Imagining Head-Smashed-In: Aboriginal Buffalo Hunting on the Northern Plains"At the place known as Head-Smashed-In in southwestern Alberta, Aboriginal people practiced a form of group hunting for nearly 6,000 years before European contact. The large communal bison traps of the Plains were the single greatest food-getting method ever developed in human history. Hunters, working with their knowledge of the land and of buffalo behaviour, drove their quarry over a cliff and into wooden corrals. The rest of the group butchered the kill in the camp below |
Contents
THE BUFFALO JUMP | 1 |
Communal Buffalo Hunting | 8 |
Not Just Any Cliff | 12 |
Copyright | |
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Aboriginal Aboriginal hunters Alexander Henry ancient hunters animals archaeological archaeologists arrow artifacts Audubon bedrock bison herds bison hides bison kill Blackfoot body buffalo hunting buffalo runners buffalo skull bull butchering cairns calves camp carcasses Catlin ceremonies chips communal kills cooking corral Coues Courtesy Royal Alberta cows crew Crowshoe culture dried drive lanes edge Edwin James elders European excavated Fidler fire flesh gathering basin George Catlin grass grease Gregg Grinnell grizzly bear ground groups head Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump heat Henry Youle Hind herds of bison Hind hundred Indians interpretive centre John Audubon John Palliser Josiah Gregg Kainai kilometres knew Lewis Lisa living meat metres move Native hunters northern Plains Oldman River Palliser pemmican Piikani piles pits Porcupine Hills pound prairie rocks Royal Alberta Museum sandstone season skin Smashed-In smoke Spry stampeding stone story thousands tipi wind winter wolves young