Leupp-Oraibi Road Indian Route 2 Oraibi Wash AZ

An Indian route is a type of minor

numbered road A route (or road) number, designation or abbreviation is an identifying numeric (or alphanumeric) designation assigned by a highway authority to a particular stretch of roadway to distinguish it from other routes and, in many cases, also to indica ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

found on some

Indian reservations An Indian reservation is an area of land held and governed by a federally recognized Native American tribal nation whose government is accountable to the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs and not to the state government in which it ...

. 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 A shield is a piece of personal armour held in the hand, which may or may not be strapped to the wrist or forearm. Shields are used to intercept specific attacks, whether from close-ranged weaponry or projectiles such as arrows, by means of ...

featuring a downward-pointing

arrowhead An arrowhead or point is the usually sharpened and hardened tip of an arrow, which contributes a majority of the projectile mass and is responsible for impacting and penetrating a target, as well as to fulfill some special purposes such as sign ...

with varying designs depending on the

state State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our S ...

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 A spur is a metal tool designed to be worn in pairs on the heels of riding boots for the purpose of directing a horse or other animal to move forward or laterally while riding. It is usually used to refine the riding aids (commands) and to ba ...

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 Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...

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 A fall line (or fall zone) is the area where an upland region and a coastal plain meet and is typically prominent where rivers cross it, with resulting rapids or waterfalls. The uplands are relatively hard crystalline basement rock, and the coa ...

Oral tradition Oral tradition, or oral lore, is a form of human communication wherein knowledge, art, ideas and cultural material is received, preserved, and transmitted orally from one generation to another. Vansina, Jan: ''Oral Tradition as History'' (1985) ...

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 The Iroquois ( or ), officially the Haudenosaunee ( meaning "people of the longhouse"), are an Iroquoian-speaking confederacy of First Nations peoples in northeast North America/ Turtle Island. They were known during the colonial years to ...

, up the

Mohawk River The Mohawk River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed October 3, 2011 river in the U.S. state of New York. It is the largest tributary of the Hudson River. The Mohawk f ...

, the Great Warrior Path that connected the mouth of the

Scioto River The Scioto River ( ) is a river in central and southern Ohio more than in length. It rises in Hardin County just north of Roundhead, Ohio, flows through Columbus, Ohio, where it collects its largest tributary, the Olentangy River, and meets t ...

to the

Cumberland Gap The Cumberland Gap is a pass through the long ridge of the Cumberland Mountains, within the Appalachian Mountains, near the junction of the U.S. states of Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee. It is famous in American colonial history for its r ...

and Tennessee Country, the Chickasaw-Choctaw Trail, which became the noted Natchez Trace, and the Occaneechi Trail, from the site of

Petersburg, Virginia Petersburg is an independent city (United States), independent city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. As of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, the population was 33,458. The Bureau of Econ ...

, southwest into

the Carolinas The Carolinas are the U.S. states of North Carolina and South Carolina, considered collectively. They are bordered by Virginia to the north, Tennessee to the west, and Georgia to the southwest. The Atlantic Ocean is to the east. Combining Nor ...

Sections

Contemporary Indian routes are divided into sections, each of which represents a discrete and specifically defined portion of the route. Sections are usually numbered 10, 20, 30, etc. in one of the orders that the sections would be traversed during travel. A section break occurs when it is necessary to accurately report data associated with a change in the nature of the route. In particular, a section break is required whenever any of the following occur: * The route crosses a state boundary * The route crosses a county boundary * The route crosses a reservation boundary * The route crosses a

congressional district Congressional districts, also known as electoral districts and legislative districts, electorates, or wards in other nations, are divisions of a larger administrative region that represent the population of a region in the larger congressional bod ...

boundary * A bridge begins * A bridge ends. * The surface type changes * The standard to which the road was constructed changes * There is a significant change to the condition of the road The main span of a bridge together with all its approach spans is a single section.

References

External links

Indian Route 1
Hualapai Indian Reservation (video, 1:35 min.) – Indian Route 1 starts at

Peach Springs, Arizona , native_name_lang = hu , settlement_type = Census-designated place , image_skyline = Peach Springs-John Osterman Shell Gas Station-1929.jpg , imagesize = , image_caption = John Osterman Shell ...

and ends at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. {{US route types Roads in the United States Types of roads

Description

Historical usage

Sections

See also

References

External links