building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

with internal territories prior to the construction of roads and canals: “The old
Iroquois Trail […] was the landward route from the Hudson to the Great Lakes. As a
thoroughfare in its entirety, it meant much to the Indians, but very little to the
white men before the nineteenth century. Though the lower Mohawk Valley was
sparsely settled early in the eighteenth century, white men did not build their
cabins along the Iroquois Trail to the westward until nearly a century later, when
the old Genesee Road was opened. Until then the country through which the
Iroquois Trail ran had been a terra incognita where only Indian runners knew the
way through the Long House of the Iroquois” 175 .
The first idea for the Erie Canal is generally thought to be that of Senator
Gouverneur Morris (1752‐1816), who was influenced by the sight of the first canals
built in England. In fact, Hubert highlighted the suggestion and wrote that “In his
diary for October, 1795, Morris describes his feeling on viewing the Caledonian
Canal in Scotland; " 176 .
As Morris’s political career advanced, within the space of a decade the repeated
suggestions to improve and exploit the internal waterways finally influenced
politicians and the population at a time when other canals were also being built.
The first concrete steps were made with the approval of a law presented in 1808 by
Joshua Forman, a member of the New York legislature, with a funding of 600 dollars
to prepare the project data and measurements for a canal between the River
Hudson and Lake Erie. James Geddes (1763‐1838), an engineer by profession,
involved in politics in the Federal alignment (and therefore in opposition to
Jefferson’s Democratic‐Republicans), prepared the scheduled plans and as a result
became involved as promotor of the project. A few years later in 1810, Dewitt
Clinton, Mayor of New York, presented a resolution in favour of Western Inland
Lock Navigation in order to persuade public opinion about the canal construction
company. The document prepared by DeWitt Clinton began thus:
175 HULBERT, Archer Butler, The Great American Canals, Volume II (Historic Highways of America Vol.
N. 14), Cleveland, Ohio, The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1904, pp. 15‐16
176 Ibid., p. 43
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