This weekend featured a day trip around my little area of Wyoming. First up was the Vore Buffalo Jump near Sundance, WY.
It's a sinkhole where Native Americans used to run buffalo over the edge into the pit below, where they could kill and butcher them more readily. (Think pre-horse times.)The jump is literally right off the Interstate, you can see cars going by, down in the sink hole it's pretty quiet - except for the busybody blackbirds. The three on the fence supervised us the entire time we were there. 
The pit is covered, although the signage says the layers of bones are 25 feet deep. That's a lot of dead buffalo.
From Wikipedia: "The Vore site was used as a kill site and butchering site from about 1300 AD to about 1700 AD... Lithic evidence suggests that the Kiowa and Apache used the site as they migrated southwards to their modern home in the Texas-New Mexico region.. Later peoples using the Vore site included the Shoshone, Hidatsa, Crow and Cheyenne."
Bison rib bone?
The pit is covered, although the signage says the layers of bones are 25 feet deep. That's a lot of dead buffalo.
From Wikipedia: "The Vore site was used as a kill site and butchering site from about 1300 AD to about 1700 AD... Lithic evidence suggests that the Kiowa and Apache used the site as they migrated southwards to their modern home in the Texas-New Mexico region.. Later peoples using the Vore site included the Shoshone, Hidatsa, Crow and Cheyenne."
Bison rib bone?
View from the bottom of the pit.After, we headed north toward Devil's Tower.
Because I can always use more pictures of the Tower under all kinds of weather conditions.
Plus, it was a nice drive, green and dramatic.
We could stop and explore interesting photo op sites--
and point them out...Until next time, your roving blogger,
Constance
Constance
5 comments:
For some reason,my first thought when seeing "Vore Buffalo Jump" was that was where the Harley boyz from Sturgis had a competition.
Anon- It wouldn't surprise me if they did! :)
What a great day trip! I would have felt slightly weird being down in the buffalo bone pit, though....shudder.
Well, we couldn't exactly get into the pit part of the pit, it was hermetically sealed for your protection - although it would have been cool if we could. Yeah, I'm weird that way. :)
Mmm, some buffalo rib steak ...
:)
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