Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump
They were rivers of fur, pouring over the grasslands. Until the ground just
fell
away
beneath their feet.
And after that, all that was left to them, was to fly.
Stand here with me, and watch. Soak it in. Waterfalls of fur, muzzles wet-biting air, fore-legs cycling, scratching at the sky, but alas... NO ENTRY.
No stairway for flesh and fur up here, no skyway 'cross the chasm. You can't live up here - not dressed in hoof and horn.
Rebuffed, they head home, skydivers, turning horn over hock, tumblers, born under punches, crashing back to Earth. Crashlanding, friend. Their bodies compressed in death's hard embrace, all the treacherous air finally squeezed out.In the 19th Century, Buffalo outnumbered people on this continent. Over the Earth as a whole, buffalo outweighed humanity. Back before the gun and the horse, the Blackfoot - and the other great Nations of the Plains and the Prairies - learned how to live with, and from, the buffalo. In their quest to perfect the hunt, they created a technique which lives on today, more than 6,000 years later. They searched out the many low ridges and sudden sinkholes that broke the Prairies and the Plains, looking for one with just the right characteristics - cliffs just low enough to be invisible to the buffalo when in flight... but just high enough to break their legs if they fell. Were pushed. "Jumped."
Buffalo Jumps.
For thousands of years, the single largest slaughters/harvests performed by humans were the Buffalo Jumps. They say that at the bottom of this cliff, there are bones. Obviously, there are bones of buffalo. But human bones as well. A Boy, is buried there - the Blackfoot named this place after him. They said he was standing beneath the cliff, watching the buffalo fly over, and stood too close, got crushed. Maybe. Or maybe he just wanted to catch the buffalo. Carry them someplace safe. Maybe they had an agreement, the Boy and the Buffalo. We don't know. Whatever the intention, the boy caught the buffalo as they flew off into the air. They named him after the consequence of his actions --"Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump."
Heck of a name to give a kid.
