Travois

The travois is transportation without wheels—two poles forming a V, with the apex attached to a pulling animal and the splayed ends dragging on the ground. Where wheels require roads or firm surfaces, travois work anywhere poles can slide: grassland, forest, snow, sand. This terrain flexibility made the travois humanity's primary land transport across pre-Columbian North America.

The adjacent possible for the travois required only poles, lashing material, and something to pull it. Dogs were the original motive power in the Americas, where horses wouldn't arrive until Spanish contact. The dog travois appeared by at least 20,000 years ago, evidenced by the presence of larger dogs bred for pulling in Paleoindian sites—domestication of the wolf already redirected toward transportation needs.

The travois solved a specific problem: how do nomadic peoples move camp? Hunting societies followed game seasonally; gathering societies moved to ripening food sources; both needed to transport possessions across difficult terrain. The travois carried loads—shelters, tools, food, children, elders—that humans alone could not manage, extending the range of nomadic movement.

The technology reveals what the Americas lacked: wheel-friendly terrain and draft animals large enough to make wheeled transport worthwhile. The wheel was known in Mesoamerica (appearing on toys) but never adopted for transport. Without horses, oxen, or paved roads, the travois represented optimal adaptation to actual conditions—not failure to invent the wheel but rational preference for what worked.

After Spanish horses arrived in the 16th century, Plains cultures rapidly scaled up travois technology. A horse travois could carry 300 pounds versus a dog's 40—transforming the economics of nomadic life. The tipi, too large for dog transport, became practical. The great horse cultures of the American West were travois cultures, enabled by an invention already 20,000 years old.