Imagining Head Smashed In: Aboriginal Buffalo Hunting on the Northern Plains

At the place known as Head-Smashed-In in southwest Alberta, Aboriginal people of the Northern Plains 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 behavior, drove their quarry over a cliff into wooden corrals. The rest of the group butchered the kill in the camp below.

By Jack W Brink