The Indians of Southern New England had only two modes of travel: by foot across land or by boat across water. They used these modes to maintain contact with other Indian groups or for seasonal movement. This is very nicely summed up in the following passage by an early observer. "They also frequently have villages near the water sides, at fishing places, where they plant some vegetables; but they leave those places every year on the approach of winter, and retire to their strong places, or into the thick woods, where fuel is plenty, and where there is game and venison" (Van Der Donck 1655: 81). We see here that they moved three times a year for reasons to hunt, fish or plant. For these reasons the Southern New England Indians are anthropologically classed as "restricted wanderers," which is defined as the movement of a band within a defined territory, either erratic or following a seasonal round.

Here in Connecticut, some of the state's roads are successors to former trails that Indians used for centuries. The accompanying map was devised by Mathias Spiess and shows trails the Indians used throughout the state. This map depicts the supposed trails in 1625 through the deduction that the white men followed the same routes and villages of the Natives. To anyone who knows the major highway routes in Connecticut, these trails overlay or come close to overlaying many of our present state highways. For example, the Connecticut Path corresponds to eastern I-84, the Northwest Path is western Rt. 44, the Berkshire Path is Rt. 7, the Shore Path is the I-95/Rt. 1 corridor, the Mohegan Path is I-395, and the Quinnipiac-Suckiaug Path is the southern half of the I-91 corridor.

For use in cold weather, the Indians had footwear made chiefly of animal hide, called moccasins. This footwear is described by early writers: "...and for the Winter they have boots, or a kind of laced tawed-leather stockins" (Lechford 1642: 103). "They wear shoes likewise of their own making, cut out of a moose's hide" (Wood 1634: 84). "Pumps too they have, made of tough skins without soles" (Josselyn 1675: 297). Also noted was another material used to make shoes, corn husks: "They also make shoes out of corn husks, which are not durable" (Van Der Donck 1655: 78).

In the winter snowshoes were used in the deep snow, but it is doubtful that they were used to any extent in Southern New England because of the relatively low amount of snow for the area. "In the winter when the snow will bear them, they fasten to their feet their snow shoes which are made like a large Racket we play at Tennis with, lacing them with Deers-guts and the like" (Josselyn 1675: 297).

Early writings tell us that the Colonists followed the paths previously made by the Indian inhabitants when traveling about as seen in the following excerpt:

...with two more of my associates bending our course to New Plymouth lost our way, being deluded by a misleading path which we still followed, being as we thought too broad for an Indian path (which seldom is broader than a carts rut) but that the daily concourse of Indians from the Narragansetts who traded for shoes, wearing them homewards, had made this Indian tract like an English walk and had reared up great sticks against the trees and marked the rest with hatchets in the English fashion, which begat in us security of our wrong way to be right when indeed there was nothing less

(Wood 1634: 90). The above passage enlightens us also to the fact that this well-used blazed Indian trail unintentionally mislead the English to believing it was made by their own people, resulting in them getting lost.

The Indians traveled on the water by dugout or birch bark canoe. They each had their particular advantages.

"Dugout canoes were made from hollowed out pine, dugout with clam, oyster shells and stone axes" (Wood 1634: 109). Their dugout canoes had large capacity but were very heavy and not made to portage. They could carry twenty people and were forty to fifty feet in length. "For their water passage, travels, and fishing, they made boats or canoes, either of great trees, pine or chestnut, made hollow and artificially; which they do by burning them; and after with tools, scraping, smoothing, shaping them" (Gookin 1674: 12). Williams' description shows how an Indian would bring all his necessities with him, retreat from their community and live in the field until he completed the boat.

Mishoon an Indian boat or Canoe made of a pine or oak, or chestnut-tree: I have seen a Native go into the woods with his hatchet, carrying only a basket of corn with him and stones to strike fire when he had feld his tree (being a chestnut) he made him a little house or shed of the bark of it, he puts fire and follows the burning of it with fire in the midst in many places: his corn he boils and has the brook by him, sometimes angles a little fish; but so he continues burning and hewing until he has within ten or twelve days (lying there at his works alone) finished, and (getting hands) launched his Boat; with which afterward he ventures out to fish in the ocean

(Williams 1643: 107). Williams also goes on to say canoes vary in capacity from three or four to twenty, thirty, and forty people.

By comparison, birch bark canoes were small in capacity but light in weight. "...they run with their light canoes, (which are a kind of boats made of Birch Rindes, and sowed together with the rootes of white Cedar-Trees) from place to place" (Johnson 1654: 39). "Their Canoes are made without any iron, of the bark of a birch tree, strengthened within with ribs and hoops of wood, in so good fashion, with such excellent ingenious art, as they are able to bear seven or eight persons, far exceeding any of the Indies" (Rosier 1605: 12). "Thus, the canoe had a frame shaped with tree saplings, covered with birch bark sown to the saplings with cedar roots. Tree pitch and rosins were used to seal any leaks" (Josselyn 1675: 307-308).

Being lighter, Native American birch bark canoes were faster than the heavier dugouts even though they had less manpower to move them. "This we noted as we went along, they in their canoes with three oars, would at their will go ahead of us and about us, when we rowed with eight oars strong; such was their swiftness, by reason of the lightness and artificial composition of their canoes and oars" (Rosier 1605: 20). Thus, we see a comparison of the speed of only three oars in a canoe overtaking an English crew in their boat with eight oars.

The birch bark canoes also had a great advantage over the bigger dugouts when there was a need to portage at falls on the streams or necks of land separating bodies of water.

Ships they have none, but do prettily imitate ours in their Birchen pinnaces, their canoes are made of Birch, they shape them with flat ribs of white cedar, and cover them with large sheets of birch-bark, sowing them through with strong threads of spruce-roots or white cedar, and pitch them with a mixture of turpentine and the hard rosen that is dryed with the air on the outside of the bark of fir trees. These will carry half a dozen or three or four men and a considerable freight, in these they swim to sea twenty, or forty miles, keeping from the shore a league or two, sometimes to shorten their voyage when they are to double a cape they will put to shore, and two of them taking up the canoe carry it cross the cape or neck of land to the other side, and to sea again; they will indure an incredible great sea, mounting upon the working billows (waves) like a piece of cork; but they require skillful hands to guide them in rough weather, none but the Indians scarce dare to undertake it, such like vessels the Ancient Brittans used, as Lucan relates

(Josselyn 1675: 308). We see that Indians were very skilled in the roughest of waters with the less stable canoe. "They were more delicate and not as stable" (Gookin 1674: 152). From Josselyn's observations above, one can appreciate the skill and bravery of the Indian in handling a small vessel such as this in Long Island Sound and the open sea when caught in an unexpected storm.

Whether the Indians were traveling by land or water they are said to be good swimmers in order to ford a stream or in the event of their boat tipping over in the water.

We see that Indians traveled by simple means and didn't have the use of the wheel or beast of burden to aid them. Further, these first people of Southern New England traveled basically the same corridors we travel today in our automobiles and they skillfully and bravely plied the same streams, lakes and seas we do today in our recreational vessels.


Bibliography

• Gookin, Daniel. Historical Collections of the Indians of New England. Arno Press, New York, 1674.

• Johnson, Edward. Johnson's Wonder-Working Providence 1628-1651. 1654. Edited by J. Franklin Jameson, PHD, LLD, Barnes and Noble Inc. NY, 1967.

• Josselyn, John. An Account of Two Voyages to N.E., 1675. Mass. Historical Collection ser.3 v.3 p.211-396. Published in Cambridge in 1833.

• Lechford, Thomas. News from New England. 1642.

• Rosier, James. Prosperous Voyage, 1605. University Microfilms, Inc. Ann Arbor.

• Spiess, Mathias. The Indians of Connecticut. Tercentenary Commission of Connecticut, Commission of Historical Publications, 1933.

• Van der Donck, Adrian, edited by Thomas F. O'Donnell. A Description of the New Netherlands, 1655. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, NY.

• Williams, Roger. A Key to the Language of the America. Printed by Gregory Dexter, London, 1643.

• Wood, William. New Englands Prospect, 1634. Edited by Alden T. Vaughan, UMass Press, Amherst, 1977.