Buffalo Jump.  Keywords: Bonfire Shelter, buffalo jump hunting, Paleo-Indians, Plains Indians, Texas pre-history, Texas Indians, coahuiltecan, Pecos caves, Seminole Canyon, Mile Canyon, Langtry TX, shaman culture, 4th-7th Texas social studies.

BONFIRE SHELTER

A Texas Buffalo Jump Site

THE BUFFALO JUMP METHOD

Prehistoric hunters of the Plains, from Alberta, Canada in the north, all the way south to the canyons of the Rio Grande, in Texas, practiced several methods of mass killings of buffalo. They herded buffalo to the edge of cliffs, or into enclosed areas, such as box canyons, or into corrals made of poles where they would kill the trapped animals. Of these, the most violent and indiscriminate mass-killing method was the "buffalo jump".

Hunters herded the bison and drove them over a cliff, breaking their necks or legs and rendering them immobile. Bulls, cows and calves fell to their deaths as they stampeded amidst clouds of dust. Tribe members waiting below closed in with spears and bows to finish the kills. Later the group would butcher and process the sacrificed animals. Effective, but not efficient in terms of maximum resource utilization.  Most sites exhibit piles of buffalo remains that witness to massive waste.

Artist's rendering of a "buffalo jump"

The Blackfeet Indians called the buffalo jumps “pishkun”, which loosely translates as “deep blood kettle”. This type of hunting was a communal event which occurred as early as 12,000 years ago and lasted until at least 1500 CE, around the time of the introduction of horses. The broader term game jumps includes buffalo jumps and cliffs used for similarly hunting other herding animals, such as reindeer. The Indians believed that if any buffalo escaped these killings then the rest of the buffaloes would learn to avoid humans, which would make hunting even harder.

Buffalo jump sites are often identified by rock cairns, which were markers designating “drive lanes”, by which bison would be funneled over the cliff. These drive lanes would often stretch for several miles.

Buffalo jump sites yield significant archaeological evidence because processing sites and camps were always nearby. The sites yield information as to how the Native Americans used the bison for food, clothing and shelter. Plains Indians in particular depended on the bison for their very survival. Every part of the animal could be used in some way: hides for clothes and shelter, bones for tools, sinews for bowstrings and laces. Hooves could be ground for glue, and the brains could be used in the tanning process for the hides. The extra meat was preserved as pemmican.

Many sites exhibit remains of Bison Antiquus, a giant of the glacial age, topped by many layers of its descendant the American Bison

In one of his journals, Meriwether Lewis describes how a buffalo jump was practiced during the Lewis and Clark Expedition:

"One of the most active and fleet young men is selected and disguised in a robe of buffalo skin… he places himself at a distance between a herd of buffalo and a precipice proper for the purpose; the other Indians now surround the herd on the back and flanks and at a signal agreed on all show themselves at the same time moving forward towards the buffalo; the disguised Indian or decoy has taken care to place himself sufficiently near the buffalo to be noticed by them when they take to flight and running before them they follow him in full speed to the precipice; the Indian (decoy) in the mean time has taken care to secure himself in some cranny in the cliff… the part of the decoy I am informed is extremely dangerous."

BONFIRE SHELTER

Bonfire Shelter is located on a side of Three Mile Canyon, near the Rio Grande, close to the town of Langtry, Texas.

Bonfire Shelter on the western fringe of the Lower Pecos canyonlands has the twin distinction of being both the earliest and southernmost bison (buffalo) jump site known in North America. 

Bison antiquus - artist's reconstruction

Here early Paleoindian peoples ingeniously stampeded herds of Bison Antiquus over the edge of a cliff overhanging this large alcove or rock shelter. The bison plunged to their deaths on a rocky pile at the opening of the shelter, providing a sudden wealth of meat, hides, and bone to the hunters.

Located in a narrow box canyon that empties into the Rio Grande, Bonfire Shelter has seen many mass kills. The first definitive jump episodes occurred over 11,700 years ago (9700 B.C. or earlier) during the Paleoindian era at the end of the last Ice Age (Pleistocene). At least three separate events created what archeologists call Bone Bed 2, a layer in the shelter's deposits containing the bones of a now-extinct species of buffalo (Bison antiquus or B. occidentalis) as well as a small number of stone tools including Folsom and Plainview projectile points. 

Today's buffalo is 40% smaller in height and length
compared to the pre-historic relative

The Great Plains now extend into Texas, where gradually they become a desert. At the present time, we can't imagine this desert region to be Bison habitat. Nevertheless, in the post-glacier period, and for several thousand years, the cool, grassy and wet plains extended well into what is now the Chihuahua desert.  

This desert is relatively young, but growing. There may have been several other long periods of time when the Plains' habitat extended across the Rio Grande.  It is during these time that the site was mostly used.  For this reason, the people that hunted buffalo were any of the ancestral groups of the Plains Indians who came into the region, and retreated as the grasslands and buffalo retreated. The Lower Pecos caves indicate the presence of buffalo, but the dominant source of meat, as told by the paintings, is deer.

Site plan - The discontinuous line is the ridge of the cliff above the alcove

Lateral view of the current state of Bonfire Shelter. 

View of the site from the opposite of the canyon

The late Coahuiltecan inhabitants of the South Texas Desert Plains are not likely to have hunted buffalo with any massive hunt method. They moved around in very small bands.  By the time they occupied this area, it was marginal buffalo land, where  the herds did not migrate in any significant numbers.