It would be interesting to know by which of the routes used by the Indians in those early days La Salle travelled to the Ohio.  After the existence of the Ohio was made known, the first route made use of in reaching that river by the coureurs de bois and other French travellers from Canada, was that from the southern shore of Lake Erie, from a point near where the town of Westfield now stands, across the wilderness by portage southward about nine miles to Chautaugue Lake.  These parties used light bark canoes, which were easily carried upon the shoulders of men whenever a “carry” between the two streams became necessary.  The canoes were paddled on the lake to its southern end, out of which flowed a shallow brook, which afforded water enough in places to float the frail craft.  The shoal water, and the obstructions made by fallen trees, necessitated frequent portages.  This wild and tortuous stream led the voyagers to the Alleghany River, where an ample depth of water and a propitious current carried them into the Ohio.

The French, finding this a laborious and tedious route, abandoned it for a better one.  Where the town of Erie now stands, on the southern shore of the lake of the same name, a small stream flows from the southward into that inland sea.  Opposite its mouth is Presque Isle, which protects the locality from the north winds, and, acting as a barrier to the turbulent waves, offers to the mariner a safe port of refuge behind its shores.  The French ascended the little stream, and from its banks made a short portage to the Rivire des boeuf, or some tributary of French Creek, and descended it to the Alleghany and the Ohio.  This Erie and French River route finally became the military highway of the Canadians to the Ohio Valley, and may be called the second route from Lake Erie.

The third route to the Ohio from Lake Erie commenced at the extreme southwestern end of that inland sea.  The voyagers entered Maumee Bay and ascended the Maumee River, hauling their birch canoes around the rapids between Maumee City and Perrysburgh, and between Providence and Grand Rapids.  Surmounting these obstacles, they reached the site of Fort Wayne, where the St. Joseph and St. Mary rivers unite, and make, according to the author of the “History of the Maumee Valley,” the “Maumee,” or “Mother of Waters,” as interpreted from the Indian tongue.  At this point, when ninety-eight miles from Lake Erie, the travellers were forced to make a portage of a mile and a half to a branch called Little River, which they descended to the Wabash, which stream, in the early days of French exploration, was thought to be the main river of the Ohio system.  The Wabash is now the boundary line for a distance of two hundred miles between the states of Indiana and Illinois.  Following the Wabash, the voyager would enter the Ohio River about one hundred and forty miles above its junction with the Mississippi.