Imagining Head-Smashed-In : : Aboriginal buffalo hunting on the northern Plains / / Jack W. Brink.

• Author: Brink, Jack.
• Year of Publication: 2008
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (361 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

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 t

Table of Contents

Cover Page; Contents; Foreword; Preface; Acknowledgements; CHAPTER 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; CHAPTER 2: THE BUFFALO; Is it Bison or Buffalo?; In Numbers, Numberless; Tricks of the Trade; The Fats of Life; CHAPTER 3: A YEAR IN THE LIFE; Calves; Mothers; Fathers; The Big Picture; Science and the Historic Record; The Seasonal Round; The Season of Buffalo Jumping; CHAPTER 4: THE KILLING FIELD; Finding Bison; Drive Lanes; Points in Time; Ancient Knowledge

Back to the Drive Lanes Deadmen; In Small Things Forgotten; CHAPTER 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; CHAPTER 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; CHAPTER 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; CHAPTER 8: GOING HOME; Buffalo Hides; Pemmican; Snow Falling on Cottonwoods; CHAPTER 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; CHAPTER 10: THE PAST BECOMES THE PRESENT; 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; Last Summer; A Thousand Years Ago; Three Months Later; Three Days Later; Sources to Notes; References Cited; Index;