Indian route (United States)

An Indian route is a type of minor numbered road in the United States found on some Indian reservations. These routes are part of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Road System, which also includes federal aid roads, interior or locally funded roads, highway trust fund roads, tribal public roads, county or township roads, parts of the state highway system, and other federal agency public roads.

Description

Indian routes are signed by shields featuring a downward-pointing arrowhead with varying designs depending on the state and/or reservation. Maintenance of these routes varies by locality and could be the responsibility of the BIA, a given tribal nation, or both. BIA route numbers are used on sign posts, atlas maps, plans, programs, reports, and other bureau records requiring similar identification. A spur to an existing route is always assigned its own route number.

Historical usage

Historically, the term "Indian route" referred to one or more components of an extensive network of trails used by indigenous peoples for war, trade, and migration, long before the advent of railroads and highways. These routes were often along relatively high ground or ridges where the soil dried quickly after rains and where there were few streams to be crossed, following important mountain passes to connect river drainages, while trails traveling across rather than along rivers usually followed the Fall Line. Oral tradition is usually the major source for route identification, but this is sometimes supplemented by field notes of land-grant surveys, old county maps, and historic narratives from scientists, explorers, soldiers and law enforcement officials. Later explorers, traders, and colonists followed some of the major routes, such as the Iroquois trail, up the Mohawk River, the Great Warrior Path that connected the mouth of the Scioto River to the Cumberland Gap and Tennessee Country, the Chickasaw-Choctaw Trail, which became the noted Natchez Trace, and the Occaneechi Trail, from the site of Petersburg, Virginia, southwest into the Carolinas.