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Retracing the Great Indian Trading Path: Occaneechi Town to the Trading Ford, by Tom Fowler |
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Sunday, 13 November 2005 |
On a warm, sunny morning in November, I back my SUV out of the driveway
of my home in Durham and drive out of town on a northwesterly tack. At
Hillsborough I cross over the Eno River and I pass near the
reconstructed Indian village of Occaneechi. I make my way to the
western edge of town on Dimmocks Mill Road. About a half mile outside
of town I crossed the bridge back over the Eno River. In mid-bridge, I
glance to my right, up river, and spot the railroad bridge that spans
the water just beyond the site of an old ford across the river. I know
it's there because I've followed the old road bed down to the river and
seen where the old road continues on the other side of the ford. Over
the bridge, where Dimmock's Mill Road bends slightly to the right, I
shift into a higher gear, and drive onto the Great Indian Trading Path.
It's been paved at this particular spot--or so I'm told. My plan for
today is to follow the Path some ninety miles or so to the traditional
lands of the Catawbas and to stop at the famous Trading Ford on the
Yadkin River near Salisbury. Three hundred years ago, in February of
1701, John Lawson took about a week to cover this same route on foot. I
hope to make it to the Ford in time for a late lunch.
The Great Indian Trading Path was actually a series of paths connecting
the area of Virginia in the vicinity of present-day Petersburg with the
Catawba Indian lands near present-day Charlotte. The Path was in use by
the native population of traders and travellors long before the
appearance of European explorers and traders. Early maps of this area
show the Path crossing the Yadkin and then cutting across present day
Davidson, Randolph, Guilford, Alamance and Orange Counties. Early
European explorers such as John Lederer in 1670, Lawson in 1701,
William Byrd in 1728, and Bishop Spangenburg in 1752, wrote at some
length about the Trading Path. Bishop Spangenburg contrasted traveling
on the Path to traveling over the land beyond the Path: "[O]n the
Trading Path ... we could find at least one house a day where food
could be bought; but from here we were to turn into the pathless
forest." A teen-aged Daniel Boone probably walked the Path with his
parents in 1750 when the Boone family moved down from Pennsylvania to
make a new home in the Forks of the Yadkin. George Washington traveled
on a part of the Path during his southern tour in 1791. The Path
continued to be heavily used on into the 19th century, as horses, and
later wagons, replaced foot travel as the common means of
transportation. Some have claimed that the route of Interstate 85 from
Petersburg to Charlotte, and in particular the crescent connecting the
cities of Durham, Hillsborough, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Salisbury
and Charlotte, was dictated by the location of these population centers
which grew up where they did because of the proximity of the Trading
Path.
The construction of Interstate 85, various other roads, farms, towns
and other developments, have removed much of what might have remained
of the Path itself. I am driving on the small country roads to the
south of and parallel to I-85, with names like West 10 and Bowman Road.
These roads may well have been built directly on top, or just to one
side, of the Trading Path. I look into the woods on either side of the
road for signs of any old roadbed but see nothing to make me stop and
investigate. But I do stop at the old cemetery at the church at
Hawfields on State Road 119. Churches were often built along the
Trading Path and an old cemetery may well be a clue as to the location
of the Path. A portion of the path is said to be found in the woods
adjacent to the Hawfields cemetery. Sure enough, in the woods adjoining
the cemetery, at the edge of a plowed field, I find a broad, deep
depression in the land. It runs straight down a slight incline, about
twenty feet across and about five feet below the level of the
surrounding land. The forest has grown up in the road bed itself,
obscuring the road. I believe I am standing in a remnant of the Trading
Path itself.
From Hawfields, I continue driving west/southwest along country roads
that approximate the route of the Trading Path. In the small town of
Alamance I pass an historical marker which says: "Trading Path:
Colonial trading route, dating from 17th century from Petersburg,
Virginia to Catawba and Waxhaw Indians in Carolina passed nearby."
Although you would never find it on your own, the Trading Path does
actually still pass nearby. Earlier in the fall I was fortunate to
accompany Trading Path historian Tom Magnuson on a public hike he
guided along a section of the Path that still exists between the
Bellemont-Alamance Road and Great Alamance Creek. On this hike a group
of twenty of us followed the well-defined road bed, though forested
over with secondary growth hardwoods, for almost a mile to a ford of
the creek. Magnuson, head of the Trading Path Preservation Association,
told us about his study of the Path and efforts to preserve its
heritage. Magnuson notes that locating the remnants of the Path often
depends on discovering the river fords that provided the only passage
across Piedmont rivers before the advent of bridges. "Find the fords
and you'll find the footpaths. Find the footpaths and you'll find the
villages," says Magnuson.
From Alamance, I drive State Road 62 to Julian in the edge of Guilford
County. This road may well follow the old course of the Trading Path.
There is evidence of old road beds in the woods criss-crossing the
right of way of 62. At several points I pull over, park and tramp
through the woods to look at possible sites. They seem to be likely
candidates but there is no way for me to tell for sure. Driving through
Julian, however, I find myself on a secondary road that, according to
the road sign, is named "Colonial Trading Path." This evidence may not
satisfy an historian but it lets me feel that I am still on the right
path.
I follow Old Red Cross Road and New Salem Road into Randolph County to
Randleman--but past Randleman I am guessing. A Trading Path scholar
from the 1950's, Douglas L. Rights, said that old maps show the Trading
Path traveling though Randoph County's Caraway Mountains and that this
little mountain range actually appears much as John Lawson described in
his writing about the Path in this section of North Carolina. Rights
also notes that the Keyauwee village where Lawson spent the night in
1701 could well have had its name transformed into the name Caraway
over the centuries. I drive to Flint Hill and down Flint Hill Road
through the Caraway Mountains. I find myself in agreement with Lawson
and Rights--these are impressive mountains even if located in the
Piedmont. I turn onto Highway 64 and immediately cross Caraway Creek
with Shepherd Mountain and Ridges Mountain in the distance.
Archaeologists have located the site of an Indian village in the bottom
lands of Caraway Creek that they believe is Lawson's Keyauwee Town.
I cross the Uhwarrie River on Highway 64 knowing that somewhere nearby
is the Trading Path's ford across the Uhwarrie--probably identifiable
even today. I don't have the time to explore and, of course, private
property rights must always be respected. I soon turn off Highway 64
following any roads that head due west. I may still be in the vicinity
of the Trading Path but the roads I am following are now more
questionable. High Rock Lake now covers the section of the Yadkin
before me and I must turn northwest, away from the Path, in order to
find a crossing of the Yadkin. I join Interstate 85 and drive 65 miles
per hour for a short stretch before I exit on Highway 70 just before
crossing the Yadkin. On the far side of the river is another historical
marker. This one proclaims the "Trading Ford: On famous trading path
used by Indians and early settlers. There Greene retreating from
Cornwallis crossed on Feb. 2, 1781. East 1 mi."
In early February of 1701, John Lawson stayed several days at Sapona,
the Indian town at the Trading Ford. Calling the Yadkin the Sapona
River, he described the locale as follows:
"[W]e reach'd the fertile and pleasant Banks of Sapona River , whereon
stands the Indian Town and Fort. Nor could all Europe afford a
pleasanter Stream, were it inhabited by Christians, and cultivated by
ingenious Hands. These Indians live in a clear Field, about a Mile
square, which they would have sold me; because I talked sometimes of
coming into those Parts to live. This most pleasant River may be
something broader than the Thames at Kingston, keeping a continual
pleasant warbling Noise, with its reverberating on the bright Marble
Rocks. It is beautified with a numerous Train of Swans, and other sorts
of Water-Fowl, not common, though extraordinary pleasing to the Eye.
The forward Spring welcom'd us with her innumerable Train of small
Choristers, which inhabit those fair Banks; the Hills redoubling, and
adding Sweetness to their melodious Tunes by their shrill Echoes. One
side of the River is hemm'd in with mountainy Ground, the other side
proving as rich a Soil to the Eye of a knowing Person with us, as any
this Western World can afford."
To reach the Ford, I drive into the edge of Salisbury and turn left or
east onto Long Ferry Road. On Dukeville Road I turn left again and
drive through a residential area toward the river. At the end of this
road is the Yadkin and the Trading Ford. Douglas Rights tells us that
although the backwater of High Rock Lake now covers the Ford, the
islands in the Yadkin River that made up a part of the Ford are still
visible in dry seasons. It has been dry this fall so I am optimistic.
But at the end of the road is the large and imposing Dukeville power
station with visitor parking and a chain link fence between the parking
lot and the river. I park, find a gate in the fence and a short trail
down to the Yadkin. I can see the islands across the still water in the
mid-afternoon sunlight. I decide that I am standing close by the famous
Trading Ford near where Lawson must have lingered three hundred years
ago.
I wish I could see the Path's old roadbed angling down to a free
flowing and reverberating Yadkin, but I'm content with what I have seen
on my day's travel. I still marvel at the survival of the fragments of
the Path's old roadbed that I did find and I hope there are many more
remnants for Tom Magnuson to locate and preserve. And some day soon,
maybe I can help search for the Trading Path's fords over the Uhwarrie,
Rocky, Alamance and Haw Rivers. But that day will have to wait at least
a bit. I'm due back in Durham so I back out of the Dukeville power
plant parking lot and head for the on-ramp to the latest version of the
Great Indian Trading Path. Soon I'm traveling again at 65 miles per
hour heading north on I-85. I'll make Occaneechi Town, present day
Hillsborough, before dark.
A remnant of the Great Indian Trading Path can be seen along a section
of the Poet's Walk, at Ayr Mount Historic Site, 376 St. Mary's Road,
Hillsborough, N.C. For further information about the Trading Path and
related matters:
The Trading Path Association website: www.tradingpath.org
John Lawson, A New Voyage to Carolina (UNC Press 1967)(originally published 1709)
Douglas L. Rights, The American Indian in North Carolina (John F. Blair, Publisher, 1957)
Douglas L. Rights, The Trading Path to the Indians, North Carolina Historical Review, Volume VIII, page 403 (1931)
Stephen Davis & Trawick Ward, Time Before History: The Archaeology of North Carolina (UNC Press, 1999)
Stephen Davis, Patrick Livingood, Trawick Ward & Vincas
Steponaitis, Excavating Occaneechi Town: Archaeology of an Eighteenth
Century Indian Village in North Carolina, a CD-ROM (UNC Press, 1998)
Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation Web Page (with information about
reenactments at the reconstructed Occaneechi Village in Hillsborough):
www.occaneechi-saponi.org
North Carolina Archaeology Home Page: www.arch.dcr.state.nc.us
Tom Fowler
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 13 November 2005 )
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