Driving Bison and Blackfoot Science

Archaeological and ethnohistorical evidence of "buffalo jumping" is concentrated in Blackfoot (Nitsitapi) territory. Although the "hardware" of buffalo jumps has been documented extensively, little is known of the "software," in particular the skills required to drive stampeding herds of bison over long distances to the deadfall, on foot, and often for days. The origins and nature of bison driving knowledge is explored on the basis of ethnohistory as well as Blackfoot chronicles, philosophy, and linguistics, and compared with the findings of recent field studies on the relationships between bison and wolves in the northern Great Plains. Blackfoot explanations of bison driving as knowledge learned from wolves are entirely plausible, and shed light on Blackfoot ecological methodology, as well as the development of human-canid hunting relationship generally.