Great Indian Warpath
The system of footpaths (the Warpath branched off in several places onto alternate routes and over time shifted westward in some regions) extended from what is now upper New York to deep within Alabama.
Various Native peoples traded and made war along the trails, including the Catawba, numerous Algonquian tribes, the Cherokee, and the Iroquois Confederacy.
Only smaller villages and settlements of different tribes occupied the valley, which was used as a hunting ground, a travel route, and a warpath between the two great clusters of Eastern Indians in the 17th and 18th centuries.
When King George III issued a proclamation in 1763 forbidding further settlement beyond the mountains and demanding the return of settlers who had already crossed the Alleghenies, a line was designated roughly following the Seneca Trail.
In the south, the GIW began at the Gulf of Mexico in the Mobile area and proceeded north by northeast, bisecting another trail known as the Upper Creek Path and crossing the Tennessee River near Guntersville.
This intersected the main route of the path before fording the stream at Harrison, Tennessee, to reach the Middle Mississippian town which archaeologists call the Dallas site.
After crossing that valley, the branch from Chickamauga passed east to Parker's Gap through Whiteoak Mountain and turned northeast, eventually rejoining the main route.
From the Cumberland Gap and Appalachian mountains at the Tennessee border, the fork called the Chesapeake Branch led northeast, passing 3 miles (5 km) west of what is now Bristol, then through the sites of present-day Abingdon, Glade Spring, Marion, Rural Retreat, Fort Chiswell (another possible westward gap route), Draper, Ingle's or Pepper's ferry, Salem, Roanoke and Amsterdam, then up the Shenandoah Valley through Buchanan, Lexington, Staunton, Harrisonburg, Winchester.
One Chesapeake branch cut off at present Ellett, Virginia, went up the North Fork of the Roanoke River, down Catawba Creek to Fincastle or Amsterdam.
From crossing the Potomac River at Hagerstown, Maryland, the Seneca Trail (U.S. Route 11) continued northward toward the Cumberland Valley and modern Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.
Since the terrain in Virginia and West Virginia was the most difficult to cross east to west (or vice versa), along the Appalachian mountain range, due to numerous north–south ridges, most hunters (and later settlers) crossed the mountains between the Ohio River watershed and Chesapeake Bay watershed either in Tennessee to the south of that region, or via what was once called Nemacolin's Trail through the Cumberland Narrows of Maryland and western Pennsylvania.
Named after the Delaware chief Nemacolin, who assisted surveyor Thomas Cresap on behalf of the Ohio Company of Virginia, it was further improved by Washington and General Braddock.
One branch continued west toward the Ohio River valley through Emmitsburg, Maryland and could ultimately connect to Nemacolin's trail further north, even along what became U.S. Route 30 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Another GIW branch continued east along the Potomac River toward Washington, D.C., and Alexandria, Virginia (then settlements of the Piscataway tribe) following what became the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.
War parties could then invade the Delmarva Peninsula, and the lands of the Algonkian speaking Lenape of the Delaware River Valley and/or the Piscataway and Powhatan Confederacy of the Chesapeake Bay.
Both these war and hunting routes joined to cross the Susquehanna River near Camp Hill (now a suburb of Harrisburg) and jointly followed its tributaries further northward until again splitting near what became the Shamokin Dam and later Shikellamy State Park (then a major Indian village near Sunbury).
This or the Great Shamokin Path may have become the most used after the French and Indian War as settlement, the Kittanning Expedition of 1756 and the Wyoming Valley massacre of 1778 as well as disease pushed the remaining Algonquian-speaking peoples westward.
The northernmost major east–west branch in Pennsylvania connecting to the GIW became the track of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad; a part has recently been converted back to pedestrian use as the Susquehanna Warrior Trail in Luzerne County.
A tributary trail, called the Warrior Branch, coming from Tennessee, through Kentucky and Southern Ohio, came up Fish creek and down Dunkard, crossing Cheat river at McFarland's.
After receiving the Warrior Branch junction, it kept on through land late of Charles Griffin, by Long's Mill, Ashcraft's Fort, Phillip Rogers' (now Alfred Stewart's), the Diamond Spring (now William James'); thence nearly on the route of the present Morgantown road, until it came to the Misses Hadden's; thence across Hellen's fields, passing near the Rev.
This branch, and the northern part within our county [Fayette], of the main route, will be found to possess much interest in connection with Braddock's line of march to his disastrous destiny.
