Moccasin Telegraph

I was listening to the episode 679 of the Jefferson Hour interview with Keith Bear.  He mentioned that the "moccasin telegraph" notified the Mandan of the arrival of Lewis and Clark weeks before they actually arrived.

In 490 BC, the soldier Pheidippides ran the  24.85 mile distance between Marathon and Athens to proclaim Greek victory over the Persians.[1] The Native Americans used a similar principle.  The moccasin telegraph was a pre-columbian network between the Indian tribes.  The tribes were normally laid out about seven to eight miles apart so many were in range of a days run.  According to legend, this network carried the information about the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth to the Great Plains.  Rapid City, South Dakota is 1,932 miles from Plymouth.  If a network of runners each ran ten miles a day, the information could have arrived in about six months and thirteen days.[2]

In this TED talk, McDougall talks about our lost art of distance running.  An Apache marathon was running 50 miles to steal horses.