Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 2).djvu/91

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EARLY THOROUGHFARES WESTWARD
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the Canaseraga creek to the lower Genesee and Lake Ontario. It was down this trail that Butler's rangers fled, after the massacre of Boyd and Parker at Little Beard's Town in 1779, on their way to the mouth of the river."[1]

It is interesting to notice that the most famous ford of the Genesee was at the mouth of a creek and bore the name "Red Creek ford."

THE KITTANNING PATH

One of the main thoroughfares westward was a trail leading from Philadelphia up the Susquehanna and Juniata and over the mountains at Kittanning gorge—which takes its name from the destination of the road through it, Kittanning, on the Allegheny.

The name is a corruption of "Kit-hanne," signifying "the main stream." Though the name referred originally to the Allegheny river as a whole, it soon came to be applied to the Indian villages that covered both banks of the river at the spot

  1. Harris's Aboriginal Occupation of the Lower Genesee Country, pp. 36–40; for additional mention of local trails near Rochester, see id., pp. 40–47.