When a brave could lose his head on the Alberta plains

A Blackfoot Indian tells SCOTT MacLEOD of the great buffalo hunts on the Alberta plains.


One night the spirit of a dead buffalo visited Lorraine Goodstriker in her dreams. The Blood-Tribe Blackfoot woman admits she was scared.

As the supervisor of on-site interpretation at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump in southern Alberta, Goodstriker feels the weight of trying to preserve her culture and nurture it back to health. In her care at the museum-like centre is a stuffed buffalo, a buffalo kept apart from three others, a buffalo she thought might be lonely."

Please don't hurt me," Goodstriker said in her sleep.

But the mighty buffalo told her not to worry. He admitted he was lonely but said he visited the other stuffed buffalo at night after the tourists left. He had come to tell Goodstriker the buffalo were proud of her, and wanted her to continue her work at the centre. They wanted her to keep telling the world about the long history of the buffalo and the Blackfoot.

Since that night Goodstriker says she has felt the importance of her role at the buffalo jump even more keenly - and she has often visited the lonely stuffed buffalo during the day.

So what is a buffalo jump?

Some Canadian tribes used to hunt the wild beasts of Alberta's vast plains by stampeding them over the few available cliff-faces.

The 5000-year-old Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, 16km west of Fort Macleod, is one of the oldest, biggest and best-preserved of those sites. The multi-level Blackfoot centre blends into the side of a cliff-face and holds hundreds of artifacts from the ancient hunting era, during which an estimated 150,000 buffalo were killed nearby.

Nowadays the intrepid tourist can sleep overnight in a teepee, eat a buffalo burger in the cafeteria, learn ancient games and try hands-on activities such as drum-playing.

But the best sense of history is gleaned from Goodstriker when she tells of the hunt, which could last weeks. She says her ancestors would dress in wolfskins and buffalo hides and take on the animals' spirits during the hunt. The braves wearing buffalo skins would move in front of the herd, drawing it forward, while the "wolves" would help to guide it into lanes leading to the buffalo jump.

Then, as the cliff loomed, the wolves would start a stampede.

About 150 years ago one of the pluckiest young braves wanted to watch more closely as the buffalo dropped. He shielded himself under a ledge at the bottom of the cliff as the bellowing beasts thumped to their deaths around him. But one must have nailed the brave a beauty, for when his mates came down to do the butchering they found his head smashed in.

Hence the name.

Nowadays the area is less treacherous for sightseers but is perhaps a monument to dangers still facing the Blackfoot."

Today's Indian lives in a time of continual change and compromise to other values," says Goodstriker, whose native name is Ikiinaawatsiimokskakii (Slow Praying Woman)." To survive he must walk with one foot in the white man's world and the other in his own world."

It seems to me that he is succeeding, for he is still living and the old ways are coming back."

CASENOTES:

GETTING THERE: Air New Zealand flies daily to Los Angeles, with Canadian Airlines offering a link to Calgary. Return airfares start from $2553.

BUFFALO JUMP: Entry to the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump interpretative centre costs $C6.50 ($10) for an adult and $C15 for a family. Up to six people can spend a night in a teepee for $C50. A two-day camping package costs between $C475 for one person and $C1000 for six, including hikes, food and a guide.