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The river was the first road, and its Mishawaka infrastructure was the rapids. The documentary record reached supports the landing and not much more: canoes and pirogues came up the river as far as the rapids at Mishawaka and no farther in a laden run; the log village stood at the dam site around 1820; the fall is two feet nine inches on the county history's measurement. A fall of that size is a portage in the small — a carry of a few yards around broken water, not the nine-mile carry at the bend — and no record reached describes the carry at Mishawaka: where boats were lifted, where the path ran, whether the north bank or the south carried it. The landing is a fact; the portage path at the rapids is an inference from the landing, and it prints as one.
Two negatives belong to this article because the river invites both assumptions. There is no towpath in the record: Mishawaka's races were mill races, dug for water power from 1837, and a towpath belongs to a canal, which was projected for this valley and never built on this ground. And there is no documented bank trail — no record reached draws a footpath along either bank between the portage and Elkhart in the Native or French eras, though the river's use makes bank movement certain in fact. Certain in fact and absent in record is the whole subject of this section; the bank paths print here at exactly that size, as the network's most-used and least-documented lines.