The Rigors of Colonial-Era Travel

Much-romanticized view of traveling through Cumberland Gap

Planes, trains, and automobiles … none of those had been invented yet during America’s colonial era. So how did people get around?

The most obvious method is on horseback, or by carriage or wagon. But not every manner of conveyance was suitable for every kind of journey.

Freight, for instance, was most likely carried by horse-drawn wagon or ox-drawn cart, which I discussed in another post. The oxen were most often driven by use of a long, slender rod and verbal commands, with the drover walking alongside, but horses were driven from the seat of the wagon. On a long journey with larger numbers of people, however, the able-bodied would walk to save exertion on the horses, leaving only the infirm or small children to ride.

Both ox-carts and wagons required a proper road for passage, thus the term wagon road to distinguish from a bridle path, where walking or mounted on horseback was required. Carriages or coaches needed even better roads.

So, in cities and towns, and in well-populated areas with good roads, people could be free to use coaches or carts of varying sizes without too much worry. But what about when folk desired to travel to, say, the wilderness? How did they manage to get there?

This was a question I had to explore while planning my upcoming novel The Cumberland Bride, which traces the journey of one fictional party of settlers from eastern Tennessee up into the wilds of Kentucky. First I had to figure out exactly when the Wilderness Road was opened for wagon travel. At the time my story is set, 1794, the route had been improved to a wagon road from southwestern Virginia, across east Tennessee and up to Cumberland Gap, but northward the way was still too rugged for wagon travel.

People had to pack things, then, onto horses and mules, and either ride horseback and walk. They’d often put small children or mothers with babies aboard the pack horses, but for the most part people made the journey on foot. They’d face rocky terrain, fallen trees, steep hills, muddy ground, creeks and rivers of varying widths and depths, wetlands, mud flats, and sand pits, as well as dangers from wild animals and hostile natives. They risked frostbite, sunstroke, heat exhaustion, and other injury and illness, including a nasty condition called “foot scald” if they walked too long in wet shoes.

Travel on good roads by coach was still no easy affair. Long hours of bouncing and jostling often made many prefer to be directly on horseback, and I think I’d have agreed with them, even with my aging body!

We moderns like to think, however, that we could be tough, but I’m continually amazed at the tenacity and fortitude of folk who traveled long distances in those days before the comparatively “easy” travel methods of the present. It's incredible the lengths our ancestors went to, to try to make a better life for themselves and their children.

Trail Signs and Paths

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.