At the southern end of the Porcupine Hills of Alberta, in the arid piedmont on the eastern slope of Canada's Rocky Mountains lies Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, one of the most ancient and most minimalistically beautiful of UNESCO's World Heritage sites. For most of the last five millennia, estipah-skikikini-kots (The Place Where We Had Our Heads Smashed) has been at the heart of the interlocked seasonal cycle of bison and human on the Western Plains of North America. With the coming of escaped Spanish horses from the south and European guns, disease and settlement from the east, Head-Smashed-In fell silent but for the sound of the wind in the buffalo grass.

The Place

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is located about twenty kilometres west of Fort Macleod in southern Alberta, near the Oldman River. Fort Macleod is about an hour's drive south of Calgary. The area was the heartland of the Northwest Mounted Police battle against the American Whiskey Traders in the late-19th Century and is well worth a visit by travellers with any sort of interest in history.

The Geography

Head-Smashed-In itself consists of a number of inter-related geographical features which culminate in the jump itself. Stretching to the north-west of the cliff is the 22-square-mile Gathering Basin, where Bison were funnelled together to begin their stampede. The basin is a flat area surrounded by highlands. The banks of the basin are cut by six valleys which approach the basin at virtually equal intervals in an arc from slightly south of due west to slightly east of due north. There are two short exits from the basin, the North Pass and the South Pass, both of which lead directly to the jump itself. Once the bison were stampeded into the basin from whatever direction, their only exit was the fatal jump. The jump itself is a 1000-feet section of cliff that has a consistent vertical drop of near 40 feet. Below the jump is the Kill Site, a huge bone midden over thirty feet deep and spread over most of the thousand feet of the cliff length. About 60 feet downslope from the Kill Site is the Campsite, a flat area which served as seasonal dwelling area and butchering ground for countless generations of bison hunters over several thousand years.

The Geology

The gathering basin is the drainage basin of Olsen Creek. Olsen Creek has carved a series of tributary valleys up to 50 feet deep since the last glaciation.

The jump is a section of Paskapoo sandstone which stands as an escarpment about two kilometres long, running from southwest to northeast.

The kill site is situated on a slumped rock terrace which has been divided by a spring. Most of the kill deposits are located on the section north of the spring. The first block, which was about 50 feet wide, broke away from the cliff about 5600 years ago and dropped 50 feet. This block of stone shattered at the bottom of the cliff and produced a relatively flat terrace. The earliest surviving evidence of human use of the jump is preserved in the stratigraphy immediately above the rubble from this collapse. About 2000 years ago another, somewhat larger block broke away from the cliff. It too shattered into rubble, raising the level of the Kill Site and decreasing the drop from the jump.

The campsite is on a flat bench of glacial deposit a little above the prairie stretching away to the east.

The People

In historical times the Head-Smashed-In area has been part of the wintering ground of the North Piegans, whose reservation lies just to the south of the Buffalo Jump. Head-Smashed-In continues to be an important place for the Piegan people: Piegans work at the Interpretive Centre to help visitors understand their history and culture; and, in the early 1990s the Lonefighters Society of the Piegan people occupied the Head-Smashed-In interpretive centre in protest of the proposed (and since completed) Old Man River Dam project. The surrounding area is rich in archaeological sites and structures. One survey of a section of the Willow Creek north of Head-Smashed-In found ten sites per mile, from camps, through burials, to rock mosaics. These hills have a very rich prehistory whose evidence is subtle.

The Stories

No-one can say what the early users of the Buffalo Jump named the place. Its modern name is a rough translation of the Piegan description estipah-skikikini-kots (The Place Where We Had Our Heads Smashed). According to North Piegan legend, during an early bison run a young boy tried to get a close view of the action by hiding at the bottom of the jump under an overhang of rock. He did get his close view, but he was found later pressed against the cliff with his head crushed by the weight of hundreds of dead bison.

There is a Blackfoot creation story that Napi created the Blackfoot people in the Porcupine Hills and taught them how to jump bison. This myth may refer to Head-Smashed-In.

The Archaeology

Lines of stone cairns called drive lines occur in the gathering basin. The cairns are about three feet in diameter and much overgrown. Hundreds have been documented, all as parts of lines that would have served to steer the bison toward the two passes and the jump. The kill site has provided an abundance of both bison bones and human artifacts. The campsite has provided evidence of hearths, boiling pits, and other signs of human occupation.

Excavations at the kill site and at the campsite have established the presence of three distinct successive cultures that used Head-Smashed-In. The cultural periods are named for the dominant tool assemblages associated with the stratigraphic layers. The tool assemblages are named after the sites where the assemblages were first identified. The Old Women's assemblage is named after a smaller buffalo jump (Old Women's Buffalo Jump) farther north in the Porcupine Hills (near the modern town of Nanton, Alberta). Similarly, the Mummy's Cave assemblage is named after the Mummy's Cave site in Wyoming.

The Mummy Cave Complex - 3600 - 2100 BC

The Mummy Cave people were the earliest identifiable group to use the site. The stone and bone tools recovered from these deepest layers are of a quite limited range of styles. After the Mummy Cave people ceased using the jump, it remained idle for over a thousand years.

Pelican Lake Phase - 900 BC - 300 AD

The Pelican Lake people left a large variety of stone tools in various styles. The stone of the tools was imported from the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, from the Kootenay Lakes region and from Montana. There is stratigraphic evidence of a brief use of the site at the end of the Pelican Lake Phase by a different culture using what are termed besant side-notched points.

Avonlea Phase - 300 - 850

The Avonlea Phase was a period of very large and frequent bison kills. The bone beds are particularly thick and recent enough that hair, horns and even manure is preserved in the archaeological deposits. There is evidence of a progression of stone tool design from the earliest Avonlea layers to the latest with tools characteristic of the plains culture in the late layers. The stone is primarily from Montana and the Canadian Shield.

Old Women's Phase - 850 - 1850

The Old Women's Culture also conducted massive and frequent kills. Human bones have been discovered in one layer. The stone tools are of the plains and prairie type. There is also a brief appearance of tools made of petrified wood. European trade goods and metal points are present in the latest layers demonstrating that the jump was used into historic times. The Piegan people who live and work around Head-Smashed-In are the Old Women's people.

The Fall of Head-Smashed-In

With the coming of the horse and European weapons, bison-hunting could be conducted by single riflemen on horseback: the large communal activity of bison-jumping was no longer necessary. With the coming of European disease, of course, the large communities were nearly wiped out, leaving tiny remnants trying to survive in isolation, as at the Cluny Earthlodge Village site south-east of Calgary. With the coming of wholesale European extermination of bison for sport, the inconceivably vast herds themselves vanished. After thousands of years, Head-Smashed-In was left empty of both bison and people.

Head-Smashed-In Today

The UNESCO World Heritage Site of Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump now has a magnificent interpretive centre unobtrusively embedded in the cliff. Members of the Piegan First Nation offer a number of educational programmes at the centre. Tourists may also guide themselves up through the centre's displays and emerge at the top of the cliff. From the cliff's edge one is faced with an awesome vista of grass and sky stretching out seemingly forever to the east. On most days the west wind will be blowing steadily over the jump, stirring the short prairie grasses and flowers with a whispered echo of the lost rumble of hoof-beats.