March 24, 2009
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head-smashed-in buffalo jump
We went here a while back. The history of the area goes like this ….
For several hundred years the Native Peoples (First Nations) would watch the buffalo herds and when the time was just right at different buffalo jumps, they would force the buffalo to stampede off the cliffs and those that were not killed by the fall would be killed by the tribes men. The buffalo was then used for meat, clothing, housing, weapons, tools, bedding, well you get the picture. (we all could take a page from the old native ways when it comes to animals…)
This particular buffalo jump is located south of Calgary, just north of Fort McLeod. The area is vast and beautiful in an oddly lonely sort of way. It is something that calls to your heart almost as if the land it self was speaking directly to your soul.
There is a legend behind the name of this particular buffalo jump that goes as follows ….
There was once a young brave who wanted to watch the buffalo jumping off the cliff as if to look like a waterfall. So at the start of the running of the buffalo he climbed in to a crevasse on the cliff wall and waited for the buffalo to start falling. Once the run started and the buffalo started falling, the young brave was caught behind the wall of falling buffalo. The kill was plentiful that year and as the bodies piled up they trapped the young brave and he was crushed from the weight of the animals. As the animals were taken out from the cliff to be cleaned and skinned, the other tribe members found the young brave crushed among the bodies of the buffalo. From that day forward they called that buffalo jump “head-smashed-in” to honour the life of the young brave.
