Re-Imagining a Buffalo "Jump" Without the "Stupid"
In the usual fable about Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump, all the creatures involved are stupid.
The buffalo jump was used for 5,500 years by the indigenous peoples of the plains to kill buffalo, by driving them off the 10 metre high cliff. The Blackfoot drove the buffalo from a grazing area in the Porcupine Hills about 3 kilometres west of the site to the "drive lanes," lined by hundreds of cairns, then at full gallop over a cliff, breaking their legs, rendering them immobile. The cliff itself is about 300 metres long, and at its highest point drops 10 metres into the valley below.In Blackfoot, the name for the site is Estipah-skikikini-kots. According to legend, a young Blackfoot wanted to watch the buffalo plunge off the cliff from below, but was buried underneath the falling buffalo. He was later found dead under the pile of carcasses "where he got his head smashed in"
This fable is sometimes supplemented by fanatical adherents with the additional detail that the cliff was originally 50 feet high, instead of 30 as it is now, and the height of the cliff gradually diminished over thousands of years as the remains of stampeding buffalo piled up under it. Directly under it!
Since this additional detail only makes the whole story even more stupid, I might as well hypothetically accept it to avoid distractions from the principal elements of the whole ludicrous fable, and the best introduction to some of the stupidest of all the stupid creatures in this picture is Dave Barry's great essay, "What Has Four Legs and Flies?"
Once upon a time, he says, "North America was occupied by large and fortunately very stupid herds of buffalo."
It was easy to stampede these pitiful animals over a cliff because they were so stupid!
Barry also introduces the next stupid player in this stupid fable about Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump.
The "Head Smashed In" part comes from a native legend that holds that one time, a young brave (probable tribal name: Not Nuclear Physicist) decided to watch the hunt while standing UNDER the cliff.Even thousands of years later it is impossible to ponder this tragedy without choking back large moist snorts of anguish.
Harharharhar!!!
So now that two of our stupid players in this stupid play have been introduced, it's time for the star to appear... the incredibly stupid star who has especially delighted so many white tourists at the World Heritage tourist center at Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump, and the stupid star of this stupid fable is...
The entire culture and society of the many Native American tribes who inhabited the great plains in North America before the beneficent white man exterminated 90% of them!
And what exactly makes these make-believe "Indians" so incredibly stupid in this stupid story?
It's the nauseating wastefulness and cruelty of the whole stinking picture!
And just in case you never saw an image or read a description of buffalo herds in North America before they were almost completely exterminated for sport by anything white that could hold a gun, it may be worth mentioning that North American buffalo traveled in very large herds, and they were very large animals.
So the picture that emerges from the god-awful fable about buffalo jumps includes hundreds or even thousands of crippled and otherwise mutilated animals at the bottom of a cliff awaiting execution by a gang of sadistic savages, and nobody claims that all or even most of those robust animals would have died anything like instantly after the fall.
How long would it take the first animals at the bottom of one of these pile-ups to die in agony from injuries or suffocation, under all the other buffalo that followed them over the cliff?
But let's leave that nauseating question aside while we discuss instead the miserable and literally insane wastefulness of this nauseating picture.
Since most of these putative buffalo "jumps" occurred long before the introduction of horses into North America around 1500 AD, the Native Americans involved in the hunt could only use as much of the buffalo as they could consume on the spot or carry away, and even a buffalo calf dresses down to about 600 pounds of meat.
Since the average number of people in a Blackfoot band was between 80 and 240, if we make a fantastically generous estimate that every member of the band could account for 100 pounds of buffalo meat, along with the rest of their baggage, then even the dressed-down carry-away weight of a buffalo calf at 600 pounds would suffice for six people, and...
So after 20 or 30 or at the most 40 buffalo had gone over the cliff, all the rest was waste.
Now we could probably fix up this stupid fable with all sorts of fantastical epicycles and additional hypotheses, but before we postulate multiple bands somehow magically gathered to harvest the buffalo at exactly the right moment for driving them over a buffalo "jump," or apply who knows how many other ad hoc patches to hold this threadbare fable together, maybe we should ask ourselves if there's another way to account for all the evidence that remains around sites like Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump, and best of all...
Without assuming that any of the creatures involved were stupid!
No stupid Indians!
No stupid buffalo!
No stupid boy at the bottom of the cliff!
No waste!
No cruelty!
Suppose we assume that instead of stupid Indians stampeding stupid buffalo onto the soon-to-be smashed-in head of a stupid boy, instead we assume that...
The Blackfoot and other tribes used the cliffs for corrals, completed by trenches and piles of rock now assumed to define "driving lanes" for stampedes.
I have seen any number of cowboys drive steers into pens just by whooping and waving their arms, and it cannot be any harder to drive a buffalo into a pen than it is to drive a buffalo over a cliff! If buffalo didn't strongly resist running off cliffs, it's would be hard to explain how they throve and multiplied in the region around Smashed In Head Buffalo Jump, where there are lines of cliffs, as you can deduce from this Google map...
...or observe in this photo.
And under all those cliffs the ground slopes steeply away, just like it slopes steeply away under the infamous cliff at Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump, in the foreground of the photo.
How would stampeding buffalo fall straight down, stick, and accumulate directly under that cliff?
No way!
But even assuming that buffalo remains accumulated directly under the cliff, and even without seeing any real archaeological evidence from fanatical adherents of this silly fable, my hypothesis that the Blackfoot and other tribes penned up buffalo at the edge of the cliff provides a simple explanation...
Ask your butcher for a bucket of entrails, dump it on a slope, and observe how far down the slope it rolls.
It would roll nowhere, unlike a stampeding buffalo flying off a cliff.
So if the Blackfoot and other tribes had penned the buffalo against the cliff-edge, and gradually culled the herd for as much and only as much meat and skins as they needed, then wouldn't it be convenient to dump the entrails and whatever else was left over off the edge of a nearby cliff, instead of waiting for refuse to rot in the pen?
And there we finally arrive at a reasonable explanation for buffalo remains accumulating directly at the bottom of a cliff (if such a thing actually occurred), and without assuming that either the buffalo or the Blackfoot were stupid.
But what about the boy? How did his body wind up at the bottom of the cliff?
If children were playing around at the edge of a cliff for 5000 years while their parents slaughtered and skinned buffalo, nobody had to be stupid for one boy to fall off a cliff in all those many centuries.
And that's the story of Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump, without the "stupid."
Another image of Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump with a slightly wider view of the long, sloping apron under it is visible here.
October 6, 2009 9:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
The hypothesis of using cliffs as convenient backstops for buffalo pens also explains the presence of so many trenches, which would be useful for penning buffalo against the edge of a cliff, along hilltops and canyon walls in the northern plains, for example at the Hartville Uplift and elsewhere, without acquiescing to the usual (and ridiculous) explanation that those trenches were little mines for extracting metals which virtually never appear in the pre-Columbian archaeology of North America.
October 6, 2009 9:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Um, did you read all of your Hartville Uplift link? It describes the trenches as mines for the chert used make arrowheads which are widely found in the area and time period.
You hate waste, cruelty and stupidity. I do too but having observed my fellow man -- um, take the decimation of the buffalo by the white men -- I cannot rule out any activity of any brand of human beings on the grounds that it is wasteful, cruel and/or stupid.
That said, why do you assume that the only purpose of killing the buffalo was for fresh meat? After meat is dried it would weigh much less and be suitable for trade. We know that the arrows produced from the chert found in the general area were widely distributed. Most probably trade. Hide glue and sinews are other possible items produced from buffalo. See http://www.primitiveways.com/secrets_of_sinew.html.
The slopes are confusing -- both you and Quinn have some explaining to do. Quinn indicates that at the excavation at the Jump buffalo remains are found 10 meters down. He does not indicate whether these remains are such as might be expected from abandoned carcasses or from butchered remains as you suggest. Researchers should probably able to distinguish between the two.
As you previously noted,however, these slopes occur along the length of the cliffs, not just where the lanes for the jumps are now known to exist or the areas where you believe trenches may have been used as fences. (How deep are those trenches any way? -- Buffalo can scramble pretty well.) So are we looking at geological formations or centuries old garbage dumps along the length of the cliffs? Your belief that buffalo did not plunge over the cliffs elsewhere --as in a human stampede at a stadium -- is a surmise, not a fact.
I refuse to speculate on the degree of idiocy to be found in a teenage male of any species. I would point out, however, that legends often have some grounding in fact. Much to the startlement of modern humans who are used to pursuing fiction on paper.
As a thread hijack on a political blog this reaches another order of magnitude.
October 7, 2009 12:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
You ask...
But I said that the Blackfoot...
And likewise about children playing around the cliffs...
And although I didn't list all the many other uses Blackfoot found for other parts of the buffalo anatomy, I also didn't assume, claim, or imply that even meat and skins were the whole story.
October 7, 2009 1:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
And thanks anyway for your thoughtful comment, as dubious as you may be about my diary.
I'm fried right now, but if you take another peek at this thread in a few hours, I may have recovered enough to reply to some others of your several objections, and even now I don't disagree with all of them.
October 7, 2009 2:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's also worth comparing remains at the Vore Buffalo Jump with the accumulation of buffalo bones at Head Smashed In, because it's fairly well established that the sink-hole at Vore was only used for buffalo hunting for about 300 years, instead of around 5000 years at Head Smashed In, and yet...
The accumulation at Vore is 20 feet deep, which is to say two thirds as deep as the 30-foot deposits at Head Smashed In, which was in use about 16 times as long.
What this suggests to me is that the buffalo really were slaughtered one way or another at the bottom of the Vore fall-off, and since all the remains at Vore date from after the introduction of horses into North America around 1500 AD, it's likely that the local plains tribes were able to drive much larger herds into Vore than they could manage at Head Smashed In.
Judging from images like this, it's also possible that the Vore sink-hole was used for a pen instead of some kind of stampede-hootenanny, since not all of Vore is surrounded by anything like a cliff.
It doesn't necessarily make any more sense to slaughter buffalo by stampeding them over a cliff than it would make to slaughter cattle the same way, but you can't sell the idea that early ranchers stampeded cattle over cliffs, because nobody would believe that white men were so incredibly stupid, although there's really much more justification for believing that the ultra-destructive "white tribes" are incredibly stupid than there is for believing the same thing about plains tribes like the Blackfoot at Head Smashed In or the Cheyenne at Vore.
October 7, 2009 9:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
I must say, if you're a Dave Barry fan, you may not be the humorless scold I have taken you for. I was laughing just reading those short exceprts.
October 7, 2009 12:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's just super! "Humorless scold!"
Harharharhar!!!
"Laughing executioner" is more like it.
(cue video)
October 7, 2009 3:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
OT, re the Fenger beating:
http://www.wgntv.com/news/wgntv-top-obama-aides-chicago-youth-violence-oct7,0,2440235.story
October 7, 2009 5:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
So now we have "a national conversation about values."
And Holder also promises a grand program to combat violence...
...for $20 million nationwide
Chicago's share of that should be about $200K, based on population, which is just about enough to put 2 extra cops on the street, but only in the "next fiscal year."
And meanwhile...
Let's talk about "values!"
Thanks for the link, anyway, Brewmn61.
October 7, 2009 6:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
I just thought you might appreciate the fact they are throwing some money at the problem. Hopefully, it'll make it into the pockets of people other than just the usual Daley cronies, and do a little bit of good where it's needed.
October 7, 2009 7:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Okay, jacob, you have officially gone 'round the bend. Get some fresh air, dear. Have a good dream tonight.
October 6, 2009 9:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks so much for your thoughtful criticism of my diary, wendy.
So shall I also assume that your comments and diaries aren't even worth trying to understand?
October 6, 2009 9:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
And that was the very last minute I wasted by replying to insubstantial and insulting comments on the blogs today.
As a sport, it's almost as fucked up as stampeding herds of buffalo off a cliff.
Harharharhar!!!
October 6, 2009 10:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
I believed it was just an attempt to re-hash your squabble with Quinn. If you want comments on merit of your argument:
Buffalo would be almost impossile to pen and kill; hunters often had to travel long distances to get to where the buffalo were, and you couldn't just drag along some posts to make a pen. Herds did not come to the hunters. The incredible weight and mass of a moving buffalo herd would be astounding; even if there were a pen, they would smash right through it. I can see why you might want to think they were/are not stupid; they surely are smarter than domesticated cattle, but it apparently was not that hard to stampede them. Horses are also noble; but they are not so smart, and are very impressionable, and easily spooked, especially in herds.
Of course you can ignore my comments. As you wish.
October 6, 2009 11:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
About penning animals against the edge of a cliff, check out neoboho's comment below.
And thanks for returning, wendy, even if you don't agree with my diary.
October 6, 2009 11:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hmmm... I have to admit it makes a lot of sense. Buffalo jumps never factored much into my beliefs. I have always had the itch in my mind, though, that something doesn't add up. Either the natives used all of the buffalo, or they left a bunch to rot. There are simply too much leftovers. What I have read, limited to my pair of cultural anthropology courses and light reading, was that buffalo were sacred and plentiful. Buffalo jumping makes little sense in light of what is known about the indigenous culture and the habitat of their times.
Now I am going to have to read more and arrive at an actual conclusion. Thanks.
October 6, 2009 10:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for commenting Zipperupus, and I appreciate your wait-and-see attitude about deciding what may have happened along those cliffs.
I wasn't really trying for anything dispositive here, but only suggesting that the existing evidence is sparse enough to fit a whole spectrum of hypothetical explanations, and I always prefer explanations where nothing and nobody has to be stupid.
So thanks also for making it so much easier for me to believe in something besides "stupid" on the political blogs, with your many thoughtful and intelligent diaries and comments, which seem to cover a broader and broader cultural spectrum all the time.
Amigo, you must be a voracious reader!
October 6, 2009 10:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks.
My wife says no way on buffalo jumps. She let me know that somewhere in her garage is a book about buckskinning that discusses jumping as a myth. Coincidences abound.
Plus, corraling makes more symbolic sense when it comes to us little people being played for suckers by big game capitalists.
October 6, 2009 11:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Who would drive limos for Goldman Sachs, if they ran the whole slave class off a cliff?
October 7, 2009 12:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Back before cars and trucks a merchant hired a driver and his donkey to transport a load of merchandise to another town. It was a hot, long journey and when the sun was high in the sky they took a break. The driver immediately sat down under the his ass's shadow.
At his point the merchant argued that since he had rented the ass he had also rented the ass's shadow.
The driver replied that he had only rented out the ass and retained possession of the shadow of the ass.
Typical merchant class capitalist elitists. Always trying to take advantage of a poor laborer. Far be it for me to imply the height of a cliff is trivial in a piece meant to be metaphorical, but wouldn't our time be better spent arguing about an ass's shadow?
October 6, 2009 10:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
So, fables are stupid? Has it occurred to you that that may be the point?
October 6, 2009 10:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't claim or believe that all fables are stupid.
But a fable which makes the noble buffalo as stupid as a chicken is unquestionably stupid!
October 6, 2009 10:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
You don't see stupid chickens running off a cliff, even with their heads cut off.
Noble Buffalo, eh? That's funny.
October 7, 2009 8:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think your theory has legs, Roots. I've spent a big part of my life behind the buckskin curtain, and it makes sense to me. I haven't heard much about catching buffalos, but some Shoshone old timers told me how they use to catch antelopes. Yep, they would build a brush corral against a cliff (or any sort of rock face about 15' high or so. The Brush was sort of hour-glass shaped. But here's the good part...they would "sing" the antelopes in. Pronghorns are very curious critters, it turns out. The Shoshones would hide around the cliff, and sing their antelope songs.
I think that today, where you can still hunt Pronghorns, it is illegal to hide in the brush and wave a white rag - something that also attracts these animals.
October 6, 2009 11:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
I replied to this comment below, but it didn't attach, and thanks again for sharing that story!
October 6, 2009 11:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Damn, that's a great story, neoboho!
I can't even imagine corraling pronghorns! Those beaties are amaziingly fast, and you would have to build your corral 15 feet high, like you said, or they would jump right out of it.
There's a great movie script in that story about singing antelope up to a cliff, or that's a story for a really great script!
I don't know squat about the Shoshone, but spent a little time with some Chiricahua Apache still living near Fort Sill, where all of them were deported once upon a time, and after a Herculean effort to comprehend a little of their Spanish/English/Chiricahua argot, I finally understood one little phrase, meaning...
"White man wants to tell us something."
...which I had been hearing over and over every time I opened my mouth.
Harharharhar!!!
Those are the guys who will live through the next holocaust, if anybody does.
October 6, 2009 11:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Did you know My Socks? Oh, hell, that's what we used to call him, and I know his name was Jose but I never knew his last name. I'd love to run into him again, now that we're (heh heh) elders. Great sense of humor...it was like we both shared some great joke but neither of us knew what it was. From Ft. Sill.
Let me tell you about the Shoshones. The Dan family from Beowawe (Bee o wah way) were always on the front line in the land claims, protecting the mustangs and Piñon Pines etc. Like Carrie Dan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnRGXGkPjBo
But I wanted to say something about Carrie's niece, Pearl, who I used to hang out with from time to time. One time she got all philosophical and told me, "I love to read those books about the great Indians - The Souix, the Cherokees, the Six Nations people - and then I ask myself what my people have ever done? We never done nothing. We are the Polacks of the Plains."
October 7, 2009 1:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Omigod! "The Polacks of the Plains!" That's terrible!
I wish I had known your friend at Fort Sill, and for all I know I may have. My comprehension of who was who was weak, to say the least, but your description of that otherworldly sense of humor is exactly what I felt around those guys, although I never got inside it.
October 7, 2009 3:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, it's terrible - back in the day when all those terrible Polish jokes were circulating. Boy, didn't Dennis straighten us out with his "Wake up, America!" speech at the convention. A definite high mark in American oratory.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv0smG7ptcM
October 7, 2009 4:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, Dennis Kucinich is Croatian, although he represents a heavily Polish district in northeastern Ohio called Parma. I grew up in the neighboring district of Lakewood, and certainly remember the ridicule Parma received for its ethnicity.
October 7, 2009 7:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
I lived in North Royalton for a year.
October 7, 2009 9:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
And then you literally fled for the hills (ref to living in CO now)? My brother lives in Middleburg Heights. ;-)
October 7, 2009 12:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Our parents usually vacationed by themselves, left us with our Aunt. When I was ten, they brought us Out West. When CU accepted me, I left and almost never went back.
'O, give me land, lots o' land, under starry skies above...'
The town near where we live got its first traffic light three years ago...bummer.
October 7, 2009 1:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
At the end of the day, the "Polacks" were anyone from anywhere east of Germany, north of Greece. The bigots labelling people made no effort whatsoever to determine where those they ridiculed actually originated. It's a common tactic for the common man to avoid an inquisitive discussion that might stretch his mind.
October 7, 2009 1:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
As it happens, there are significant populations of Eastern Europeans (among others) throughout Cleveland, so it is one place where people do differentiate country of origin. Ethnicity is celebrated there (as well as ridiculed). Like it is in New York.
When I was growing up, ethnic jokes and stereotypes were broadcast weekly across the greater Cleveland area in the form of comedy skits by a local duo named Bob Wells and Chuck Schodowski. They hosted a late-night show, The Hoolihan & Big Chuck Show, which featured characters wearing white socks, playing accordions, and named The Kielbasa Kid and Mary Hartski, Mary Hartski. Here's an example of a typical sketch.
Revisiting this in 2009, I can't believe they aired those jokes from the 1970s on into the '80s.
October 7, 2009 7:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Canada moved early to squash that sort of ethnic humour.
October 7, 2009 8:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
My grandfather built the Ukrainian Orthodox church in Cleveland! He was both priest and contractor. I went to find which one, but they have a few. He also built churches in Minneapolis, Johnson City, NY, and Trenton, NJ. My father was born there.
October 8, 2009 11:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
oh eat my shorts.
First, this is not five thousand years old.
It is most probably two hundred thousands years old.
frick you and the buffalo that you rode in on.
hahahahahahaahahah
It is funny. I cannot deny you that. hahahahahah
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5M_Ttstbgs
October 6, 2009 11:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
I kind of think some buffalo did run off the cliff, DD, but maybe not by human intervention. Look at those films of Wildebeast migrations in Africa - pretty pushy crowd. So if there were people around, why not take advantage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik-ydov-7b8&feature=related
October 7, 2009 2:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Wow. You have way too much time on your hands. Not gonna back down. Sorta respect that, nice to liberals with balls again.
None of this in anyway takes away from the quality of Quinns story or the metaphor. But yes you are determined to prove a point, to shine a light on us TPM cave dwellers. We here are stupid for lauding him and his shadows puppetry.
Well fine then, suit yourself, you know as well as we do it is a good story and he used facts fine, you just saw an opening.
...and...Quinn respects you.
Point proved.
Now how about my question about Keynes in the Dean blog? Did you bother to read the link to his paper?
October 7, 2009 1:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
I looked through the paper you linked, but didn't read it all, because it was written in 1943, when there was virtually no problem with unemployment in the United States.
The same paper would have been idiotic in 1933, when nobody wanted to hear about "the long-term problem of full employment," while millions of people were literally starving in the short-term.
And now we're getting closer and closer to 1933, and farther and farther away from 1943.
October 7, 2009 6:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well thanks for the honesty.
We (and Britain) had a war on in 1943 (so yes some full employment), but if you read it you will find it was loooking forward to the post war periods of development - more theoretical then germane to the time.
We increased consumption and discouraged savings through the expansion of debt, which is unsustainable. You are arguing for a transference from private debt to public debt to maintain employment. That seems fine to me, but it is also not sustainable.
Keynes argued that a shift to more employment but less work would be an effective tool. Like Q argues, in this comment on your pissing on Dino blog, Dean's proposal is a 'foot in the door' towards remaking our economy towards a more sustainable equilibrium along the lines of Keynes thinking.
I am not against spending money to hire workers, but we need to be looking at reforming our economy too.
October 7, 2009 1:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dean's proposal to give away still more tax-breaks to the bosses isn't "a foot in the door."
It's a tit in the big wringer!
And that's your tit, Buckwheat!
What the heck are you talking about, Saladin?
This is just more of the same old shit, but with a brand new sales-pitch attached to it.
It's a tax-break for business!
"But it's really for the little people."
Bullshit!
October 7, 2009 3:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
I already stated that I fully agreed that big business would do a great job of gaming it. But I will let the proposal speak for itself.
Not all businesses are evil (just most of the large one), and Yes I too hate all the nonsensical tax credit games we play. But Having run a small business with employees (and knowing a lot of people that do) I think many small businesses would take advantage of the break as well. Most of those companies are not sophisticated enough to game it, and they welcome the opportunity to let some of their people take a little time off without hurting the (often slim) bottom line.
Anyway I think you are overly hard on Dino's proposal. I know though hyberpole sells. I do agree that we need to get people working again and I would support most proposals, some (classical Keynes) more then others.
I will let the thread return to the buffalo herding, I must confess that do to your blog and the comments here (particularly neoboho's) I have learned more about this phenomenon then I ever thought I would. Thanks for that.
October 7, 2009 4:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dear Li'l Malibu Dude.
Thanks for this fab tribute. It completely and utterly misses the point of my blog... but at least it's a step up from arguing 30 feet versus 50 feet.
That said, GO READ THE GODDAMN BOOK, WILLYA? IT'S GREAT, AND IT'S FREE.
Plus, without it, you're flailing around here and looking like a complete idiot, trying to reimagine the shape of Plains Buffalo Hunting culture on the basis of a Wikipedia article and some cowboys you once saw.
See, the book even CONFIRMS some of your fevered imaginings, with lots of discussion about how Native bands used corrals and other cool hunting techniques - like trapping them in the snow - as well as Buffalo Jumps. You might even learn about the actual characteristics of the buffalo. Like their high levels of curiosity and their poor eyesight, but also the way they treat a solid object differently than a barred one (important when building a corral or herding them.)
Since you're now a corral freak (apparently the only non-stupid way of hunting buffalo you can think of), you might also find out that corrals aren't perfect, since buffalo can not only break out... but also, that when they are corralled they race in circles and gore and impale and crush and stamp one another into a filthy, nauseating, mess. Which is useful if you're aiming to kill animals, but which means your whole schtick about corrals not being cruel or wasteful is, ummmm.... stupid.
BTW, this "stupid" label you keep handing out is kindof offensive when you think about it. You won't want to read THE work by THE guy from THE site. Nope. You just want to call other people stupid and lazy and thoughtless, and assert YOUR versions of how high the cliffs are and how buffalo fell and how much meat they could cook and how many Natives were there and... come to think of it, is Malibu BIG enough for your ego? Yeah yeah, I know you saw a cowboy once (and THAT must've been impressive, eh?) but really, all you've offered up is... your Wiki link... a picture... the weight of a buffalo calf... and on that basis - and the fact that you were fighting with another blogger - YOU HAVE JUST DISAPPEARED AN ENTIRE METHOD OF HUNTING WHICH THE PLAINS INDIANS CLAIM TO HAVE USED.
You know... the word stupid IS coming to mind... but not for the buffalo or the Natives.
Interesting too, the way you want to say the Natives were stupid.... UNLESS they did it your way. Pretty cocky there, Celeb Snapper. (By the way, what techniques do you use to hunt Celebs? I hear it's all done on the basis of sexual favours - offering up live goat-photographer sex shows in exchange for snaps. I've got a theory about that. An a Wiki article to back it up. That should be enough, eh?)
But as a for instance, I liked how YOU decided that different Blackfoot bands couldn't work together. Even though THEY and the archaeologists claim they did. But you reject the idea, and label it "ad hoc" and "magical."
Same thing when YOU decide bands couldn't dry and trade the excess meat either. These bands used imported goods... but apparently never traded anything in return. Couldn't have traded food. No way. Dried meat? Never.
Same way you decide that the dozen techniques the Natives used to pull off a large-scale buffalo kill, and long hours of extraordinarily hard work, and their staring-buffalo-in-the-face bravery... is "stupid" if the story ended up with buffalo running over an invisible-to-them cliff-edge. Whereas if those buffalo had run into a corral-they-can-see... somehow this makes both the Natives and the buffalo smarter. Why would these Natives be smarter? Because they were doing it YOUR WAY.
Bottomline is, you got in a fight with another blogger, threw a tantrum, and now the entire Buffalo Jump phenomenon has to disappear. It doesn't matter if all you got is a Wiki article. Doesn't matter if a whole range of Native Tribes have NAMED places after buffalo jumps.... and have given TESTIMONY for centuries about the techniques they used. Oral history and tradition, fuckit. Archaeology? Fuckit.
If you're into the reality of buffalo hunting techniques and such, go read a book. 'Cause this piece is just your arse talking.
October 7, 2009 1:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Quinn, your initial mistake was asking Rootie to respect an expert. Rootie respects facts, not experts. (As far as I can surmise Rootie feels that most experts are not experts and that most people who cite experts mangle what the expert said which was probably wrong in the first place.) So he takes the facts he can get -- the measured 30 foot drop from the Wiki article and the steepness of the slope and the implausibility of the bison falling onto such a slope remaining stationary and concludes that your expert's hypothesis that the cliff was 'higher' was illogical. (Rootie is also big on logic and exactitude.) But Rootie's surmise is contradicted by a fact which you had not revealed which was that your expert had dug into those slopes and that buffalo remains were found 10 meters down. (Which I 'presume' means that the slopes were not initially as they are now in the photos.)
But we are now off to the races -- what hypothesis will explain the facts that we now have and not disturb Rootie's premise that stupidity is not involved.
October 7, 2009 12:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rootie respects whatever he thinks are facts, not anybody else's facts, no matter how well documented.
October 7, 2009 1:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well put, Quinn.
October 7, 2009 1:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Second'd
October 7, 2009 1:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
hey, thanks for the link to that book. Looks interesting.
October 7, 2009 1:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
You ask...
But I said that the Blackfoot...
And likewise about children playing around the cliffs...
And although I didn't list all the many other uses Blackfoot found for other parts of the buffalo anatomy, I also didn't assume, claim, or imply that even meat and skins were the whole story.
October 7, 2009 1:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
My previous comment was intended to reply to another comment way up the thread, but it failed to attach and fell all the way to the bottom of the list, like buffalo entrails dumped off a cliff.
October 7, 2009 2:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
You argued that killing a lot of buffalo was impractical and unlikely because of the weight of meat that the Blackfoot would have had to consume and carry. You assumed that they were after the meat rather than after something they could carry. If we are talking about dried items, the weight becomes much less of a consideration. Humans have been known to kill a whole animal to get a very tiny part of it -- witness shark's fin soup.
October 7, 2009 12:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey, it's a good debate. Most Injun theories are bullshit anyway. Why, we haven't even discussed that before the reintroduction of the horse and displacement from the white invasion in the east, most of the groups in the great plains were sedentary cultures with agricultural economies. Sure, bison were on the menu, but it wasn't central to the economies. Corn, squash, beans, turkey - I'll bet Prairie Dog was very popular. And fish. There was a lot of fish. When the rivers swelled and receded in the flood pans you could walk out and pick fish off the ground, dry them, smoke them and store them up for winter. I mean, it's hard to imagine that the Kahokia cosmopolis was supported by buffalo hunting.
What we actually know about plains cultures comes from a brief snapshot taken at a time when everyone's lives were turned up-side-down and in a state of shock. The big push...as the illegal aliens got their foothold on the east coast tribes and nations bulged westwards to escape the pressure. The Iroquois pushed on the Hurons, the Hurons on the Chippewa, and the Chippewa pushed the Souian nations clean out into the plains, where they started kicking ass on the Pawnee, Arikari, Mandans and so on. Everyone was on the run, so to speak - became nomadic, began to love their horses more than their women (old Crow saying), constant inter-tribal conflicts. I'm just saying that you cannot extrapolate that into a distant past.
October 7, 2009 3:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
Constant intertribal conflicts. Yup, that's what we got goin' on right here.
I don't really mind this intertribal conflict, although I'm a big fan of quinn and Rootie both. I love the lyrical allegory that quinn evoked, and I honor the rationality that Rootie demands.
Because both approaches have the same intention: to pay homage to a people who remain unknowable to us and whose culture we helped destroy.
I can and do respect both men, both approaches, and since I accept we can't know everything for certain, it may forever be a draw.
October 7, 2009 8:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
If one looks at Quinn's post on this thread, I would say he is demanding just as much if not more rationality on this topic than Rootie.
October 7, 2009 10:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Once you get past words like "idiot," "cocky," and "freak," yeah, he's totally rational.
October 7, 2009 12:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
And you're telling me Mr. Ridgepole doesn't employ such verbal techniques upon those who happen to have a different take on an issue. Please. If not calling people names is the basis of whether an argument is rational or not, then Rootie is clearly one of the least rational people around here.
October 7, 2009 12:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Did I tell you that? No, I didn't.
So deal with the words I used, not the ones you imagined I used. If you don't understand what I meant, that's fine, just ask me what I meant. It's a lot easier than defending myself over your tangential assumptions.
October 7, 2009 1:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
the way you set up your original post: quinn lyrical, rootie rational. "i can respect both men, both approaches." The implication here is that quinn's approach to the argument is different than the "rationality that Rootie demands." I pointed to Quinn's post which in this thread which was not about the lyrical allegory which was the point of his orginal post as proof that quinn is being just as rational about the facts. The way you responded "once you get past the...", one can take your claim that Quinn as being rational as nothing more than tounge in cheek. But even if it was just a qualifier, having suffered the slings of being called things such as "a retard" by Rootie, I guess I would except the same qualifier for Rootie in his quest to demand rationality on these message boards. In other words, what was the point of making that qualifier about Quinn's posst if such a verbal technique doesn't seem to diminish your view of Rootie's technique.
October 7, 2009 1:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
When I said above I love the lyrical allegory that quinn evoked, I was referring to the story-telling merits of quinn's original post. (I wasn't referring to quinn's comment in this thread, if it needs to be said.) Perhaps I should have linked to quinn's original post in my first comment.
When I said I honor the rationality that Rootie demands, I was referring to the merits of questioning mythology in this post. The idea of "wastefulness" in the buffalo jump myth bothered me too. I appreciated Rootie's pursuing it.
But just like the rest of us, quinn isn't always lyrical and Rootie isn't always rational. I am not assigning personality traits to either of them, I'm not making an absolute assessment about either person. I'm isolating the merits of each post, leaving any flaws aside. I personally respect and value story-telling as much as truth-telling. Since I am not invested in the buffalo jump argument (and I don't have time to fact-check it for myself and evaluate whatever conflicting info I find), I can live with both versions. Yes, I should have been clearer.
When you pointed out that quinn's comment in this thread was rational, however, I couldn't help mentioning that in this case, quinn had corrupted his "rational" argument with as much loaded language as Rootie often uses.
I don't blame you for being pissed at being called a retard! I have been called many names by so many people on these boards that I am frequently surprised (and amused) when people who previously called me a name are suddenly complimentary to me about something unrelated six months later! I chalk it up to the intensity of the moment.
October 7, 2009 2:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
When I said above I love the lyrical allegory that quinn evoked, I was referring to the story-telling merits of quinn's original post. (I wasn't referring to quinn's comment in this thread, if it needs to be said.) Perhaps I should have linked to quinn's original post in my first comment.
When I said I honor the rationality that Rootie demands, I was referring to the merits of questioning mythology in this post. The idea of "wastefulness" in the buffalo jump myth bothered me too. I appreciated Rootie's pursuing it.
But just like the rest of us, quinn isn't always lyrical and Rootie isn't always rational. I am not assigning personality traits to either of them, I'm not making an absolute assessment about either person. I'm isolating the merits of each post, leaving any flaws aside. I personally respect and value story-telling as much as truth-telling. Since I am not invested in the buffalo jump argument (and I don't have time to fact-check it for myself and evaluate whatever conflicting info I find), I can live with both versions. Yes, I should have been clearer.
When you pointed out that quinn's comment in this thread was rational, however, I couldn't help mentioning that in this case, quinn had corrupted his "rational" argument with as much loaded language as Rootie often uses.
I don't blame you for being pissed at being called a retard! I have been called many names by so many people on these boards that I am frequently surprised (and amused) when people who previously called me a name are suddenly complimentary to me about something unrelated six months later! I chalk it up to the intensity of the moment.
October 7, 2009 2:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm cursed. Sorry for the double post.
October 7, 2009 2:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, the "rationality that Rootie demands." Seems to me, someone left their close-reading ability in the other room, Gasket. 30 second Recap - I posted Buffalo Jump, the "rational" Root arrived late, deposited the following (at the top of the thread, natch):
"quinn's nonsense reworking... the cliché-minded quinn... if quinn had taken the trouble to think for one millisecond out of his already-know-it-all-without-even-thinking existence..."Is there anything we can possibly tell this stupid white man that is so fucking stupid he won't believe it?"
So how about it Gasket? Straight up, how was that for a rational entry into the discussion? That was his 1st comment, but apparently he was just getting warmed up, because he then jumped over to someone else's post to drop THIS beauty:
"Unlike the thoughtless and logorrhetic quinn, who distorted everything about Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, and that's everything without exception, including even the height of the cliff, which that idiot gives as 50 feet, when it's only slightly higher than 30 feet at it's highest point.... bullshit, like the rest of his thoughtless and deceptive diary."
My my my, just the voice of reason there, eh? Well G, those were the TWO OPENING COMMENTS from "Mr Rational."
And from where I sit... fuck that. Straight up, I'll tell you that he's brilliant, writes great, I love his photography, etc. Hell, I'll tell him that - and have. But he fucks over people who come to his blogs. It's personal assault, which he escalates if they nail him on facts, and he justifies this as simply him being "acidic." Which would be alright if the shitstorm stayed within his blog - it's a reader beware kinda thing, and everybody knows how it plays on Rootie's blogs.
But then he starts in on my blog, and then moves on to OTHER people's blogs to rain more shit down on me personally. And that's to be tarted up now as him being "rational." Look, absolutely, I get mad. People can call me lots of things, but "deceptive"? That's on the short list. Fuck that. Some shrieker runs rabid, spraying that kinda crap about me over multiple blogs, I'm gonna aim to stick a leghold trap on him.
October 7, 2009 2:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
He's jealous, Quinn, with good reason. You'll just have to live with it.
October 7, 2009 2:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
q, as I said to acamus, I was just referring to Rootie's pursuit of an alternate explanation in this particular blog. I am not referring to every comment he has ever made. Ugh. Why do I have to explain that, I wonder? But apparently I do.
I'll also explain that I haven't had time to read everything that everyone has written here lately.
Can I defend Rootie's comments on your blog? Of course not! They are an unedited diatribe. But also: I haven't even had time to read them yet. And I probably won't have time anytime soon.
Okay, you're pissed at Rootie. That's fine. But you're not going to succeed at changing his behavior.
What I see in you both are two extremely talented men. I tried to give you both credit for your talents. I don't agree that I need to diminish those talents by denigrating either of you.
October 7, 2009 3:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
But it'd be waaaaay more fun if you'd pick my side, and come in and diss the hell out of that Malibu clown. (Klown? Clown? Ok, which looks more insulting?)
Anyway. He's wrong, evil, genetically malformed, his very soul a blight upon the Earth's history and a bar to its future advancement.
I would suggest that's all pretty uncontroversial stuff, and you'll feel entirely comfortable on my side.
BOO ROOT.
October 7, 2009 3:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Come here, gasket, and stand at the bottom of this cliff.
No thanks!
October 7, 2009 5:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
"I'll bet Prairie Dog was very popular"
I remember that, a few years back, the latest archeology concluded that primitive man probably did not hunt woolly mammoths and saber toothed tigers with spears, but probably relied on rabbits, squirrels and field mice caught with nets. I remember also being strangely saddened by my visions of a Neanderthal braining a mammoth with a boulder having been displaced by this new research.
October 7, 2009 12:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Future anthropologists will debate the Head Smashed In Monster Truck Rally:
http://www.thenewstribune.com/partners/story/875429.html
October 7, 2009 1:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
That would be funny as hell, if it wasn't a tragedy.
October 7, 2009 1:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
True, and it could be that the original Head Smashed In also thought he was safe enough to watch the mayhem.
October 7, 2009 2:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's another spot of reported buffalo jumps in Texas, though they do surmise there was waste at hand due to the excess success of the stampede:
http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/bonfire/plunge.html
Youtube by Tatanka: Buffalo jump
(not to hard to see how a teenager might have ended up with 'head smashed in.' Contains some of the paintings Quinn used.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fnbbNPQigE&feature=PlayList&p=50DB88056E36AFFC&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=1
October 7, 2009 11:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ok, that Bonfire Shelter site is amazing. Wow. Forget about Ruta and I and our nonsense, that is just an INCREDIBLE site. Remains of all sorts of extinct animals, mysteries about which large predator killed them, seeming use of the box canyon both as as a corral and as a jump, bone deposits running back 12,000 years, links to climate change and the movement of buffalo north and south. Amazing.
The vid was interesting as well, hadn't seen it. Liked the images of people moving like wolves or running ahead of the buffalo, and of the fall off the cliff... gave it some new angles.
October 7, 2009 12:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Tatanka. Lakota for Buffalo.
And the boys rapelling off the cliff!
Christ.
October 7, 2009 1:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
A couple flaws to note in the argument of Ruta.
First, the whole question of the small population of natives at the gathering/Jump. Are we conveniently forgetting the populations of natives prior to the arrival of small pox and the like? Talk about the unknowables! Due to the natural ingredients of their structures, it's pretty difficult to know how many people lived in their "cities".
Second, due to the unknowable, are we sure that two hundred years befor the arrival of the White man, that the Natives held the belief in using every part of the animal? Could they not walk away and declare, the rest will feed Coyote, Bear and Eagle to strengthen them for Winter? It is a use and respects the interrelationship Natives felt with the rest of the World.
Just a couple of thoughts.
BTW, I think the cliff was probably 20 meters. hahahahaha! Let's get some rage going about THAT little bit of trivia. I would imagine a fall of anything more then 10 meters would be sufficient to incapacitate an animal the size of a buffalo. I just throw this one in here because I find this piece of the argument an amusing point of contention for all it matters to the issue of whether they drove the Buffalo over the cliffs or now.
October 7, 2009 1:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Id like the last word. Moral of this thread: NEVER INSULT A BUFFALO IN ROOTIE'S PRESENCE!
October 8, 2009 8:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Dear Editor:
Mr Rutabaga Ridgpole should do more research before he posts articles that are full of opinion and personal speculation that have no evidence or logical inference to back up those speculations. The science of archaeology takes great care and spends much time and effort to uncover and interpret the stories of past cultures. Mr. Rutabaga Ridgepole would be wise to go to the HSIBJ website and click on the link to “Imagining Head Smashed In”, to read, for free online, the book by HSIBJ site archaeologist, Jack Brink, who is also the Curator of Archaeology at the Royal Alberta Museum in Edmonton. Anyone with the skills to navigate our website will find their questions answered about Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. One of the differences between uninformed speculation and the science of archaeology is that archaeology methodically proves theories through fact and logical inference. Mr. Rutabaga’s article and only proves that he wisely chose a moniker that describes his intellectual capacity to properly research and then professionally communicate information about subjects that attract his fleeting attention.
It would be appreciated if the article by Mr. Rutabaga were either deleted or corrected.
October 8, 2009 2:12 PM | Reply | Permalink