A Buffalo Pound: Courtesy of the Glenbow Collection
Calgary & Southern Alberta
When and how the people of the plains hunted their prime quarry was intimately linked to the seasonal movements of the great bison herds. The herd movements were quite predictable. During the summer, buffalo grazed on the open grasslands. In winter, they sought the shelter of forested river valleys and the Cypress Hills. Here, hunters could stalk individual animals with ease. Bison herds also converged in the southwestern Alberta foothills, where the frequency of warm Chinook winds afforded good winter grazing land. The area's varied topography, with its cliffs and coulees, provided hunters with perfect conditions for conducting large bison drives.
The earliest known bison drive took place some 10,000 years ago in what is now Texas. However, the Northern Plains people of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Montana seem to have perfected the method at locales such as Old Women's Buffalo Jump, south of Calgary, and Head-Smashed-In, located in southwestern Alberta's Porcupine Hills west of Fort Macleod.
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The spectacle of large numbers of confused animals stampeding over a high cliff must have awed bystanders. Few of the people present would have had the time to watch the proceedings at their leisure, however. A communal bison drive was not a haphazard event that a few hunters could organize at the last moment, after they had sighted a bison herd. It was a complicated affair. In addition to special topographical conditions, it required extensive planning and the carefully regulated efforts of many people. In the large grazing zone or "catchment area" behind a suitable cliff, people first had to construct converging networks of funnel-shaped drive lanes marked with stone cairns. At Head-Smashed-In, which saw repeated use from about 4,000 BCE until the mid-1800s, such drive lanes extended some 13 kilometres back from the cliff face.
Hunters would crouch behind the cairns, silently awaiting the approaching herd. As it passed by, they would emerge from hiding in a sequence that ushered the bison forward. Directing the animals towards the jump face required skill, community coordination, and patience. The process might consume several days. Until they were certain the bison had no alternative but to jump the cliff, the drivers had to take great care not to stampede the herd.
The Blackfoot term for the base of the cliff – the piskun or "deep blood kettle" – gives some indication of the massive size of some communal bison kills. The butchering operations that followed successful bison drives were also large-scale communal events. Butchering had to be completed quickly and efficiently before the vast store of bison meat began to spoil. Archaeologists have found evidence that people followed extremely efficient assembly-line procedures at some butchering sites.
In areas where wood was available but steep cliffs were in sparse supply, hunters modified the classic bison jump technique, running bison over low bluffs into carefully-constructed corrals or "pounds".
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