came to the Cuttaway [Kentucky] River; We were obliged to go up it about 1 m. to an island which was the shoalest place We coud find to cross at …”6 Gist's chronicled movements suggest that the crossing he describes might be at the very location, later to be called Leestown, that lay about one mile from present-day Frankfort and was a critical part of the famed ancient buffalo trail, referred to by the native tribes as “great buffalo trace.”
The Amazement, the Terror
Aside from the empty vastness and developmental potential of the western wilderness, one common impression communicated by the returning frontiersmen, especially the celebrated “longhunters” like Daniel and Squire Boone, Henry Skaggs, James Harrod, Isaac Bledsoe, Richard Callaway, and others involved their stirring firsthand accounts of the breathtaking numbers of big game creatures. Elk, whitetail deer, black bear, panther, beaver, bobcat, wolf, wolverine, wild boar, and bison reigned supreme in the frontier's dense woodlands, bogs, limestone outcroppings, plains, and meadows. Even allowing for the seasonal hunting by the regional tribes, big game populations of unimaginable sizes flourished in the region that now encompasses all or part of the heartland states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois.
But of all the recorded accounts concerning big game, the most indelible impressions were spun courtesy of the horned, cocoa-brown-colored, and aggressive American bison. Zoology long ago determined that the two distinct varieties of buffalo in the greater Bovid family had for millennia been found solely in sub-Saharan Africa (the ornery and dangerous Cape buffalo) and southeastern Asia (the water buffalo), and not in North America until relatively recently. Buffalo and bison are related but biologically different. DNA findings from bones excavated in northern Canada suggest, however, that bison herds emigrated from eastern Asia anywhere from 195,000 to 130,000 years ago, traveling over the natural Bering Straits land bridge that connected eastern Asia to Alaska. The buffalo cousins that made the journey, two Bovid families of bison, are divided between the American bison and the European bison. Nevertheless, the English- and French-speaking explorers of the western frontier from their initial seventeenth century portrayals referred to the American bison by a variety of names, including biffalo, bofelo, buffalow, bufflo, buffaloe, and, most commonly, buffalo. That latter sobriquet, though technically incorrect, has endured to the present day. In keeping with this quirky custom, I will refer to the American bison as buffalo moving forward.
In terms of individual size the North American buffalo is an imposing, sinewy yet compact biological machine. Females average from 700 to 1,000 pounds, stand five feet at the shoulder and are six to seven feet from nose to tail while males can tip the scales at 1,800 to 2,000 pounds, stand six feet at the shoulder and span up to nine feet in length. In their innate “fight or flight” genetic programming, the slightest disturbance while they are at rest or grazing can, in an instant, set an entire herd into unpredictable, helter-skelter motion from zero to 30 miles per hour. This hair-trigger reflex is why Native American hunters, who regarded the buffalo as a sacred being, used so much caution, stealth, and concealing costumes when in the hunt. Their elaborate precautions taught the Euro-American longhunters and their successors about the necessity for extreme safeguard measures when dealing with the skittish buffaloes.
The Euro-American explorers encountered buffalo not only in small groups of 20 to 50 but also in vast herds in the tens of thousands, stretching across middle America's fertile prairies, which were carpeted with swaying short and tall grasses. The largest reported gatherings ranged from 100 to 500,000 buffalo. As the massive herds of buffalo trotted in migration mode, the ground underfoot quaked in rolling temblors and the air hummed with the sound of hooved thunder and guttural murmurs. The pong of hide, urine, and dung stung the eyes and clouds of billowing dust clogged the nostrils. Witnessing wild buffalo searching for sustenance in such staggering numbers proved such an awe-inspiring spectacle that it inspired the more literate early adventurers to connect pen to notebook. “The amazing herds of buffaloes, which resort thither, by their size and number, fill the traveller with amazement and terrors, especially when he beholds the prodigious roads they have made from all quarters as if leading to some populous city,” described Kentucky surveyor, mapmaker, historian, and pioneer John Filson in 1784.7 Twenty-one years later on August 29, 1806, William Clark wrote in the journal of his historic expedition to the Pacific Ocean with Meriwether Lewis about the spectacle of the buffalo population, estimated then to be in the range of at least 30 million, and by some estimates possibly 60 million, across the continent. Of the wonder he felt, Clark wrote, “I assended to the high Country and from an eminance I had a view of the plains for a great distance. From this eminance I had a view of a greater number of buffalow than I had ever Seen before at one time. I must have Seen near 20,000 of those animals feeding on this plain.”8
The buffalo herds were perpetually in motion. They thrived by grazing on the nutrient-rich, flat-as-a-tabletop, grassy plains, and sheltered in woodland regions that spanned from northwestern Canada south through the heartland prairies to northern Mexico, as well as southeast to the hardwood forests of the Appalachian mountain chain. The immense range that sustained the buffalo population covered more than one-third of the North American continent in the late 1500s. Buffalo roamed unchallenged throughout this vast tract of North America, trampling and sculpting the terrain and flora by the sheer enormity of their numbers and the incessant pounding of millions of hooves. Their seasonal migrations traveled along ancient pathways that had been carved into the landscape over millennia. Many of the buffalo trails, or traces, were in some locations hundreds of feet wide and up to four feet deep. Their battered traces in which the dirt was pulverized to an almost stone-like hardness were connected, like the blue highways on a present-day roadmap, by specific locations and topographical intersections that provided natural mineral deposits, such as sulfur, magnesium, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, and sodium chloride. The most important mineral deposit of all to the herds, more vital than all the other minerals, was sodium chloride (NaCl), also known as salt.
Salt is a key life-sustaining nutrient for all of the Earth's marine and terrestrial mammals. Sodium chloride is vital to the daily maintenance of muscle and nerve function, as well as fluid regulation. When mammals, including humans, sweat and urinate, they lose sodium. Mammals that reside in the planet's oceans, like dolphins, whales, otters, seals, walruses, and porpoises, are surrounded by salt, so their replenishment of sodium is easily met. Land-based mammals, however, must by necessity search for salt. This is especially true of the large, four-legged mammals that inhabit the continental landmasses.
Early visitors in the Ohio River Valley soon learned that the resting spots of mammal herds connected by traces served as roadway markers for their constant roaming in search of edible vegetation, salt, and fresh water. One observant geographer, Gilbert Imlay, described in the 1790s one of these mineral-laden stations, scribbling, “A salt spring is called a ‘Lick’ from the earth about them being furrowed out in a most curious manner by the buffalo and deer, which lick the earth on account of the saline particles with which it is impregnated.”9 Another eyewitness account from the late 1790s whose author remains unknown depicted the effect of groups of buffaloes, writing, “The vast space of land around the salt springs desolated as by a ravaging enemy and the hills reduced to plains by the pawing of their feet. I have heard a hunter assert that he saw about a thousand buffaloes at the Blue Licks in Kentucky at one time.”
Prior to the invasion of travelers from the British colonies to northern Kentucky via avenues like the Wilderness Trail, the Cumberland Gap, and the Ohio River, native tribes utilized the roads bulldozed by buffalo herds as trade, warring, and hunting routes. An account from one of Reverend James Smith's trio of journals from 1783, 1795, and 1797 describing his travels through northern Kentucky's Bluegrass identifies one of the most famous buffalo traces, named Atlanant-o-wamiowee by the Shawnees. “We left the lick [probably Lower Blue Lick] and pursued our journey to
