First Peoples Buffalo Jump State Park is a Montana state park and National Historic Landmark in Cascade County, Montana in the United States. The park is and sits at an elevation of . It is located about northwest of the small town of Ulm, which is near the city of Great Falls. First Peoples Buffalo Jump State Park contains the Ulm Pishkun (also known as the Ulm Buffalo Jump), a historic buffalo jump utilized by the Native American tribes of North America. It has been described as, geographically speaking, either North America's largest buffalo jumpAlberta-Montana Heritage Partnership, p. 272; Gale, p. 143; Gottberg, Harris, and Haselsteiner, p. 579.Robison, p. 13.Baumler, p. 15. or the world's largest.Wilson, p. 256; Wright, p. 7; Conklin, p. 40; Gilles, p. 52.Schalla and Johnson, p. 60. There is some evidence that it was the most utilized buffalo jump in the world.Puckett, Karl. "Historic Buffalo Jump Site." Great Falls Tribune. May 30, 1999. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 17, 1974,Puckett, Karl. "Bison Kill Site Yields Terrific Old Treasures." Great Falls Tribune. July 5, 1999. and designated a National Historic Landmark in August 2015. The former name of the park was derived from the Blackfeet word "Pis'kun," meaning "deep kettle of blood," and the nearby town of Ulm.Aarstad et al., p. 272.In March 1999, the Blackfeet tribe of Montana asked that the public and state officials begin calling the site by a new name, Kakpayta Peyasu Pishkun (or Listening Thunder Pishkun). However, state officials said that since the site was used by many tribes and not just the Blackfeet, the old name would stay. See: Puckett, Karl. "Group Says It Changed the Name of Ulm Pishkun." Great Falls Tribune. March 8, 1999.
Although there are more than 300 buffalo kill sites in Montana, First People's Buffalo Jump is one of only three protected buffalo jumps in the state. The other two are Madison Buffalo Jump near Three Forks, and Wahkpa Chu'gn near Havre,Graf, p. 20 both of which are also on the National Register of Historic Places.
History
Native American use
The site's cliff face is approximately long,Punke, p. 35.Halliday and Chehak, p. 283. and has been variously measured at between in height.Fifer, p. 111; Dunn and Kennedy, p. 367; Engel, Engel, and Swan, p. 251. The east–west-trending cliff is composed of sandstone that is part of the bentonitic Taft Hill Member of the Blackleaf Formation.
Archeological research and carbon dating of evidence at the site indicates that Native Americans used the site as early as 500 CE.Puckett, Karl. "Whites, Indians Alike See Pishkun as Bridge Between Their Cultures." Great Falls Tribune. March 19, 1999. However, in 2011, park archeologists found a point (either a large arrowhead or a spearhead) that initial estimates indicated might be as much as 5,000 years old, which would force a radical revision in the date of earliest use."Buffalo Jump Expansion Unearths Gems." Great Falls Tribune. March 27, 2011. Accessed 2011-05-12. This appears to be infrequent. Most evidence indicates that the pishkun began to be heavily frequented for hunting purposes around 900 CE.
The site was used as a "buffalo jump," a place where American bison could be driven up a hill and over a cliff.A "bison kill site" is any place where bison were killed by Native American peoples. However, most of these sites are dead-end canyons, narrow or steep defiles, steep-sided watering holes, and similar places where buffalo could be trapped. These sites made it difficult for a bison to escape, allowing the native hunter to more safely kill the animal or pen one or several animals up for slaughter at leisure. Not all bison kill sites are buffalo jumps; a buffalo jump is a specific type of bison kill site. Prior to 1700 CE, Native Americans lacked horses. Because they utilized dogs as hunting companions and for transportation, this time period is known as the "Dog Days" by many tribes. Bison served as a significant food source for many Native American tribes. Killing the animals, however, was difficult, as bison are notoriously difficult to herd or capture, and can be highly aggressive. Buffalo jumps were one way to kill large numbers of the animals at once without many of the risks associated with close-proximity ambush. Once the animals were driven over the cliff and incapacitated, they would be slaughtered and their meat, hides, and bones used by the hunters to feed and clothe their families and to make various tools and weapons. Jumps were rare, as ambush was a far more common killing method. There is conflicting evidence about what time of year the jumps were used most heavily. There is some evidence that bison kills usually occurred between early fall and early spring, but evidence of unborn and young calf skeletons at the site indicate that slaughter may have occurred year-round.
Under the most widely accepted scenario,Hobbs, Nancy. "The Sacred Buffalo Jump." Salt Lake Tribune. May 30, 1999. hunters would slowly encircle a bison herd several miles from the jump and subtly drive them toward the base of the hill leading up to the cliff. It's not known how many hunters this required. Archeologists theorize that anywhere from 12 to 100 people may have participated. Low fences (or "drive lines") of rock and braided vines were built to help funnel the bison toward the summit. These fences extended back at least half a mile from the summit(about 260 stone piles, remnants of these drive lines, still exist near the hilltop and, in 2011, remains of the braided vines were also found at the site). As the bison began moving toward the summit, hunters (perhaps wearing wolf hides) would leap up from their hiding places behind the rock fences and begin making loud noises. This would begin to stampede the herd, so that they could not stop at the cliff face and would plummet over it to their deaths. There are oral history traditions among some tribes about "buffalo runners" – swift, brave young men who would drape themselves in a buffalo robe and race ahead of the herd to help lead them toward the cliff summit. The young man would leap over the cliff and land on a ledge just out of sight below, while the herd would plummet over and past him. Others (primarily women and children) would kill any animals who did not die from the fall, and butcher all the carcasses.
The slaughtering process changed over time. An analysis of the deep piles of bone at the site revealed that the earliest hunters probably just stripped the hides and meat off the dead animals. But, around 500 CE, Native Americans began using fire pits to cook or dry the meat, then pulverize it and mix it with dried berries and fat to create pemmican. Tribespeople also built shallow bowls in the earth and lined them with rock to create primitive cooking pots. These cooking devices (known as "blood kettles") were used to boil bison blood so that it would coagulate and to lessen its susceptibility to spoilage.Lee, Sonja. "Ancient Blood Kettles Discovered." Great Falls Tribune. February 15, 2006. Other foods would be mixed with the coagulated blood to form a sort of gelatinous food source high in protein and nutrients, or the cooked blood could be used with ground grain to make biscuits.
People came together under temporary leadership to plan and carry out bison drives and in the huge butchering task that followed. Willingness to obey leaders lasted only so long as it was made necessary by the demands of the communal work. Communal hunts required leadership and organization, but neither was carried over as a permanent feature of the sociopolitical system. When the drive and the distribution of dried meat was over, the need for leadership was gone, and they returned to informal band organizations.Archaeology of Native North America, 2010, Dean R. Snow, Prentice-Hall, New York. pp. 259-260
Several Native American tribes have an oral history which includes the First Peoples Buffalo Jump. These include the A'aninin, Assiniboine, Cree, Kalispel, Piegan Blackfeet, Salish, and Shoshoni. Each of these tribes has its own name for this pishkun. There is evidence that other tribes may also have used the pishkun, but this is not conclusive. The site was certainly used heavily throughout this period, and there is archeological evidence that members of these tribes camped on and near the pishkun. One indication of how frequented the site was is the bone bed, which extends along the entire length of the cliffRinella, p. 150. and is deep. An archeological estimate based on the number of bones at the site indicates that at least 6,000 bison died there.
With the arrival of the horse, Native American tribes began hunting buffalo from horseback, and the pishkun fell into disuse around 1700 CE.
Post-Native American use The area that is today known as the state of Montana was made an organized incorporated territory of the United States in 1864 after a series of gold rushes. Settlement of the territory was sparse, especially the area around the pishkun. In 1878, the area containing the First Peoples Buffalo Jump fell under the control of William H. Ulm, a white settler from Indiana who homesteaded a cattle ranch in the area.Cheney, p. 229; Coleman, Travis. "Current and Past Ulm Residents Reminisce on Town's 120th Birthday." Great Falls Tribune. June 14, 2009. The pishkun itself was named Taft Hill. The nearby city of Great Falls was founded in 1883, and the Montana Central Railway arrived from the booming mining town of Butte (passing through Ulm on its way to Great Falls) in October 1887.Hidy, Hidy, and Scott, pp. 57-60.
The pishkun site became a popular location for members of the public to look for arrowheads and other Native American artifacts. From 1889 to 1905, the pishkun was used as a sandstone quarry. Several buildings in Great Falls and Helena were built with sandstone quarried from the site.
The state of Montana obtained the site sometime prior to 1945. From 1945 to 1947, the need for phosphorus (a mineral used in fertilizer and explosives) was high. The state of Montana leased the site for $7,600 to the Frost Fertilizer Company, which began "mining" it for bone.Davis, p. 284. More than of bones were removed from the site, pulverized, and shipped to the West Coast for use as fertilizer and in explosives manufacturing.Flannery, p. 323; Patent and Muñoz, p. 23. The site was one of the two largest pishkuns in the United States mined for bison bone. A second attempt to mine the site for bone was made in the 1950s, but local rancher, Earl Monroe, who wished to protect the site from further depredation, leased the land and kept it off-limits to the public.
As a state park
The Montana Department of State Lands (now known as the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation) purchased a portion of the site in the 1930s. The lands were made part of the school trust lands – land held in trust for the benefit of the Montana public school system. Under a mandate from the Montana Constitution, these lands must be managed to obtain the maximum benefit possible.Puckett, Karl. "Land Deal Would Put Pishkun in FWP Hands." Great Falls Tribune. December 29, 1999. Amateur archeological activities began at the site in the 1950s and 1960s, which developed archeological evidence about the importance of the site. The first efforts to establish a state park occurred shortly thereafter but were unsuccessful.