Imagining Head-Smashed-In
Imagining Head-Smashed-In
Aboriginal Buffalo Hunting on the Northern Plains
At the place known as Head-Smashed-In in southwestern Alberta, Aboriginal people practiced a form of group hunting for nearly 6,000 years before European contact. The large communal bison traps of the Plains were the single greatest food-getting method ever developed in human history. Hunters, working with their knowledge of the land and of buffalo behaviour, drove their quarry over a cliff and into wooden corrals. The rest of the group butchered the kill in the camp below.
Author Jack Brink, who devoted 25 years of his career to "The Jump," has chronicled the cunning, danger, and triumph in the mass buffalo hunts and the culture they supported. He also recounts the excavation of the site and the development of the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump Interpretive Centre, which has hosted 2 million visitors since it opened in 1987. Brink’s masterful blend of scholarship and public appeal is rare in any discipline, but especially in North American pre-contact archaeology.
Brink attests, "I love the story that lies behind the jump—the events and planning that went into making the whole event work. I continue to learn more about the complex interaction between people, bison and the environment, and I continue to be impressed with how the ancient hunters pulled off these astonishing kills."
Awards
- 2009, Winner - City of Edmonton Book Prize
- 2009, Winner - Best Archaeology Book, Popular Writing Category, Society for American Archaeology
- 2009, Winner - Public Communications Award, Canadian Archaeological Association
- 2009, Winner - Best Adult Non-Fiction, Calgary Public Library Foundation Literary Awards
Brink takes readers on an exploration of the site, telling its story in an irresistible personal voice into which he pours his heart and soul. What comes through is the author's deep respect for his subject.
Pick up this book and add it to your collection; it is a must read for anyone interested in the past, anyone studying history of the plains, and everyone just looking for some fresh, new and upbeat reading material. Imagining Head-Smashed-In is a tale about courage, ingenuity and the struggle for survival.
A writer committed to a subject that most of the world considers marginal, yet approaches it with I-will-be-heard confidence, can win the heart of even the most recalcitrant reader. Jack W. Brink, a curator at the Royal Alberta Museum in Edmonton, has that ability. He's spent 25 years studying the way Prairie natives kept themselves alive for millennia by hunting buffalo, a subject that in his hands becomes absorbing, dramatic and almost urgent.
Imagining Head Smashed-In brings alive the past as well as the archaeological process, in an engaging description of how archaeology really happens, which complements Brink's impressive command of the data.
A model of ecological history that will have broad appeal for scholarly and general interested readers.
Foreward by Eldon Yellowhorn
Preface
Acknowledgements
1. The Buffalo Jump
Communal Buffalo Hunting
Not Just Any Cliff
The Site
The Cliff
How Long Have Buffalo Jumped?
Blood on the Rocks: The Story of Head-Smashed-In
2. The Buffalo
Is it Bison or Buffalo?
In Numbers, Numberless
Tricks of the Trade
The Fats of Life
3. A Year in the Life
Calves
Mothers
Fathers
The Big Picture
Science and the Historic Record
The Seasonal Round
Summer
Fall and Winter
Spring
The Season of Buffalo Jumping
4. The Killing Fields
Finding Bison
Drive Lanes
Points in Time
Ancient Knowledge
Back to the Drive Lanes
Deadmen
In Small Things Forgotten
5. Rounding Up
The Spirit Sings
The Nose of the Buffalo
Fire this Time
Luring the Buffalo
Buffalo Runners
Lost Calves
Billy’s Stories
The End of the Drive
Of Illusions, Pickup Trucks, and Curves in the Road
6. The Great Kill
Leap of Faith
Overkill?
Drop of Death
Bones on Fire
Let the Butchering Begin
Bison Hide as Insulator
Back to the Assembly Line
7. Cooking up the Spoils
The Processing Site
Day Fades to Night
Dried Goods
Grease is the Word
High Plains Cooking
Hazel Gets Slimed
Buffalo Chips
Hot Rocks
Time for a Roast
Where are the Skulls?
Packing Up, Among the Bears
8. Going Home
Buffalo Hides
Pemmican
Snow Falling on Cottonwoods
9. The End of the Buffalo Hunt
The Skin of the Animal
The Last of the Buffalo Jumps
Rivers of Bones
Final Abandonment of Head-Smashed-In
10. The Future of the Past
Beginnings
A Beer-Soaked Bar Napkin
Cranes on the Cliff
A Rubber Cliff
And a Rubber Dig
The Blackfoot Get Involved
Meeting with the Piikani
Joe Crowshoe
A Painted Skull
Where are the Blood?
Hollywood North
Opening and Aftermath
Of Time and Tradition
Epilogue: Just a Simple Stone
Note Sources
Bibliography
Index
