The Warriors Path

					   Introduction

In making judgments about the paths our Native American ancestors took through their environment, one 
quickly comes to appreciate how little we know about their daily lives. Information is often limited to 
reports made by the early white hunters and settlers who the first to make contact with them. Lacking a 
written language and being so culturally different, the vast majority of the life experience of the
aboriginal people of this continent will remain a mystery.

The speculations about the choices made by Native Americans in the millennia of the pre-contact era are 
based on the conviction that Native Americans were fundamentally much like us. They shared the same basic
needs and obstacles in their day-to-day lives; as individuals, they were every bit as intelligent, 
curious and energetic as the people with whom they interacted in the 15th through 19th centuries; and 
likewise every bit as intelligent, curious and energetic as we ourselves are today. The obvious technological
disadvantages that they had relative to the people who would come to displace them were critically
important, but were never-the-less and tiny part of the reality of their 15,000 year experience in this
hemisphere. I assert those obvious facts to explain in part why I believe it is valid for a person 
living in the 21st century to make speculations about the lives of the people who waked across the 
landscape on which we live today.

Eastern Kentucky is a physically beautiful and bountiful land. Our ancient ancestors experienced it with
different eyes and they were products of distinctly different cultures, languages and life experiences. But 
on an essential level, they are us. We share with them basic human needs and motivations. On the most 
elementary level of human existence, they were in many, many ways, "us".

So, while my speculations here may often seem quite unscientific and even ignorant of many things 
that are well known by scientists and the living descendants of those ancient peoples, they are rooted in 
my honest desire to give some substance to one small aspect of their lives: the trails that they used in their 
travels across the land we now call Kentucky. As expressed in this website, my speculations will continue to
evolve as I believe I am learning more about the Kentucky landscape and the people who once inhabited it. 
Even as they do evolve, I have no real certainty that they will be evolving closer to "the truth", 
or leaving it further behind. Human lives are complex, and they are in a constant state of flux. 
That fact of the nature of life is true today, just as it was a thousand years, just as it was true ten thousand 
years ago. I remark on that as a basis for observing that any suggestions that I may make about the travel 
experience of these people may at best be a speculation about a relatively few people and for limited 
times, when one considers the vast and varied history of their lives in this small part of the planet we 
call earth. At the very least, I hope to draw the attention of visitors to this website to an aspect of 
our shared experience to which you may have not previously given much consideration, but one which may 
become something of interest and a source of enjoyment to you.

					An Overview

For uncounted generations of Native Americans, it was important to them to travel from the more intensely
settled areas of central and southern Ohio across the land of Kentucky. During most of their history, these
trips were accomplished by canoe or raft, or my walking. It is my understanding that no Native American
culture north of the Rio Grand River had any domesticated beasts of burden to assist them. In fact, they 
never made use of the wheel. While this fact may seem to severe limit their travels, in fact, it really
wasn't a significant disadvantage. Ease of travel does allow us to interact more easily, but it can also
bring give others, some of whom wish to do us harm, into easier contact, thus, paradoxically, increasing the
precieved limitation on travel.

The travels of our aboriginal ancestors were very much dependent on water ways. Lacking mechanical technology
or large domesticated animals, waterways allowed the traveler to move large burdens from place to place 
with an efficiency far greater than carrying them or dragging them across the ground using his own muscular 
strength. Waterways, by their nature, create natural pathways through landscapes covered with hills and
other obstacles to movement. Just as today, travel routes were chosen which provided the safest and most 
efficient course to the desired destination. All waterways have a certain over-all direction. They may meander 
greatly along the way, but the early traveler knew that small watercourses tend to flow into larger water 
courses, and it was all predictably down hill.

A person on foot will naturally seek out waterways as an aid to maintaining direction toward a destination. 
Rivers and creeks change more slowly than most aspects of the landscape through which they pass. That was 
an important consideration. Being able to predictably retrace one's steps between point A and point B was 
critical. Getting lost in the primordial landscape could expose one to delays, or worse, it could prove fatal.
Walking expends time and energy, and time spent alone, away from family and friends exposes one to many 
dangers in the environment. Staying close to known waterways not only assisted in predictable travel 
across the landscape, but was also a source of food and water along the way. One's destination may be more
directly reached by passing over hills and through unbroken forests, but the expenditure of energy would
have been known to be greater, even if the time required might be somewhat less. And any hiker knows, it 
is easier to get lost crossing over broken forested land, than it is to lose one's way following a known
watercourse.

All of which I hope will serve to explain why the trail courses that I am suggesting (and which first hand
historical reports confirm) tend to follow the watercourses of this region. Not all watercourses were an 
aid to cross country travel, but a knowledge of the ones which were was crucial.

It may be observed in passing that very many of our per-interstate roads and highways followed 
water courses.
 
				  Portsmouth to Vanceburg

				The Scioto and the Ohio Rivers

The Scioto River is a spine that leads directly south to the Ohio River. It was a principle travel 
artery since man's earliest experience in this part of North America. The Scioto led from the Great 
Lakes to the Ohio, and the Ohio led to the Mississippi, and in their turn, waterways of various sizes and 
orientations led to almost all of the North American continent. Although a now trite analogy, rivers 
really were the highways of the ancient world, and the Scioto and the Ohio were essential to the peoples 
living in this area. 

The orientation of the Warriors Path to the Scioto and the Ohio was critical. The traveler seeking access to
the bounty of central and eastern Kentucky had an obstacle to overcome. That obstacle was known to them 
as Osioto. Today it is know to us as the Appalachian Mountains. Much of Ohio is a fertile land leveled by 
glacial action, and that serves to explain why it was more intensely settles than eastern Kentucky. But
eastern Kentucky had a bounty of natural resources that were valued throughout the region. 

As one walks or paddles down the Ohio, one passes through a corridor of hills. For the travelor seeking a 
way through those hills, the creeks which rise in them and flow north to empty into the Ohio were te key
to unlocking access to the interior of Kentucky. Those access points were well known to the early traveler:
the Big Sandy, the Little Sandy, Tygarts Creek and importantly, a lesser known creek which enters the Ohio
at today’s community of Vanceburg, the starting point of the Warriors Path. We know that now insignificant 
watercourse as Salt Lick Creek.