First Peoples Buffalo Jump
Introduction
Text-to-speech Audio
Images
A picture of a stuffed buffalo located in the State Park.
The First Peoples Buffalo Jump
Backstory and Context
Text-to-speech Audio
First peoples buffalo jump state park has a terrific on-site education visitor center, in efforts to pay tribute to the buffalo and people who inhabited that land. The center offers buffalo culture exhibits, a storytelling circle, classroom, gallery and bookstore. An outdoor amphitheater and traditional game playing fields are featured outdoors.
For hundreds of years, Indians stampeded buffalo off the mile-long cliff. The Indians would stampede the buffalo with their horses to the cliff, thus jumping to their death. At the bottom of the cliff would be waiting other tribe members to kill the buffalo that didn't die from the jump. They used almost every part of the buffalo except most of the bones. At one time, there was up to 18ft of compacted buffalo remains below the cliff.
Eventually, uses were found for the bones such as being ground up and used for fertilizer. The park has interpretative trails, picnic tables and a protected Black tailed prairie dog town. The park center has many historical artifacts from the site. Today, the buffalo is making a comeback after being almost hunted to extinction.