Buffalo Jumps in Alberta

Photo: Cairn overlooks the Red Deer River 2012

Dry Island marks the northern boundary of the buffalo jumps. Natural declivities like this were used by Plains people for thousands of years to hunt buffalo by driving them over the cliff to where hunters waited at the bottom. At forty-five metres, Dry Island is the highest jump in Alberta.

Photo: Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump 2012

This UNESCO Heritage Site in southern Alberta is well worth exploring. The photo shows the edge of the horseshoe shaped cliff left by the last ice age. The buffalo were driven to the cliff edge and then harvested by hunters waiting below.

It was important to let none of the herd escape, lest they tell their buffalo brothers to avoid the place. Then people would go hungry.

Plains Cree and Blackfoot people appreciated their reliance on the bison. As well as eating the meat, they used the skins to make warm buffalo robes and to cover their tipi homes.

Before and after the hunt, these nomadic hunters revered the animals on which they depended. They showed gratitude by visiting Ribstone sites, of which there are many around Alberta.

The buffalo hunters did not have the luxury of choosing the jump where they would hunt; they had to follow the herd. Jumps might be inactive for many years while the buffalo grazed elsewhere.

Of course these places contain thick layers of archaeological evidence. Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump was in use when the world's oldest literary work, the Epic of Gilgamesh, was being written halfway round the world. When the pyramids were built in Egypt, buffalo were being hunted here.

This type of Winter Count Robe was inscribed with markings that served as a kind of historic calendar.

Photo: Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump Interpretive Centre, 2012

All photos taken by the author.