Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 2).djvu/56

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52
INDIAN THOROUGHFARES

The ancient war trails were forgotten as the encroachments of the Europeans came on apace and as the Indian nations became fitfully allied with one or another of the white contestants for their land. Then it was, indeed, that all Indian trails became war paths—a thing that never happened before the white man came! From the first outbreak of Dunmore's war until the Indian confederacy in the north was blasted by the campaign of Mad Anthony Wayne at Fallen Timbers, all the paths of the Central West were war paths and all were dyed with blood. If the northern and southern Indians had never contested for Kentucky before the white man entered that fair domain, the battles fought on the war paths there would yet have made the gloomy title "the dark and bloody ground" the most appropriate that could have been devised. And, rather than one great Warriors' Path leading southward, the Revolutionary maps show "General Clark's War Road" and "Bird's War Road," and other trails appropriately described, "a bloody battle fought here."[1] The evolution of

  1. See Filson's Map.