Great writing, but the last half dozen paragraphs are repeated twice.

The hunt. The tribal hunt entrenched in religious rites. The pix are great q, just great. I wanted to reread this and ponder some before commenting. I will be back.

Usually we are told that the Native Americans would only kill what they could use. Nothing would go to waste. The pelts were there of course. The horns and head dresses of course were made ready for further religious rites. I imagine similar rites ten and twenty thousand years ago all over the planet.

Now, if I get the drift of your metaphor, the bureaucrats, the corporate know it alls are herding humanity over the cliffs.

At least the hunters got something out of it.

I do enjoy Donal's quip though:

It's the Bison's own fault. They just weren't educated or nimble enough to find positions that didn't require stampeding.

I guess it is what is going to happen to all those who refused to turn in their homework on time. hahaaha
I shall return.

Buffalo are sacred.
Politicians...not so much.

Really, really well done Q. As you described the tricking, and the herding of the buffalo towards the cliff, I was flashing on the proclamations of those 'in the know', the editorials, the buzzwords, the incessant herding of voters toward the pre-ordained conclusion they're expected to reach. The wooly mammoth lived from the pleistoceine, almost 5 M years ago till about 5 thousand years ago, the buffalo dominated our plains till two centuries ago.

Do the tricksters ever learn that there's a downside to killing the whole herd? Does the greed, the stupidity know no bounds? Unfortunately, I think they've become more astute at orchestrating the finer points of their policy and it's perception by the public. Hence we'll never have another war where we institute a draft. We'll create corporations to supply the willing to risk life and limb, technically off the public rolls, for a tidy salary, while stock prices climb. We'll initiate fiscal policies that take us to the brink of the cliff, but only push enough off so that the corporate coffers are enriched, but most will survive to live another day, and to proclaim that they live in the greatest country on Earth. Something's happening here. And we, don't know what it is. If we did, we'd run them off a cliff instead.

Poignant, heartbreaking imagery. Words and pictures that imprint on one's brain -- impossible to erase, thereafter.
Rather like the impact of the descriptive narrative and images of this stampede that also ended badly:
http://fastforwardrevue.wordpress.com/2008/07/03/film-review-my-winnipeg/
A terrible irony as well as tragedy, then, in the species switch of the hunted on 9/11, when workers driven vertically into the upper reaches of the Towers had no recourse but to leap.... and then fall.

What a great post Quinn. As so often happens to me with your writing I a simply speechless. You can polish a metaphor better then anyone I have ever read (at least consistently). I am struggling to compose a substantive comment, but I find myself in complete agreement with Miguel above, and well, speechless.

Well done.

There is a certain highway in Wyoming where there are rock formations that give an appearance of buffalo carcasses on the hills... I felt like I was in a ghostland when I saw it. I thought maybe I was the only one who felt that but I got stuck in a blizzard nearby another time and others had the same experience.

But, yes, there are those among us that would lead us to jump, or kill each other off... if it served their purposes and profits.

What I believe about these people is that their souls are so empty and their fear so great... it's as if they are living dead people... unable to acquire enough wealth, attention, power, etc. to fill the emptiness and no place within where they can rest and find peace... and yet it may all only be in their heads/minds, in their beliefs and thinking that they have become such lost and empty scoundrels.

My suggestion, listen to your gut and never 'run' unless you trust why your running and who you are following.

That you're a Dreamer is obvious, Quinn. I swear I'll have the dream tonight, you shared the vapor of it so powerfully I can feel it going up my nose, like a buffalo snorting it in. Have you been able to alter your dreams, especially ones so powerful as this? Lucid dreaming is one of my Holy Grails, but I seem doomed to fail to find it.
I think the part that wanted to make we weep was:

And some, well... they just look just like us. If you didn't know their role, you'd swear they were on our side! Look at how they feel our pain! Aren't they good?! And the way they proclaim they'd rush in to protect us from the wolves! You'd swear they were on opposite sides!

Do we invite betrayal, I wonder?
A sharp-shinned hawk just zoomed in with his shoulders cocked, twisting through the apple trees, looking for a meal by way of one of the birds feeding at our many feeders. All Sharpie has to do is zoom through; the masses of birds are so electrified at his/her presence, they take to the air to escape; in the frantic confusion, three or four hit the windows and of those one or two crash to the ground. Sharpie gets his meal.
He stands over one bird, paralyzing it, while his prey stares up at him in dazed (I assume) fear. Sharpie tears at feathers and skin, and opens his wings into a shroud to hide his prey.
Last year I watched as one began his ritual; in a flash a red-tailed hawk swooped down and tore the starling away. He flew with it up into a tall tree, and devoured it.
This was true. This IS true.

Let's see you do it. Shake your heads like buffalo.

Certainly NOT! Good grief! My friends, the buffalo have had enough of this, surely. Look, this is a wonderful tale, I particularly like how you tie this into modern events.

Just goes to show there is nothing new under the sun.

Now, perhaps a blog about how the Buffalos outwitted us into spending money and time into preserving and protecting them would be in order. The Iraqis, the Afghanis of Forgotistan, as well as all us beer-swilling, too-stoopid-to-earn-a-living masses might pick up a few clues from that.

Your talent is incredible. I'm sending you a twoonie, and I think everyone else should do the same.

Thanks.

Quinn, the Buffalo Jump was beautifully written, and in many ways the analogy to the current practices apt, but today's manipulative inflammation is a perversion of the practice used by the tribes.

As you elucidate, to the tribes, the buffalo were sacred and life itself.

For the uber-capitalists and their shills, we are definitely not sacred, and they do not depend on us for their lives, but for their ever expanding power and control.

Further, while all parts of the buffalo were used, the current system is rife with waste. In many ways the current corruption is much closer to the massacre of the buffalo for their tongues, to provide the belts for industry, and to remove the basis of life for the tribes.

Here's a thought.

What if, instead of the boy dying, the place is named after a miracle? The boy survived what the buffalo couldn't, and so it became known by his new name, "Head smashed in"?

It changes things, doesn't it? Opens up this harvest site to be also a place where life is mysteriously preserved when it ought to have been lost. Is there grace then, to imagine that the falling buffalo, fell in such a way as to protect the boy?

Perhaps, as we lost the sacred from the buffalo harvest, the legend also lost it's meaning. The boy had to die, if only to pay for what the lives of the Buffalo being taken indiscriminately.

And so THAT is the story we tell today.

Just wonderin'.

Extremely well written quinn, and the visual of the buffalo jump will stay with me every time I encounter the cynical manipulation of the masses, usually to get them to work against their own self interest.

I could not help but think about this as I witnessed the rage and the madness of the teapartiers. There is simply no doubt in my mind that most of these very same people could have been herded into supporting "socialized medicine," for example, and could easily have been turned against the failed capitalists on Wall Street and the extortionist insurance companies whom they presently serve as allies. It truly is all a matter of who is manipulating the herd, and which cliff it is they choose as the jump point.

Either way, you have a herd that is hell-bent for leather (In the buffalo's case, quite literally!) in an activity that they are certain is self-realized, but which is actually performed to promote the interests of other agents they wouldn't recognize as "friendly."

It's dangerous, but it's effective. And it's a lousy way to play the game of politics.

Man, this post will stick with me a long time. I love it when you do that!

Hey, Quinn -- thank you, not only for a great blog but also the Ginsu knife bonus package of: the link to the Brink book, the PrairieMary link and, through her site, the link to Lulu. Appreciated.