| Native Americans 
              traveling the waterways of North America were constantly confronted 
              with nonnavigable sections of river where canoes and baggage had 
              to be transported over land, around falls and rapids. Sometimes 
              the portage was as treacherous as the river itself. Carrying their 
              heavy burdens, Indians and Europeans often fell to their deaths 
              trying to negotiate rocky terrain and steep cliffs. Robert Griffing's 
              painting The Portage gives us a glimpse of a rarely recorded 
              but common event of the 18th century woodland Indian. |