Warpath. These routes had doubtless always been connected with all the important Powhatan towns by trails. And thus the Powhatans had always had access to overland routes leading all over the Eastern Woodlands. The nature of the trails the Powhatans could have used has been reconstructed, notably by Wallace, William E. Myer, and Helen Hornbeck Tanner, from accounts left by early European travelers. Many of the trails were wellworn and easy to follow. Thus one gets the impression, when reading the early accounts, that when Europeans like Edward Bland and John Lawson hired Indians as guides, they wanted them less as pathfinders than as expert foragers on the way and interpreters upon arrival at the next Indian town. Bland, in particular, had a very knowledgeable Appamattuck Indian with him during his whole expedition, but he hired local guides in addition, apparently as a public relations ploy.* By and large, “dry, level and direct, give the key to Indian path making.” Paths met all three criteria as far as possible. Charlevoix remarked of Indian travelers that “nothing stops them, neither thickets, nor ditches, nor torrents, nor pools, nor rivers. They go always strait forwards in the directest line possible.” In reality, all paths involved compromise. In uneven country, a route along a stream might be more nearly level than one higher up, but in