Great Minquas Path
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Great Minquas Path, or The Great Trail, was a 17th-century trade route that ran through southeastern Pennsylvania from the Susquehanna River, near Conestoga, to the Schuylkill River, opposite Philadelphia.[1] The 80-mile (130 km) east-west trail was the primary route for fur trading with the Minquas (or Susquehannock) people. Dutch, Swedish and English settlers fought one another for control of it.[2]
The Dutch began the fur trade in the 1620s, and named the trail "Beversreede" or "Beaver Road." Sometime after 1633, they built Fort Beversreede at the trail's eastern terminus, the confluence of the Schuylkill River and the Delaware River. A 1655 Swedish map shows the fort on Providence Island, on the west bank of the Schuylkill River, at its mouth,[3] although Scharf and Westcott state that the fort was on the east bank of the Schuylkill River.[4]
In 1634, the Susquehannock used the Great Minquas Path in their conquest of the Lenape people. "Minquas," meaning "treacherous," was the Lenni-Lenape name for the Susquehannock, their traditional enemy. The name was adopted by the Dutch, and later the Swedes.