Copyright Robert Griffing
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.