Indian Paths
Hickory Township, Forest County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Across the river here paths led over the hills to Oil Creek. Each year, in spring, the Indians used to travel westward to gather petroleum from the oil pits, boil maple sugar and make bark canoes.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Long before roads followed the Allegheny, Native travelers used seasonal footpaths that climbed the hills toward Oil Creek. Each spring they gathered crude petroleum skimmed from natural oil pits, boiled maple sap into sugar, and shaped canoes from tree bark — a round of harvests keyed to the season and the land. Forest County's oil seeps were valued generations before the 1859 Drake Well launched the world's petroleum industry nearby.
Why it matters
It records the deep Indigenous knowledge of Pennsylvania's oil country, a resource Native people used centuries before it made western Pennsylvania the birthplace of the modern petroleum age.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Forest County
Tionesta, PA · est. 1982
Established in 1848 from Jefferson County and enlarged with part of Venango County in 1866, Forest County was named for the deep woodlands that still define it. Long before county lines, the region was laced with Native American paths, and between 1767 and 1770 the Moravian missionary David Zeisberger carried his mission among the Munsee people here. The county seat later moved from Marienville to Tionesta.
Olean Road
Corsica, PA · est. 1950
The Olean Road, an early route running from Olean to Kittanning, followed the older Catawba Path — a trail once used by Five Nations (Iroquois) war parties on their long raids against the Catawba people of South Carolina. Near this point it crossed another Native path linking Venango (present-day Franklin) with Chinklacamoose (present-day Clearfield). The layered names on the land record centuries of Indigenous travel and warfare before settlers ever arrived.
Seneca Crossing
Glade Township, PA · est. 2007
Long before roads crossed this country, an eight-mile footpath linked Conewango Creek to the upper Allegheny River, sparing travelers the grueling 26-mile trip upstream to the heart of the Seneca Nation. Generations of Seneca people, French explorers, and later Revolutionary War soldiers all wore this portage smooth, its lower branches converging near this midpoint before the route continued on toward Kinzua. It was a highway of the wilderness, connecting waterways and peoples across northwestern Pennsylvania.
Seneca Spring
Kane, PA · est. 1951
A spring just southwest of here marked a resting place on one of the great Native footpaths that laced the eastern woodlands long before European roads. This trail crossed the high plateau known as the Big Level and formed part of the main artery linking Onondaga — the political heart of the Iroquois Confederacy — with the Ohio country and the distant Carolinas. Travelers, traders, and war parties alike relied on such springs to break the journey.