The Portage Path is Akron's prehistoric treasure. A trail first created by the elk, bison, and deer which inhabited the forests, the First People to occupy this region improved the forest route to create the 8-mile portage as long as 10,000 years ago. The Path crosses the watershed divide which separates waters flowing to the Atlantic Ocean from waters which flow to the Gulf of Mexico.
As many as 2500 native people lived in the Cuyahoga valley at the time Europeans first arrived.
The northern terminus of the Portage Path is at the big bend of the Cuyahoga River. For centuries, the Cuyahoga was a wide, rushing, river, unharnessed until the Canal builders destroyed its power in 1825.
The southern terminus of the Portage Path is at the northern tip of Long Lake channel on the Tuscarawas River. The terminus points of the Portage Path parallel the course of the Ohio Canal.
This trail was obvious to European explorers who first toured the area 300 years ago. On July 18, 1797, Moses Warren ascended the Cuyahoga River from Cleveland to the modern- day Merriman Road area. He surveyed the exact location of the Indian Trail which had been designated as the western boundary of the Western Reserve.
He saw an Indian village called Old Cuyahoga Town near the Cuyahoga terminus occupied by the Delaware (Lene Lenape).
The Portage Path was the boundary line between portions of the Ohio country open legally to European settlement and the territory that had been reserved to native people in the Treaty of Fort McIntosh in 1785. The new boundaries created an "Indian Territory" west of a line extending from the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, along the 8-mile Portage Path to the Tuscarawas River to present day Bolivar.
While there were no permanent villages of any tribal group, the Portage Path was probably used by Indian people as follows:
Shawnee from western Ohio;
Delaware (Lene Lenape) from the area of Schoenbrunn;
Iroquoian people who left the five nations of New York and migrated to the Ohio country and were referred to as "Mingoes";
Huron people: Wyandots, Ottawas, and Miami.
The sculpture of a Native American portaging a canoe was designed and sculpted by Peter Jones who resides and works on the Cattaraugus Indian Reservation near Versailles, New York. His father was Seneca, his mother an Onondaga. He has been honored with the "Excellence in Iroquois Arts" award, and has been selected to curate an exhibit of pottery for the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian.
The design of the bronze sculpture, Marking the Trail of the Portage Path is based on the people who lived in the area at the time of European contact -- Woodland Indians, strong and athletic, who traveled light. The Indian portaging a canoe wears a breechcloth typical of the time and a headpiece reminiscent of the style pictured in the historic Miami tribes.
This statue marks the exact ends of the trail at the Cuyahoga River and the Tuscarawas River; and for the first time, marks the exact route of the Portage Path as it traverses the city of Akron. Broad blade markers at 50 locations along the 8-mile course describe the true location of the trail.
- Written by Dave Lieberth, Society Chairman Emeritus