in England, and Roosevelt was carrying his first steamboat down the Ohio from Pittsburg; when the old Indian shore had been turned into an active agricultural frontier; the shore of Erie and Michigan was little known, and its maps were nearly as crude as those of inner Africa. Northern Ohio and Indiana were unchartered wilderness when compared with the active farm lands of the Ohio shore. Even western New York, through which the Mohawk gateway was to be approached, was still a waste, and at Genesee Falls, where Rochester now stands, it is recorded that there was in 1811 but a single house. It was this unused half of the Old Northwest that was waiting for its gate to open. Buffalo, Cleveland, Sandusky, Toledo, Detroit, Milwaukee and Chicago were at the opening of the Erie Canal either not in existence at all, or were little straggling villages where wild game ran at will and the Indians loitered about the streets.

A new world came into existence with the opening of the Erie Canal. The Cumberland road had carried the old East into the Northwest, but its capacity had been limited by the capacity of the vehicle that went along it. The conditions of emigration established by the packtrain, or even the Conestoga wagon, impressed a uniformity in simplicity upon all travel by this road. Its volume had been limited by the very width of the road itself. But the Erie Canal was more safe and less primitive than its competing route. The canal boat moved through the waters of the canal with deliberation, indeed, but with security, and the sloop or steamboat carried the traveler over the waters of the lakes. There was no limit either in size or cost to the freight that could be shipped. There was no approachable limit to the volume of migration that might pass to the northern side. With easier communication came quicker development in population and wealth, so that the lake side of the Old Northwest soon caught up to the river side which had had a generation's start. In spite of the years between the two migrations and the difference in means, the two sections easily blended into one. The earlier side had been filled with a people driven west by the hard times following the war with England. New hard times in the thirties prepared the thousands who were to pass the northern gateway in the later time. And Michigan and Chicago are concrete evidence of the emigration now as southern Indiana and Illinois were of the emigration then. Significant changes in public attitude towards the gateways ap peared in the later day. In 1788 the Ohio Company expedition had

Nicholas J. Roosevelt made this trip on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers in 1811 with his wife. This first steamboat was built at Pittsburg in 1810 under the supervision of Mr. Roosevelt who was instructed as to its building by Robert Fulton. It was 116 feet long, 20 feet beam engine, 36 inch cylinder and was called the "New Orleans." In Sept., 1811, they commenced the journey, reaching New Orleans without serious accident. The Steamboat Voyage on the Western Waters, by J. H. B. Latrobe, Maryland Hist. Soc. Fund Publication No. 6.

gone west by way of a southern and indirect route, taking it as the natural road. But when troops had to be sent from the Chesapeake to Chicago for the Black Hawk War in 1832, they were sent by a northern and indirect route, through the canal to Buffalo and by steamer to the head of Lake Michigan. The Erie gateway had by 1830 succeeded to the prominent place heid in 1818 by the Cumberland road.

Through these two gateways the Old Northwest was peopled until it ceased to be the Old Northwest and became the Middle West. Upon the East they continued to exert their influence for several decades. The Cumberland road had encouraged New York to persevere with the Erie Canal. The Erie Canal impressed upon Pennsylvania the necessity to continue her competition by constructing her canal and portage railway system. The activity of Pennsylvania stirred Virginia and Maryland to renewed exertions, the former starting a Chesapeake and Ohio Canal to increase the competition for the control of the gateways. While Maryland was late enough in entering the struggle to come armed with a new vehicle of transportation, and to begin work upon her Baltimore and Ohio Railroad by 1828. It is to be learned from the history of transportation in America that it was a desire for western business that started the great canals and roads and railroads which were to make union and nationality in America possible.

The gateways inspired the East, but they created the West, and their dominant influence is seen in the whole ante bellum history of the Middle West. They gave rise to a Northwest of two sections, one depending upon Lake Erie and looking to the New York route, the other reaching out from the terminus of the Cumberland road. For some little time the two sections stood apart, but the logic of geography and experience prepared the way for the blending of the whole population. The influence of the gateways upon the Old Northwest comes to an end when there is to be found throughout the five states substantial economic and social uniformity.

Intercourse between the Lakes and the Ohio had been difficult always, yet the necessity for such intercourse had given the occasion for the first discovery of the country long before this present era begins. How old is the Indian knowledge of the portage paths, no one can say. The earliest of the French explorers found them known and used them constantly. The river system dependent upon the Lakes, the Ohio, and the Mississippi interlock over the area of the Northwest, so that there are numerous places where the light canoe can be transferred from one system to the other with but a short carry. On the northern side the Cuyahoga, the Sandusky, the Maumee, and farther west, the St. Joseph, the Chicago and the Fox, extend far to the south with their branches. From the south the rivers rise to meet them, the Muskingum, the

Scioto, the Miami, and the Wabash, and the Illinois and Wisconsin. Between these rivers, pair for pair, portage paths were followed from time to time as hunting and trapping need suggested. But the routes were navigable only for the canoe. The Indian or the explorer, with his portable commissariat, could move freely over them, but they gave little comfort to the emigrant with family, stock, and even the most primitive of furniture. Yet the routes were valleys, and carried waterways, and no pioneer who had come into the Northwest through either of the gateways was at loss what to do. The southern gateway revealed federal activity in a great engineering work; the northern pointed to a still greater work carried to triumphant completion by a single state. The turnpike and canal were familiar to the population of the West, and were by them undertaken confidently and on a large scale at a time when Eastern communities were reluctant and timid in their own improvement. So it was that a population was no sooner in the river side of the Northwest than it demanded a road to the East, and it was no sooner in both sides than it determined to provide for itself easy intercommunication along the portage paths, or from east to west, as might be wise or possible.

The year 1825 is as significant as any in marking the growth of local internal improvement in the Old Northwest. In this year the opening of the Erie canal gave permanent accommodation to the demands for Eastern communication and left the activities of the West available for domestic exploitation. The father of the Erie canal was himself called into the service of the Northwest, and his advice, eagerly asked, was as readily given. The Fourth of July previous to the opening of his own canal came in a period of great activity for him in the Ohio country. On that day he formally began the excavation at Licking Summit1 that was to join the Lake and the River by a canal along the valleys of the Cuyahoga and Scioto, connecting the villages of Cleveland and Portsmouth. A few days later he similarly celebrated the beginning of a second great system that was one day to turn the old Miami and Maumee portage into a through route between Toledo and Cincinnati. With the commencement of the Ohio and Miami canals, as these enterprises were designated, Ohio entered upon a vast career of domestic improvement. Not all of her schemes were ever remunerative or practical as commercial enterprises, but the state had responded fully to that overwhelming demand for transportation which was characteristic of the whole Northwest, and to which the tedious experiences of original entry through the old and narrow gateways had given volume and insistence. On the very day that Governor Clinton was commencing the Ohio canal, another ceremony was taking place within the 10On July 4, 1825, work was begun at Licking Summit on the great Ohio canal.

same state at St. Clairsville.

Here, across the river and not far from Wheeling, where the Cumberland road had stopped in 1818, the President and Vice-President of the United States were giving formal recognition to the fact of resumption of construction. The Cumberland road was now to be continued, and to be extended under the name of the National road, across Ohio, through Columbus, across Indiana to Indianapolis, and was even to point the way through Vandalia to St. Louis before the railroad should overtake it, and bring its further building to an end.

The whole Northwest was preparing to bind itself together by roads and canals in 1825. Every one of the old portage paths was to receive some recognition. The canals already begun were to satisfy the greatest needs of Ohio. The two rival portages by the Cuyahoga-Muskingum or the Sandusky-Scioto were blended in a compromise route that joined the Cuyahoga and Scioto and was eminently satisfactory to Cleveland. The Miami Canal covered another much used route. In later years Sandusky, on a good harbor but left out of prosperity by the scheme of state canals, was to build the Mad River and Lake Erie Railroad on her own account, and so enter the field of internal trade. Farther on, the federal government stepped in to aid Indiana in joining the Wabash and Maumee. Illinois turned her portage path into another canal. Wisconsin later joined the Fox and Wisconsin rivers in the same way. While Michigan, alone among the Northwest states in having no good portage within her borders, consoled herself in the first flush of her new dignity as a state, in 1837," by ordering the construction of three parallel railroads across the lower peninsula, bringing herself nearly to ruin and bankruptcy thereby, but throwing light upon the enthusiasm for improvement which the Northwest had.

With the completion of these routes of internal communication through the Old Northwest the direct influence of the gateways came to an end. They dominated in its history so long as travel was difficult and as the route by its nature determined in any wise the life that passed along it. But so soon as adequate means of transportation within the country, or between it and the East were ready for any passenger and any freight, so soon as population and wealth could flow through it freely and unrestrained, in any direction, the period closes. In point of time, the gateways of the Old Northwest are dominant in 1788 and have not ceased to be important in 1850.

The significance of these gateways in the history of the Old Northwest is more than that of two routes of travel. A road may well do more then carry the passer-by. It may by its difficulty imprint upon him and his character marks that will be long in passing. Whenever the capac

"In 1837 Michigan started the Southern and Havre Branch Railroad, the Central or Detroit and St. Joseph Railroad, the Northern Railroad.

ity of the road is` beneath the demand upon it, its imprint must become deeper and more permanent. Through the gateways at the Forks of the Ohio and the valley of the Mohawk, the Old Northwest came into existence. For two generations they continued to direct its increase. Among the elements of life in the resulting community may be found many concrete memorials of their period of control. Social democracy points not only to similar economic conditions, but to similar origin and experience; zeal in transportation is the direct result of distance and dificulty; liberal constitutional interpretation at once results from and is necessary to continued development. For an understanding of the uniformity which is the distinguishing feature of the Old Northwest these gateways and their history provide the key.

UNEXPLORED FIELDS IN AMERICAN HISTORY1

BY CLAUDE H. VAN TYNE

The task which I have set myself today has troubled me much in execution because of the fear that I might be misunderstood. This society has too large a body of excellent work to its credit, and it has rendered too great services to the cause of Michigan history to endure patiently any criticism of its aims and accomplishments-especially from the lips of one of its youngest members. I hope, therefore, that what I have to say will be viewed as suggestion, not criticism, as a hope for our future accomplishment, and not fault-finding with past results.

It is a commonplace among historical scholars that the only good excuse for the rewriting of history by new generations of historians is that each succeeding generation of readers of history has new interests. in the past which the older historians, however excellent their work, neglected. Monumental and immortal as was the work of Gibbon, there have been great and valuable studies made by later investigators in the same field, and many contributions of the greatest interest made to the history of the "Decline and Fall." New ways of looking upon life create new interests in the life of past generations, and the past must be searched again for the light it may shed upon present problems or for explanations of the growth of institutions, now for the first time prominent enough to attract our attention.

And there is yet another reason for rewriting history. The study of history itself has had its evolution from the time when the historian 'Read at the midwinter meeting, December, 1907.