CHAPTER I. Before the White Man Came. Before the white man came, the region herein termed "Pittsburgh and Its Environs" was included in the wilderness lying contiguous to the Ohio river and its tributaries, but a small part of that vast extent of unoccupied and unexplored land south of the Great Lakes and east of the Mississippi river. We may say practically unoccupied, in comparison with the state of occupancy during any time within the last century. We are to use the word "wilderness" in its primary meaning -a wild, the word pure Anglo-Saxon in origin, and defined as a tract uncultivated and uninhabited by human beings, whether a forest or a barren plain. After the definition above, Webster in his earlier editions distinctly states that in the United States the word "wilderness" is applied only to a forest. The presumption is tenable that when the vast prairies illuminated his comprehension, the great lexicographer concluded there might be a prairie wilderness also, and therefore dropped the statement that the word could be applied only to a forest. We can in no wise consider the secondary meaning of the word, that of a desert, to be applicable at any time to any part of the Upper Ohio Valley region. The site of Pittsburgh lay long undiscovered and undisturbed in the vast solitude of the forest primeval, and far beyond the British frontier, which was that part of the rugged Appalachian chain we know as the Alleghenies, and that chain was a barrier to settlement, as will be shown. Who of white blood first set his feet upon the historic soil about the Forks of the Ohio is a question to which no records can supply an answer. That he was a white man, for the purpose of gain, is altogether probable. His people needed, must have, furs. The habitat of the fur-bearing animals that he knew lay in the forest wilderness. The Indian inhabitants were few in number, and lived mainly by the chase. With the first settlement of Canada by the French, there began commercial transactions with the Aborigines. The Dutch traders from the Albany region followed closely after the French, and then the English traders, "brave, inglorious men, long since passed to deep and merited oblivion," pioneers, nevertheless, leading the advance of the settlers in the conquering march of the Course of Empire towards the setting sun. We are to learn of these fur traders of our colonial days, particularly of the Pennsylvania traders who toiled the wilderness trail over the Alleghenies, and whose petty commerce involved two great nations in a long war, and prepared the way for American independence and territorial expansion for the United States of America, a nation born of that independence. Pitts.-1 The first white men came through the wilderness, througn the vast solitudes of the forest primeval, where The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight. Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. Yes, and the hardwoods, too, and all the well known deciduous trees of our American flora, with their vines and creepers and tanglements, and with the deadwood, the debris of numberless storms and hurricanes of past ages. Nevertheless it was not a trackless forest, for there existed certain well defined trails or paths, traversed for centuries by the roving feet of the red men in their hunting trips, on their migrations, by their warriors when on the war path, until the narrow trails changed to well defined paths becoming, with the advent of the whites, historic highways. Instances are the Venango trail, the Kittanning path, Nemacolin's path, later Braddock's road, the Muskingum and Sandusky trails from the confluence of the two rivers forming the Forks of the Ohio at Pittsburgh, and the Catawba or Great Warriors path from the south via Cumberland Gap to the Ohio river at the mouth of the Sciota. The wilderness was not trackless, for the wild beasts of the forest made well marked paths. Buffalo trails were especially prominent, for these animals ranged the region of the Upper Ohio Valley when the white men came. Often these trails broadened into real roads, made such by the tread of vast hordes of these heavy beasts, in countless years, in going to and fro from the salt licks and their feeding grounds. The first explorers in the western wilderness found the Indian trails and the buffalo roads, and always spoke of them as distinct thoroughfares. The Indian trail was usually a narrow path or runway, for the Indians traveled always in single file. These runways were always from two to three feet wide only, and were not worn so deeply into the ground as the buffalo traces, though the Indians' path was often a foot or two below the surrounding ground, worn thus by the hoofs of their ponies. Trees and bushes in places encroached upon the paths so that it was not possible to see far ahead. Often these slender trails were blocked by inpenetrable growths, and a single windstorm in the virgin forests would fill the paths with fallen branches, and often trunks of trees. The overhanging bushes, in the heavy dew of the morning or after a rain, completely drenched the travelers with the water retained in their branches. There were other animals than the buffalo that laid off a road; the deer, too, made their runways by instinct, and found the easiest paths to the passes of the mountains, to the shallowest fords, the richest feeding grounds, and the indispensable salt licks. The Indian, dependent upon game, followed the paths or traces made and frequented by the beasts. going to their food, water and salt, and to other habitats in the changing seasons. It was only natural that these trails became vocational with the Indians. The trails were not always silent, nor were they bloodless, for the Indians' enemies sought them, and the evolution of the trail into the warpath was easy, and natural also. The trails were of different kinds. Archer Butler Hulbert divides them into hunting, war, portage, river, and trade trails. One or more of each variety led to the Forks of the Ohio at Pittsburgh. There were no blazed trails in the wilderness forest. Blazing trees was peculiarly a white man's custom, as well as his invention. It was beneath an Indian's dignity to mark out his way. It was an affront also to suggest it, as discrediting the keen woodcraft for which the red man is remarkable. It required labor to hack trees, and patience, which was not an Indian attribute. Then, too, a warrior never worked, and in any event such work was useless. He could justly sneer at the clumsy white man who depended on the white blaze to find his way through or out of the wilderness of woods. When the first white traders came into the western woodland, they found the well marked forest trails, and followed them until they became the avenues of trade. The traders established trading posts in the wilderness, built warehouses of hewn logs, forts for the protection of their goods, and then new routes became necessary-"fur routes," or "traders' paths," and these came also to be traveled by the Indians and their peltry-laden ponies, and backward with the trader's goods— the peltries bought weapons, blankets, trinkets, powder and lead, and bad liquor. There is ample evidence that the going through the wilderness was good. There are journals of the first missionaries who recorded things as they saw them, strange things and most notable. The testimony of the Rev. David McClure is material on this point. He said: "The roads through this Indian country are no more than a single horse path among the trees. For a wilderness, the traveling was pleasant, and there was no underbrush, and the trees do not grow very close together." McClure was journeying west from Pittsburgh in the fall of 1772. Describing a stretch of the trail along the Ohio below the mouth of the Big Beaver river, he said: "The woods were clear from the underbrush, and the oaks and black walnut and other timber do not grow very compact, and there is scarcely anything to incommode a traveler in riding almost in any direction. The Indians have a habit of burning over the ground, that they may have the advantage of seeing game at a distance among the trees." Again he said: "The soil is luxuriant; the growth principally white and black oak. The sweetest plums grow in great abundance in this country, and were in great perfection. Grapes grow spontaneously here, and wind around the trees."1 1"Diary of the Rev. David McClure," 1772; pp. 49-50 |