A 6,000-year-old processing plant
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is a UNESCO World Heritage site in southwest Alberta where the Rocky Mountain foothills meet the Great Plains. For nearly 6,000 years, Plains Indigenous peoples, primarily the Blackfoot, used this 300-meter-long cliff for large-scale bison hunting. The site is a complex consisting of a large gathering basin, a network of drive lanes marked by stone cairns, the cliff itself, and a processing area below. Hunters, known as "buffalo runners," would guide bison herds into the drive lanes, which extended for kilometers. Often disguised in coyote and wolf pelts, they would initiate a stampede, driving the animals towards the precipice. The cliff, at its highest point, drops more than 10 meters to the valley below. The fall would kill or disable the bison, which were then processed at a camp established at the base. This efficient method could produce an enormous amount of food and materials in a single event.
The name of the site comes from a Blackfoot legend about a young brave who wanted to witness the hunt from below. He stood under a ledge but was buried and killed as the bison rained down. When his people found him, his head had been crushed by the weight of the carcasses.