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. Vanceburg to Eskapalia The Valley of Salt Lick Creek It is a point of some irony that a watercourse which was so critically important to the peoples of this region for uncounted millennia has lost its true name in the sands of history. So, "Salt Lick Creek" will have to do. As we look at a topographic map, we see that the valley created by Salt Lick Creek leads almost directly south into the interior of Kentucky. One must travel several miles up or down the Ohio to find a similarly advantageous route through the hills which rim the Ohio River. As we travel through this valley, we can see that our course is easily maintained. If we were to drift to the east or west, we would soon find ourselves in hollows that rise into the hills and eventually end in terrain that is only possible to traverse with great difficulty. After we have traveled several miles, we reach the headwaters of Salt Lick Creek and the valley ends in a narrow chain of hills that separate the valley from the vast rolling plain of the Licking River drainage area. An examination of modern maps indicates that there are a couple of viable ways to traverse these hills, but reports of early white hunters tell us that the Warriors Path passed close to a peak which still carries its ancient name: Eskalapia. For the modern day driver, the climb out of the Salt Lick Creek valley up the flanks of Eskalapia's ridge-line occurs quickly and effortlessly. The hills throughout this area are forested, and the trees serve to obscure important features of the land, and our climb to the high ground demonstrates that truism. The trees really do hide the forest. The top of the ridge-line at the intersection of Rt. 989 and Rt. 1310 is not dramatic. In fcat it's a little underwhelming considering its importance to the early traveler. From this point on until the Warriors Path reaches its destination at the site of Eskippakithiki, some 70 miles distant, this will be the only significant change in elevation that the trail encounters. Eskapalia to Flemingsburg Once the traveler has traversed the Eskalapia's ridge, the landscape changes dramatically. The hills fall off to the east and and a rolling area of "knobs" is revealed. This is now open farmland with small communities interspersed along the way, but in an earlier era it would have been a vast forest. Today, we drive across open country and as the highway rises and falls over the rolling landscape, it is easy to glance to the east and see what appears to be an almost unbroken series of low hills. One hill is notable, in that it is set away from the ridge-line running north to south. Sugarloaf Mountain is quite distinctive, and is in effect a landmark that would have signaled the north-bound traveler that he had reached the point where it was time to leave the knobs portion of the trail and to turn northeast over the hills to reach the valley of Salt Lick Creek and thence on to the Ohio. Sugarloaf would have been easily viewable through any break in the forest canopy, and once detected, the traveler would have turned here, and after a walk of a few hours, the familiar profile of Eskalapia would have come into view. To the southbound traveler, Sugarloaf may have been a resting point on the trail south. It probably took the better part of a days walking to reach Sugarloaf from the Ohio River, and either Eskalapia or Sugarloaf would have been a natural resting point to anyone traveling either direction. It would be unsurprising to find many Native American archeological artifacts in this area. Having said that, there is an alternative environment that could have existed before or after the one I just described. It is well known that ancestral Native Americans made extensive use of fire to modify their environment. They understood that the grazing animals on which so much of their well-being depended were grazing animals, and were far more attracted to open grass and meadow-lands. The forested knobs areas of Kentucky would have made ideal hunting lands if they were put to the torch, cleared of their natural cover. In a short span of time, grasses and other ground covers would dominate, and bison from west of the Mississippi would be drawn in. Serendipitously, clearing away the forest from this particular area would have eventually given large numbers of animals access to the Ohio River basin, and in time, spread the buffalo cultures far to the east and north, not only spreading buffalo management culture to Ohio, but to Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and other areas of mid-south America. Again, we are wrong to think of these these somewhat less technologically people as being less imaginative, less resourceful or less able to shape their environment to their advantage than the modern peoples who now, for a time, occupy this landscape. Flemingsburg to the Licking River Travel across the knob-lands of this part of Kentucky was probably relatively easy and covered in a short time. Even with the natural needs to hunt, forage, rest and recuperate from the demands of long distance travel by foot, the trip from Eskalapia probably involved no more than 2 to 3 days of daylight walking, even for a group of travelers that included women and children. The women being nearly as hardy as the men, so the inclusion of children, old people or those with some physical disability would have been the principle contributors to a more leisurely travel rate. In many ways, the Licking River dominated this part of Kentucky. The contributions of the numerous large and small creeks of the Licking River basin area made the Licking River navigable by canoe far into the interior of central Kentucky. The Licking River is a substantial watercourse through Bath County , and its floodplain extends far to the east, west and south.. The knob-lands of central Kentucky are probably a product of the Licking River, or its ancestral rivers which drained this part of Kentucky. The Licking River flows from the southeast to the northwest through Kentucky, and joins the Ohio River just east of the Covington, Ky. - Cincinnati, Ohio area. As a consequence, travelers on the Warriors path can only benefit from it directly once they have reached the area north of Owingsville. Owingsville Although the area around Owingsville is somewhat hilly, there are broad creek bottom lands that run between the hills to the south and west. Although watercourses can be an excellent avenue for crossing substantial distances, the Licking is characterized by much meandering across the landscape, and the foot traveler soon discovers that following every twist and turn of the Licking is not an efficient track to any destination, So the walking traveler no doubt employed the Licking River as a directional reference and a resource for food and refreshment, there were surely substantial stretches of the Warriors Path that short-cut the river's meanders and led the traveler much more directly toward his destination. South of Owingsville, the course of the Licking River falls away to the east, but there is a ridge-line of hills that point the way south. At a point just north of the site of the18th century Morgan's Station settlement, the ridge-line thins and some now lost indicator told the traveler that he was now just a few miles east of the ceremonial and economic center of this region, Mt. Sterling. For generations, travel on the Warriors Path may have involved a stop-over at Mt. Sterling. It was one of the more significant Native American settlements in this area whose existence we are aware of. Eskippakithiki The distance between Mt. Sterling and Eskippakithiki could probably be accomplished as one long day's walk, or perhaps two days at most. Once south of the knob area in which Mt. Sterling was sited, the trail follows the eastern edge of a hilly area which leads to the southwest. After a short distance, there is a line of knoby hills that leads the traveler to a line of eastern hills, that kept to one side, lead the Warriors Path traveler to his final destination at Eskippakithiki.