Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 1).djvu/140

136 kept up until Europeans allied the various Indian nations with them in their wars. When the Shawanese were driven from the South they came northward to the Cumberland, doubtless on the routes made by buffalo migrations, for these would have brought them just where they were first found by geographers.

The subsequent migrations of the Shawanese into the Alleghanies were also undoubtedly made over buffalo routes across the Great Kanawha and Monongahela valleys. At least, from the beginning to the end of the strange wanderings of these "Bedouins of American Indians" they remained within the habitat of the buffalo and the lesson of history clearly states that within that habitat man has found the routes of the buffalo the most practicable. Of the Wyandots, who according to their legends came into the Central West by the Great Lakes, buffalo routes cannot be said to have determined their distribution, but the Delawares, fleeing from the valley whose name they bore, no doubt came westward to the Muskingum on prehistoric routes used by the buffalo.