150 An Indian Trail 



could not yield all that this people needed : 

 they had to draw from the resources of the 

 hills behind them. They soon marked the 

 whole region with a net-work of trails leading 

 to the various points whence they drew the 

 necessities of life. The conditions of the 

 present day are laid down on essentially the 

 same lines as then. 



An Indian town was not a temporary tent 

 site, or mere cluster of wigwams, here to-day 

 and miles away to-morrow ; nor did these 

 people depend solely upon the chase. Be- 

 side the trail over which I recently passed 

 was a great clearing that had been an orchard. 

 We can yet find many a barren spot that is 

 rightly known to the people of to-day as 

 an Indian field. So persistently were their 

 cornfields cropped that at last the soil was 

 absolutely exhausted, and has not yet re- 

 covered its fertility. 



There was systematic bartering, too, as the 

 red pipe-stone or catlinite from Minnesota 

 and obsidian from the more distant North- 

 west, found on the Atlantic coast, as well as 

 ocean shells picked up in the far interior, all 

 testify. There was also periodical journey- 

 ing in autumn from inland to the sea-coast to 



