First Peoples Buffalo Jump, 8/18/11

On Thursday, we made what could be one of Montana's prettiest drives from Helena to Great Falls on I-15, especially considering it's a freeway. We saw the brown sign for this state park as we neared Great Falls and decided to return after we settled in at Dick's RV Park. Ever since we bypassed Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump outside of Fort McLeod, Alberta, Canada, a few years ago, we wanted to learn more, and didn't want to pass up today's opportunity. 

Entrance to the State Park.

 

I took a picture of the Visitor Center below us (red arrow)

from about the half way point.

We took off in Smartie with two water bottles, me clad in my Birkenstocks and Jimmy in deck shoes. We weren't sure what to expect, although we both hoped there'd be an interesting interpretive center, and there was. Also offered was a 3.5 mile loop trail to the top of the butte.  We started up.  The sun was shining and the prairie was alive with birds and grasshoppers, rabbits and big ol' black-tailed prairie dogs. And we climbed (wishing we'd worn hiking shoes) and climbed.

We climbed to the top of the butte and could envision the scene.

Part of the cliff face.

A sandstone cliff face juts out near the top. The First Peoples "herded" stampeding bison atop the butte into rock chutes and ran them over the cliffs to their death. Purposeful deaths: every part of the bison was used. The feeling we got walking along the rocks on top was the same we felt in Canyon de Chelly AZ -- we were in a sacred place.

Whoa! See anything besides a sign? On the trail down, we "encountered" this camouflaged dude; didn't see it till we were too close. It's a fat prairie rattlesnake with lots of rattles, and it didn't want us around at all!

A classic tipi on the living grasslands.

Archaeologists conducted six small digs below the cliffs, recovering some 500 arrow points, scrapers, potsherds and cutting tools, and carbon dating confirmed the use of the site as a jump at least between 1000 and 1500 AD.

[edit] The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 17, 1974, and designated a National Historic Landmark in August 2015.

Looking down on the grasslands below, we spied the Missouri River in the distance. And in the words of Meriwether Lewis, on July 11, 1806, "... the Missouri bottoms on both sides of the river were crouded with buffaloe - I sincerely believe that there were not less than 10 thousand buffalo within a circle of two miles around that place." [in the vicinity of Great Falls]

So, the only thing missing today was:  Buffalo ....