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 CHAPTER II

NDIAN thoroughfares may be divided into Hunting, War, Portage, River, and Trade trails.

The hunting trails led from an Indian nation's villages to its hunting-grounds and through them. For these hunting-grounds were not always near at hand. The forests around the villages soon became devoid of game and the hunters were compelled to go each year to a greater distance from home. Consequently it became the custom of the stronger tribes and confederacies to obtain, by conquest or unopposed occupation, large tracts of distant forests which became their own peculiar property, and into which vagrant hunters from other nations came only on peril of their lives or freedom. These tracts, which were denominated "hunting-grounds," were stable and well defined, and, as among the Bedouin tribes