Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 2).djvu/19

Rh and buffaloes, the paths found the driest courses, for from the ridges the water was most quickly shed; the hilltops, too, were wind-swept of snow in winter and of brush and leaves in summer, and suffered least from the annual forest fires; for the Indian, the hilltops were coigns of vantage for outlook and signaling.

To what degree the routes of the buffalo became the routes of the Indian it will be difficult to determine. So far as the continental routes of the buffalo are concerned, it is practically sure that these were adopted by the Indian, for the buffalo found the points of least resistance with an accuracy as infallible as the sagacity of any savage. In the instance given by Daniel Boone it is plain that, just north of Cumberland Gap, the Indian thoroughfare branched westward from the buffalo trace on Rock Castle creek. The local trails of the Indians differed from the local traces of the buffalo much as their individual destinations differed. Yet, after white men came among the Indians of the Central West they found them using the great, broad roads which the buffalo made to and from