Ohio Mound Builders Indian Trails Map

Ancient American Indian Trails on Watersheds of Ohio
Mound builder trails

Map showing the locations of the Ohio Mound Builders Ancient Indian Trails

Some of these remains are undoubtedly of no later age than the Indians whom the first whites knew; many of them are of far earlier times. It is now held by the most prominent archæologists that there are works of the mound-building Indians which do not date back far from the time Columbus discovered America. Thus any work which gives evidence of having been in existence five hundred years may belong to the mound-building era. And throughout all these five hundred years there is hardly a time when there is not evidence of Indian occupation. So the line between the mound-building Indians and the later Indians, among whom the building of mounds was a lost art, is exceedingly hard to draw.

These quotations give some evidence that the mound builders of our earliest archæological works were well acquainted with the high grounds. It is not apparent now that in any signal instance there exists evidence of a reliable character that any watershed was a highway; all we are seeking to show now is the very general fact that these people lived and moved and had their being often far inland on the heads of the little streams which never in historic times have served the purpose of navigation, and that here many of their works are found on the high grounds where it is sure all previous races have made their roads.