By Susan F. Craft
Because I
have NO sense of direction and can get lost in my driveway, I am in awe of the
trappers and hunters I read about during colonial American times. Just how did
they make their way to where they wanted to go?
A term, “By Guess and By God,” came to mean inspired guesswork, an early
form of navigation that relied upon experience, intuition, and faith. Relying on faith would be me.
When I
was researching Brigadier General Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox, a patriot
militia leader, I discovered that as a young man, he went to sea. As a sailor,
he learned to use a compass and a sextant and the stars to navigate. Those
skills served him so well when moving from one battle to the next, his men
often remarked at how precise his movements were in the murky swamps of South
Carolina.
I always
heard that moss grows on the north side of trees and does so because of the
angle of the sun. Have you been to the woods lately? I see trees with moss
growing completely around them. Lost again.
Trail Signs
Many
Indians, hunters, and travelers used axe blazes on tree trunks as trail
signs. There is a major highway in South
Carolina that has the name Two Notch Road, because it was an old buffalo trail
that Indians used where they carved two notches in the trees. (And yes, there were buffalo in South
Carolina. They migrated from the salt licks in Tennessee to the coast.)
Some
marked both sides of trees so that the trail could be run both ways. Trees
marked on one side indicated a blind trail, used a lot by prospectors who
didn’t want anyone following them. Indians usually nicked off small specks of
bark with their knives while trappers and settlers may have used hatchets or
broad axes. In the universal language of the woods, these marks meant “This is
your trail.”
Another
trail sign was to reach into an overhanging limb and bend a branch into an “L”
shape meaning, “This is the trail.” The
twig broken off clean and laid on the ground across the line of march means,
"Break from your straight course and go in the line of the butt end."
When a special warning is meant, the butt is pointed toward the one following
the trail and raised in a forked twig. If the butt of the twig were raised and
pointing to the left, it would mean "Look out, camp, or ourselves, or the
enemy, or the game we have killed is out that way." With some, the
elevation of the butt is made to show the distance of the object; if low, the
object is near. If raised very high, the object is a long way off.
But what
did one do when finding themselves in a treeless areas such as grasslands or
expanses of spartina, desert areas, or rocky regions? They used rocks, pebbles,
sticks, and patches (tussocks) of grass.
Smoke
Signals
To make
smoke signals, a clear hot fire was made, then covered with green stuff or
rotten wood so that it sent up a solid column of black smoke. By spreading and
lifting a blanket over this smudge, the column could be cut up into pieces long
or short.
Simple
smoke codes:
One
steady smoke -- “Here is the camp.”
Two steady
smokes -- I am lost, come and help me.”
Three
smokes in a row -- “Good news.”
Four
smokes in a row -- “All are summoned to council.”
Signal by Shots
Buffalo
hunters used a signal that is still used by the mountain guides.
Two shots
in rapid succession, an interval of five seconds by the watch, then one shot;
this means, "Where are you?"
The
answer given at once and exactly the same means, "Here I am; what do you
want?"
The reply
to this may be one shot, which means, "All right; I only wanted to know where
you were."
But if
the reply repeats the first it means, "I am in serious trouble; come as
fast as you can."
Cherokee
Path in South Carolina
Before 1700, this famous
Indian trail was followed by traders from Charleston, SC. There were two
routes, one by way of the Cooper, Santee, and Congaree Rivers past present day Columbia . The other led
to present day Augusta on the Savannah
River , and headed north to meet the first route near Ninety Six,
SC.
In South Carolina, the
path went by Forts Dorchester (Dorchester County), Pallachucolas (Jasper and Hampton counties), Moore (Aiken County), Ninety Six (Greenwood County), Rutledge (Oconee County), Prince George (Pickens county), and the Congarees (Lexington County). French, German, and Scotch-Irish settlers travelled
the eastern branch of the path. South Carolinians in 1756 hauled materials
along the path over the mountains into Tennessee
where they built Fort Loudoun on the Tellico River . Perhaps the largest archeological
dig in the United States
took place at Fort
Prince George in 1967
revealing more information about life along the Cherokee Path.
Two British expeditions
against the Cherokee followed this route in 1760 and 1761. Revolutionary heroes
- Sumter, Marion, and Pickens - learned guerrilla fighting along the Cherokee
Path.
The Great Trading Path
Thousands of years ago, American Indians along the east
coast established a system of paths and trails for hunting, trading and making
war on other tribes. Most followed the migration paths of animals and along
routes and fords across streams and rivers.
The Great Trading Path, or the Occaneechi Path, was one
of many Indian trails in use when the English first explored the Carolinas
backcountry during the late seventeenth century.
By the early to mid 1700s, the Trading Path provided
European-American explorers and colonists a well-traveled route for settlement
and trade. They traveled by foot, horseback, and wagon from Pennsylvania,
Maryland, and Virginia and from South Carolina and Georgia. The Trading Path became known as the Great
Wagon Road because of this increased traffic. Following portions of the
original path, the Great Wagon Road crossed Virginia into North Carolina. The
route was not just one path, but many. One branch of the path led to Charlotte
and another through the Waxhaws and on through Charleston, SC, and eventually
to Augusta, Ga.
I love your explanation of the trading paths. Many of our current highways follow those routes. I live just off the Santa Fe trail - US Hwy 56. The original trail is within a mile or so of this highway all the way from Kansas City to Santa Fe.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Judith. Sorry I'm so late getting back to you. When I got home from work, I started working on my current novel and completely lost track of time. Yes, it's amazing how our road systems mimic the original Indian paths.
ReplyDeleteSusan, this was so fascinating. I learned a lot, thank you!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Debbie. So glad you liked it. I love researching stuff like this.
ReplyDeleteGreat article, Susan. I am thinking in different locales they used different types of sign dependent upon the tribes, too. I had no idea about Two Notch Road being named for that--I always wondered, having lived in Columbia and doing my internship in W. Columbia. I wonder how many Carolina fans know that?
ReplyDelete