Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump
Interpretive Centre

I spent the summer of 2008 working in Drumheller, Alberta, and decided to take a weekend to drive out to Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, a few hours southwest of Calgary, Alberta. As with much of Alberta, the drive out to the cliffs was relatively flat, with a nice view of the mountains paralleling the highway for much of the drive south.

The buffalo jumps were used by Native Americans (at Head-Smashed-In, the Blackfoot Indians) to hunt buffalo. They would chase over the plains, herding up hundreds of the animals, and using cairns, make-shift fences, and other devices, would funnel the buffalo at a full gallop towards the cliffs, where they would fall and either die on impact, be crushed by bodies falling above them, or at the very least have their legs broken so they could be later slaughtered.

Once you get closer to the cliffs that make up the Buffalo Jump, you can see why it would have been a popular hunting spot for the Native Americans - there is a relatively large, flat plain below the cliffs, the same above, and the cliffs disappear back into the flat prairie to either side. I can imagine that they would have had a relatively easy time of running the bison around and up on to the elevated plain, before funnelling them to the face of the cliff and off to their death.

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump

Although there's not much visible from the exterior except for the cliffs themselves, the Alberta Government has done themselves proud with the excellent and informative interpretive centre, built right into the cliffside a few hundred metres from the Buffalo Jump. Maybe my expectations were just low, but I thought most of the exhibits were really well done, and there was 4 floors of it and plenty enough to make the $10 admission fee worthwhile.