Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 1).djvu/68

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64
PATHS OF MOUND-BUILDING INDIANS

are even now when dammed of a size sufficient to warrant us the belief that great armies passed over them.[1] We cannot imagine a hostile army of power great enough to have necessitated the building of such a work as Fort Ancient ever coming to it on the little river on which it stands.

Speaking of the mound-building Indians, MacLean remarks: "In order to warn the settlements [of mound-builders], where such a band should approach, it was found necessary to have . . . signal stations. Judging by the primitive methods employed, these wars must have continued for ages. If the settlements along the two Miamis and Scioto were overrun at the same time before they had become weakened, it would have required such an army as only a civilized or semi-civilized nation could send into the field. It is plausible to assume that a predatory warfare was carried on at first, and on account of this the many fortifications were gradually built.

  1. Gen. Moses Cleaveland, on coming to the site of the city which bears his name, found he could not ascend the Cuyahoga because of the vast quantity of deadwood which filled it.