The social nature of the portage camping ground is illustrated by the meetings--friendly and otherwise--between the Indian retinues of the many travelers who encamped here. When Céloron journeyed from Quebec to the Ohio Valley with his leaden plates, he paused at one of the portages to allow his Indian allies to jollify with certain comrades whom they met here.[15] There are cases where such meetings resulted more seriously than mere drunken sprees.[16]
The meeting-place was also the famous camping ground. To reach the portage path the tired paddler bent every energy as the red sun lay on the horizon. Two landings were thus saved. Here the ground around either end of the path had been cleared and trodden hard by a thousand campers, and if wood was scarce in the immediate locality there was abundance at no great distance. No one familiar with camping need be told the advantages, natural and artificial, to be found on an old camping ground.
But here it should be noted that the shortest portage between any two bodies of water was rather an arbitrary line, at least theoretically so. It was chosen as a good site, not for staying, but for passing. Usually it traversed some sort of watershed, more or less distinct; on either side low ground, marshes, and swamps were not uncommon. In many instances the length of the portage path varied inversely with the stage of the water. Some portages were a mile long in wet seasons and ten miles long in dry. Where this was true the country through which the path ran was not altogether suitable for camps nor for villages, which the camps on important portages often became. Often, however, the nature of the country was favorable for habitation, and at many portages the camps became permanent. At such points Indian villages were sometimes found; but as a rule portages were not largely inhabited unless they were defended, and that was not until the era of military occupation.
The portages were frequently used as burying grounds by the Indians, and beside the little paths around the rapids of the river lies the dust of hundreds swept away to their death by the boiling waters. The portages were not infrequently on high, dry ground, favorable for interment.