Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump: Ancient Bison Hunting in Alberta

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is a sandstone cliff in the foothills of southern Alberta, Canada, where Indigenous peoples of the Northern Plains drove herds of bison over the edge in communal hunts for about 5,700 years. Its earliest use dates to around 3700 BC, and hunting there continued into the 19th century AD. With deep layers of bone, tools and camp debris, it is one of the oldest, largest and best-preserved bison jumps in North America, and in 1981 it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The setting

The jump lies where the Porcupine Hills meet the open prairie, about 18 kilometres (11 miles) north-west of the town of Fort Macleod. Behind the cliff stretches a broad upland basin of grassland that once supported large herds of American bison, often called buffalo in North America.

Today the cliff is about 10 metres (33 feet) high, but when it was first used the drop was considerably higher. Thousands of years of bones and soil have piled up at its foot and partly filled the space below. The bone deposits in places reach roughly 10 metres in depth, a remarkable record of repeated hunts.

The site’s name comes from a Blackfoot story. A young man, eager to see the bison fall, hid beneath a ledge at the base of the cliff. The kill was so large that he was trapped behind the falling animals, and when his people came to butcher them they found him with his skull crushed.

How a bison jump worked

A buffalo jump required detailed knowledge of the land, the weather and animal behaviour. Bison have poor eyesight but a strong sense of smell and a tendency to stampede when alarmed. Hunters used these traits to move a herd gradually towards the cliff over a distance of several kilometres.

The gathering basin above Head-Smashed-In covers about 40 square kilometres. Across it, hunters built long lines of small stone piles, known as cairns or drive lanes, which helped to channel the herd. People may have stood behind the cairns, waving robes or shouting to keep the animals moving in the right direction.

Specially trained young men, often called buffalo runners, played a central role. Disguised in wolf or bison-calf skins, they could approach a herd and lure it, imitating a lost calf or a predator. Once the animals were moving, others joined in to drive them faster until the leaders reached the edge. Unable to stop, they plunged over, followed by those behind them.

Below the cliff, hunters killed injured animals and began butchering. A large processing camp nearby was used to dry meat, render fat, crack bones for marrow and prepare hides. Much of the meat was made into pemmican, a mixture of dried meat, fat and sometimes berries, which could be stored for months.

A communal effort

Bison jumps were not the work of a few hunters. They needed planning by experienced leaders, cooperation among several family groups and careful timing, usually in autumn when animals were in good condition. A successful hunt could provide food, clothing, shelter and tools for a whole community through the winter.

Ceremony and religious practice accompanied the hunts. Blackfoot oral traditions describe rituals to call the bison and to give thanks afterwards. Every part of the animal was valued, from hides used for tipi covers and robes to bones shaped into tools and sinew used as thread.

Excavation and dating

Interest in the site grew in the 20th century. In 1938 Junius Bird of the American Museum of Natural History carried out early excavations. Larger investigations followed from the 1960s, notably by Brian Reeves of the University of Calgary, and in the 1980s by archaeologists of the Provincial Museum of Alberta under Jack Brink.

Radiocarbon dating showed that the earliest kills took place around 5,700 years ago, roughly 3700 BC. There seems to have been a long gap in use after the earliest phase, followed by intensive use over the last two thousand years or so. Changes in projectile points, such as the shift from atlatl darts to smaller arrowheads after the bow and arrow came into use on the Plains, help archaeologists date the layers.

The use of the jump declined in the 19th century. Horses, introduced to the Plains by Europeans, and later firearms changed hunting methods, and commercial overhunting brought the plains bison close to extinction by the 1880s.

Recognition and the interpretive centre

Head-Smashed-In was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1968 and a Provincial Historic Site of Alberta in 1979. In 1981 UNESCO inscribed it on the World Heritage List as an outstanding example of communal hunting practised by Plains peoples over thousands of years.

An interpretive centre, built into the cliff so that it barely disturbs the landscape, opened in 1987. It is managed by the Government of Alberta, and Blackfoot staff and elders share their history, language and traditions with visitors. Trails lead to the top of the cliff and along the base where the bones accumulated.

Myths and facts

A common image of a buffalo jump is of hunters simply chasing a herd at full speed across the prairie and over any convenient cliff. In reality, the process depended on slow, patient positioning over hours or even days. A herd that panicked too early could scatter or turn aside, and a failed drive could leave a community without its winter food supply.

Another misconception is that every hunt killed huge numbers of animals and wasted most of them. Kill sizes varied greatly, from a few animals to many dozens, and the extensive processing camp below the cliff shows that meat, fat, marrow and hides were carefully used. Some waste certainly occurred in very large kills, but the archaeological record points to intensive processing rather than careless slaughter.

It is also sometimes assumed that the site belonged to a single people for its whole history. Over nearly six millennia, the hunters who used it changed in language, technology and culture, and the earliest users cannot be linked with certainty to any modern nation. In recent centuries, however, the area lay within the territory of the Blackfoot Confederacy, and Blackfoot traditions are closely tied to the site.

By the numbers

Timeline

• c. 3700 BC: Earliest known bison kills at the jump.
• c. 1st millennium AD: Intensive, repeated use of the jump begins; the bow and arrow spreads on the Plains.
• 18th–19th centuries AD: Horses and firearms transform bison hunting.
• Mid-19th century AD: Use of the jump comes to an end.
• 1938: Junius Bird excavates at the site.
• 1968: Designated a National Historic Site of Canada.
• 1981: Inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
• 1987: The interpretive centre opens.

Why it matters

Head-Smashed-In preserves thousands of years of hunting knowledge and cooperation in one place, and it shows how Indigenous Plains societies built a sustainable way of life around the bison long before European contact. It stands in a long American tradition of big-game hunting that reaches back to the Clovis culture of the Ice Age and later shaped societies across the continent, from the Plains to cities such as Cahokia.