Bison driven off this cliff for 5,500 years, and 12 metres of bone below it
A sandstone cliff 300 metres long, 18 kilometres west of Fort Macleod, dropping about ten metres at its highest, that the peoples of the plains used for 5,500 years to take bison. Calling it a cliff undersells it, because the cliff is the last ten metres of an engineered system. Drive lanes marked by HUNDREDS of stone cairns run from a gathering basin in the Porcupine Hills about three kilometres back, narrowing the whole way, and young men trained in the behaviour of the animals, the buffalo runners, worked a herd into them wearing coyote and wolf hides until the weight of the herd behind did the rest. At the bottom the injured animals were finished with spears and clubs, and the carcasses went to a camp at the foot of the cliff that had fresh water and everything else needed to process them. The bone below is 12 metres deep. UNESCO listed it in 1981 for what it says about prehistoric life on this continent, and the interpretive centre, opened in 1987, is built into the cliff itself in five levels and won a Governor General’s gold medal for architecture. Joe Crowshoe Sr., a ceremonial elder of the Piikani Nation, was the man who made the place what it is. The name comes from a story about a young man who stood under the cliff to watch the animals come down.
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
