That really is the name of this place; I could not make that one up. This will be the last blog about our Saturday adventure. I saved this one for last, because it is the hardest to put into words. All day long we laughed every time we talked about going to Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. I mean really, who would name a UNESCO World Heritage Site that and why? We arrived at the museum about 45 minutes before it was scheduled to close. When we walked into this beautifully designed building nestled into the cliff side and began reading about the site, it was overwhelmingly sad for me. Basically, this is a place where over 6,000 years, tens-of-thousands of buffalo were run off the cliffs so that the Plains people, as they are called, could eat and use all of the buffalo parts for various things. I get that in this cold, hard to survive climate, everyone has to eat but it was still a little overwhelming. When the site was excavated, 12 meters of buffalo bones were unearthed. That is over 39 feet or 4 stories! I think that if there were any buffalo left it would not be so sad, but the white men who came through on the trains completely wiped out the remaining buffalo. The scenery was beautiful, but I don't think that I will ever look at a sandstone cliff the same way again.
The legend is that a young boy wanted to see the many buffalo that were being run off the cliffs to their deaths. He was standing under an overhang as he watched but when his people came to butcher the buffalo, they found the boy with his skull smashed in. What an awful story.
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