Quick Facts
Name
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump Interpretive Site
Type of Landscape
Organically Evolved
Relict Landscape
Location
Traditional land of the Blackfoot People
12 miles West of Fort McLeod, Alberta, on Highway 785
Designation
National Historic Site (Canada) 1968
World Heritage Site (UNESCO) 1981
Client
Government of Alberta - Formerly Alberta Culture and Alberta Public Works
Legacy
Indigenous Cultural Heritage Site
Introduction
Above the rolling foothills of Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, visitors wend their way from the upper doors of the Interpretive Centre and along the cliff tops to stand above the main kill site. Below them, 11 meter deep bone beds that accumulated over thousands of years of use by first nations buffalo hunters.
From the surrounding vista, the Rocky Mountains rise from the prairies. Distant roads and farm buildings are barely visible. The surrounding slopes are now grazed by cattle, their shapes reminiscent of the buffalo that once teemed here. And it becomes quickly clear that this is not just an interesting height of land. This landscape has remained unchanged since the retreat of the last glaciers, 10,000 years before. This is a window into the past.
And up on the cliffs, it is difficult for the imagination not to take flight. The biting breeze is almost constant, the sun scorching. The only sounds, wind in grass and the cry of soaring raptors.
Is that a smell, a sound, a quality of light? A rumble of hooves, a braying of calves, clouds of dust? To the west, cresting the skyline, are those knots of dark buffalo, stampeding down the slope toward the abyss? Behind and beside the buffalo, wolf-skin covered hunters are running and whooping, pushing the terrified animals faster and faster toward their death. And then, over the cliffs on all sides, a bedlam of bellowing, colliding, plunging animals. Dying in the fall.
For 300 generations, fellow human beings harvested the buffalo in preparation for the long winters ahead.
This is “the story,” of Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. A cultural landscape unique in the world. And after millennia of use, the subtle evidence remains. Bone deposits up to 12 meters deep, meat and hide processing sites and teepee rings along the Oldman River two miles to the south east.
Building into the Cliffs
The Interpretive Centre at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is built completely into the cliffs of the foothills of the Rockies. It is a remarkable feat: the five-level building has become a piece of the landscape.
That sense of a land undisturbed, of ancient mysteries, is what mattered most to the site’s planners. The collaborative planning team included experts from five disciplines: Doug Gage and Robert Leblond (Building Architects), Garry Carson (Landscape Architect), Mike Simpson (Structural Engineer), Larry Pearson (Interpretive Planner), and Jack Brink (Field Archaeologist). The Jump, they believed, was all about the landscape. They should at all costs, not disturb what was already there, and certainly not try to enhance it.
From the building’s exterior, they focused first on the roof, unanimously agreeing to cover it with a half meter of native soil, sandstone boulders, and grasses gleaned from well-tended virgin prairie south of the site. The roof’s depth ensures living plants, dormant seed, and natural nutrients remain long available. The prairie grasses are deep-rooted species: Feather Reed Grass and Sandgrass. For millennia, these grasses accommodated grazing buffalo, resisting prairie fire and drought. They exhibit a distinct color, texture and growth habit, and are more resilient and attractive than cultivated agricultural grasses.
Hunting the Hunters
Waiting below the Buffalo Jump cliff were First Nations peoples who systematically dragged the carcasses to nearby processing camps. There, prowling the site’s perimeters, were the ever-present prairie wolves, impatiently awaiting their call to the feast. An abundance of crushed wolf skulls in the bone beds testifies to a second harvest: the hunters collected wolf pelts, once the satiated wolves had become too helpless to run.
The Ancient Balance
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump remains a research facility, and its archaeological dig sites are many. To protect the landscape, pathways are low-impact and moveable, but fire remains a serious risk.
Within the section of ranch land surrounding the site, vast herds of grazing buffalo once effectively controlled grass growth, reducing the risk of fire. In lieu of buffalo, site managers realized that grazing cattle might do the job, to help maintain that ancient balance.
There was a problem, however. Half-wild cattle do not mix well with tourists. The practical answer: the landscape is open to adjacent ranchers, but only in the off-season.
The Cultural Landscapes Legacy Collection highlights the achievements that have made a lasting impact within the field of landscape architecture and on communities across Canada.