Day 8 - Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump

What's the difference between a buffalo and a bison? You can't wash your hands in a buffalo!

Woohoo! 4000 miles I've flown to make that joke. And let's get one thing straight, the North American buffaloes are in fact bison. But we won't dwell on it, eh? Nor will we dwell on the fact that the plural of buffalo can be buffaloes, buffalos, or just plain buffalo.

Okay.

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is one of two places I wanted to visit because initially I was attracted by the name of the place (the other being Peace River). Buffalo jumps are cliffs which the North American Indians used to drive herds of bison over in order to kill them. So they're not really "buffalo jumps", they're "bison fall horribly to their bone-crunching deaths". It's one of many methods the North American Indians used to kill bison before the advent of guns and the eventual almost annihilation of the great bison herds.

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump allegedly got its name because on this one occasion a young Blackfoot Indian wanted to see the buffalo falling over the cliff first hand (I'm going to use "buffalo" and "bison" interchangeably, okay?). At the end of the hunt they found the poor chap underneath all the buffalo, with, you guessed it, his head smashed in.

We set off from Medicine Hat this morning and headed back west on Highway 3, another dauntingly straight road ("continue for... one hundred and two miles"). I got stuck behind a lorry! I couldn't believe it! As we got further west the Rockies reappeared, looking more and more like the Mountains of Shadow on the edge of Mordor (in the Peter Jackson version of Lord of the Rings). Black and brooding with clouds massing over the top of them like a threat (it was supposed to thunder today - so far it hasn't, but the day ain't over yet).

We made it to Head-Smashed-In just after 1pm, and ate a quick snack in the car park, before walking around the outside of the Buffalo Jump, taking in the cliff face itself as well as the prairies stretching back out to the east. After a hunt, when the final surviving (but still horribly wounded) bison had been despatched (probably via repeated blows to the head from a rock tied to a stick), the animals were skinned and rudimentally butchered at the base of the cliff, then the different parts of the carcass taken away down the prairie for further "processing".

The site itself features an incredibly well set up interpretive centre which takes you through the whole process of the buffalo jump, and also describes how the North American Indians made use of virtually the whole animal; the hide for clothing, shields, tepee covers, furniture (the brains and livers of the animals were used in the tanning process)... the bones for tools... the sinews for "string"... and of course the meat for eating (they would dry strips of the meat out in the sun, then pound them into a powder which was mixed with fat and berries to create "pemmican", which sustained them through the lean winter months; I've not seen any for sale yet). It really is a very impressive centre, and describes the whole process of the hunt, and the dependancy of the North American Indians on the vast buffalo herds. Archeological evidence suggests that they hunted buffalo in this way for at least 6000 years, finally ceasing only about 150 years ago, and never dented the buffalo population during the whole of that time. It was only when the Europeans arrived in the 19th Century, bringing guns and a desire for buffalo pelts, that the huge herds were devastated (going from an estimated 30-40 million down to a few thousand in just two or three decades... you want to take a few moments to let that sink in).

We spent the whole afternoon at Head-Smashed-In, then drove back to Lethbridge and checked into our hotel, where the clerk was so impressed with our cheery demeanours that he upgraded our hotel room for free. I'm loving this country to bits!

Tomorrow sees us driving through Kananaskis Country, up Highway 40 (which only opened after the winter on June 15th!) and on up to Canmore in the Rockies. Bears and cougars, here we come...