by Sonia Turner pg 9 Big Hill Country 1977
The Big Hill rises some 4,400 feet above sea level; its northwestern flank is wooded with spruce, poplar, willow, saskatoon and chokecherry. The Indians called the hill “Manachaban”, signifying “the place where you get bows.” The town of Cochrane is situated at the base of its southwestern slope. Below the town the tree-edged Bow River flows in an easterly direction through a terraced valley.
Wooded foothills rise in the west and we behold the Rocky Mountains with familiar peaks such as Mount Aylmer, the Devil’s Head, and Black Rock.
The Ghost River, also known as Deadman River, forms our western perimeter. It was so named by the Crees because a ghost was seen going up and down the river picking up the skulls of the dead. Various creeks form the drainage system of the Big Hill country. In the northwest the Waiporous, Meadow, Owl, Le Sueur, Behanhouse, and Ranche Creeks flow through the wooded foothills of the Keystone and Wildcat Hills region. Historic and descriptive creeks, like Spencer, Beaupre, Coal, and Horse Creeks all eventually find their way to the valley of the Bow River. Big Hill Creek drains the Lochend districts and enters the Bow just west of Cochrane. The Dog Pound and Beaver Dam Creeks, both flowing in a northeasterly direction, form our northern perimeters.
The town of Cochrane is located in Sections 2 and 3, Township 26, Range 4, West of the 5th Meridian. It is 19 miles northwest of Calgary on Highway lA and is on the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The main town lies at an altitude of 3,760 feet, at a Latitude of 51 11 ‘and Longitude of 114/28 W. The annual precipitation averages between 17-19 inches and droughts are rare. (This includes an average annual snowfall of 72.5 inches and a rainfall of 11.42 inches). Chinook winds which sweep over the mountains help to modify the winters with their warmth. Part of the Cochrane area is in the black soil zone; the soils in this zone are the most fertile in the province and have in their surface foot about 3 to 4 times as much nitrogen and organic matter as there is in the average brown or grey wooded soil. The frost-free season is approximately 100 days.
Generally speaking, extensive ranching, mixed farming and lumbering are the main industries. In the early days there were rock quarries which made use of the calcareous tufa deposits of Paskapoo sandstone along the Big Hill Creek, for building stone. Clay was used in the manufacturing of bricks. The sand and gravel industry is booming now. There are extensive gas fields in the Jumping Pound area, and oil explorations are being conducted in the Wildcat Hills region. Many producing wells are scattered throughout the Lochend and Inglis districts
Presently there are large dairy farms in operation on our eastern perimeter and scattered throughout the various districts.
The Big Hill country did not always have this same physical appearance. Although our local written history is only a few hundred years old our geological history: which is the history of our earth and its rocks, is millions of years old. Geological time is not counted in years or hundreds of years. but in ages, thus in geology, even a million years ago is considered a relatively short space of time.
During the Paleozoic Era, a geological time period extending from about 225 to 600 million years ago, great inland seas covered Alberta and our present Cochrane area. Various forms of marine life lived in the waters of these seas: creatures called trilobites (which were the first animals with a complex skeleton), primitive forms of snails, clams and corals, and various shells called Brachiopods. These creatures left behind their fossilized remains, so we know exactly what they looked like. As these creatures died their remains sank and came to rest at the bottom of the seas. These ancient graveyards of the dead and decayed remains of marine life were subjected to great pressure from overlying beds of silt and sand that had turned to rock. Through chemical changes and tremendous pressures occurring over countless millions of years, these vast marine beds became our present pools of crude petroleum and natural gas.
Between 70 and 225 million years ago the land became a marshy delta extending for thousands of square miles; this was called the Mesozoic Era. For part of the time the land was covered with warm marshy swamps with a dense growth of vegetation of tropical plant life, with ferns, figs, mosses and palm trees. It was a fetid world, the age of reptiles – teeming with crocodiles, turtles and huge dinosaurs. Horned, armorplated and duck-billed dinosaurs weighed up to 50 tons, and some were 20 feet tall; many were omniverous. Their skeletons became fossilized and some of their remains from the Red Deer River Badlands near Drumheller are in museums in Toronto, Ottawa, New York and Europe. From the ancient remains of these subtropical deltas comes the coal of the Drumheller Valley, of the Edmonton district, and along the outer foothills belt (e.g. Canmore mines).
Change is continuous and some 40 to 70 million years ago, the earth underwent a violent period of mountain building as the earth’s rocky crust was folded, bent, twisted and thrust upwards by great disturbances, some of them volcanic. The geography of Alberta began to take shape; the Rocky Mountains rose to form the backbone of the continent and inland seas were replaced by interior plains. This was the Cenozoic Era, and warm-blooded animals appeared: the small three-toed horse, the sabretooth tiger and hairy mammoths.
As the climate became colder, glaciers developed and flowed from north to south over the Northern Hemisphere. During their movement, rocks and debris were ground into soil. When the glaciers melted back this debris was deposited. A number of glacial and inter-glacial (when the glaciers melted back) periods occurred. There are numerous examples of glacial and inter-glacial action in Big Hill Country; the deep coulees carved out by rivers from the melting glaciers; the waterfall at the head of Big Hill Creek coulee; the terraces along the valley of the Bow River; glacial tills scattered throughout the area, and extensive gravel deposits.
Geology is part of our “living past”; it has made the Big Hill country what it is today – its rivers and lakes, prairies and rich soils, oil and gas. The Big Hill is made up of layers of rock of the Tertiary Age (Paskapoo formation). The Grade Six classes at the Andrew Sibbald Elementary School, Cochrane, study our geological past when they make their annual pilgrimage to Moose Mountain and gather fossil rocks containing Brachiopods, crinoids and other marine life of the Paleozoic Era. The Waiporous Crossing has a good example of sandstones and shales of the Cretaceous period. A rare event is finding fossilized “worm tracks” imbedded in rock belonging to the Cretaceous period, in the Ghost Diversion Dam area. The Jumping Pound gas field on the eastern edge of the foothills derives its gas from the thrust faults of the Mississippian strata, which was formed in the Paleozoic Era over 300 million years ago.
Gordon Hall of Cochrane has in his private collection, remains of prehistoric pleistocene animals. He has parts of an extinct western bison, Bison occidentalis, about 11,600 years old. The extinct Mexican ass, Equus conversidens was 11,600 years old. He also has the main beam of a woodland caribou, Rangifer caribou. All these were found in Clarke’s gravel pit at S. Cochrane and identified by A. Macs. Stalker and C. Churcher of the National Museum of Canada, Ottawa, in the 1960s. An ancient Bighorn sheep specimen was also found, which was over 11,000 years old; some others were recovered in the Griffin pits and placed in the museum at Ottawa.
It is generally believed that man first arrived in North America from Asia and Siberia over a land bridge in the Bering Strait during periods of glaciation. On other continents archaeologists, scientists who study the stone tools and skeletal remains of man, have found that man has been present over the last two million years or more, but in the Americas he has been a late-comer. Prehistoric man is believed to have journeyed down to Alberta through an ice-free corridor via Alaska and the Yukon.
In the Cochrane area, we have evidence of prehistoric man. Stone tools such as grooved mauls, stone axes and points have been found. 10 Teepee rings, which are signs of human habitation
along the Bow River as far west as Morley. Sites range from two or three teepee rings to as many as over 100. Many teepee rings are found in the Big Hill Creek area; others are scattered here and there. There were teepee rings on the Gilbert Flats, where the Cochrane Light Horse Association held their gymkhana for a few years, on what is now known as Cochrane Heights.
There are numerous buffalo jumps throughout the Big Hill country area: the Hutchinson buffalo jump, which was excavated and studied in 1972, the buffalo jumps in the Jumping Pound area and others in the Big Hill Creek perimeters, and still others further east. The Madden buffalo jump is known for its pictographs or rock paintings. It is the furthest north major jump that the University of Calgary has on file.
Medicine wheels are ceremonial rings of stone larger in diameter than teepee rings, sometimes reaching 50 feet or more in diameter. Some have large cairns in the middle, or spokes radiating from the center. Locally three have been discovered so far: one each in the general localities of Spy Hill, Bearspaw and the Big Hill Creek perimeters.
At Lake Minnewanka there is a very old site; the earliest remains are 12,000 years old. A Clovis point was discovered. It is the earliest evidence of man in the Rockies. Unfortunately this site was destroyed by the reservoir.
On the lA Highway at Coal Creek a horse was found buried in the cellar of building remains. This site was historic, and part of the Mitford Mines at Coal Creek. The prehistoric site had two teepee ring levels; one historic, about 1840 to 1870 (Stoney Indians), and the other was 2,000 years old and was a winter camp of three-plus tents.
In the Jumping Pound area archaeologists have found a number of prehistoric sites along the creek, such as buffalo jumps, teepee rings and camps. The remains of dogs were found at two sites on the Kumlin Ranch; one a kill dating to historic times and the other a prehistoric winter camp about 1,500 years old.
The Ghost-Morley area has yielded little information because of the Indian Reserve. There are teepee rings and campsites. A 10,000 year old point was found east of the Ghost River.
Professor Brlan 0. K. Reeves, Ph.D., Department of Archaeology, University of Alberta, states: “The oldest site in Western Canada is the Taber Child site, which is more than 48,000 years old. The second oldest is Old Crow in the Yukon, at about 28,000 years. Many archaeologists, particularly Americans, don’t believe it.”
Ironically, during World War I and World War II, tons and tons of buffalo bones were shipped in boxcars to be used for the manufacture of fertilizer, thus inadvertently destroying archaeological sites forever. Today many sites are being destroyed by rural housing and acreage developments.
The first white man to come to our area appears to be David Thompson (1770-1857), the great explorer and fur trader, in November 1800. On November 17, 1800, he started out on an exploratory trip with five members in the party. He started from Rocky Mountain House (established in 1799) and travelled south to the Bow River, at the present site of Calgary, then on to the Highwood where he visited two Pikenow camps; on his return he travelled northwest, where he crossed the Jumping Pound Creek on November 28, 1800. Then, searching for Duncan McGillveray, they camped a short distance above where the Ghost River joins the Bow. Here they saw large herds of buffalo bulls but no cows. Traversing the present Morley area, they killed four Bighorn sheep at Old Fork Creek and then travelled west to the Gap. On their return on December 1, they crossed the Ghost and continued northwest over Spencer Creek, Beaupre Creek, and on to the Dog Pound Creek, continuing on their journey until they reached Rocky Mountain House on December 3, 1800.
(Reference: Alberta Historical Society Review, Spring 1965.)
The Indians, which David Thompson referred to as the Pikenow Indians, were the Piegans, who were part of the Blackfoot Confederacy.
Old Bow Fort (or Piegan Post) was established by the Hudson’s Bay Company to encourage the fur trade with the Indians of the southern regions. It was situated at the junction of the Bow River and Bow Fort Creek (Township 25-7-5). Archaeological excavations conducted by Professor Paul Nesbitt, of the University of Calgary in 1970, reveal that Piegan Post was possibly first built in 1826, then abandoned and rebuilt again in 1833. It consisted of six buildings surrounded by a five-sided palisade With a bastion, or lookout tower. It was occupied until early 1834. John E. Harriot was in charge. The Indians proved too hostile, and as there were no enough beavers to make it a worthwhile project the fort was abandoned.
The Stoney Indians arrived in this area about 1845, thus they were comparative latecomers here. It is thought that the Mountain Crees preceded them by a few years, probably driving out the Piegans and some of the Kootenay tribe before them. Many of the local names are Cree or their equivalent in Stoney. It seems that the Stoney did not attach definite names to the features of the area.
“Our Stoney Indians are a branch of the great Dakota or Siouan Confederacy. They are Assiniboines, of which Stone) is an English translation.” Their name means “The people who cook v\ ith stones;” when it was translated into English this was shortened to Stone People and finally Stone) Indians or Stonies. The Athabascan Assiniboine had separated from the main body of the Assiniboine and settled in the Athabasca region a decade or two before the eighteenth century. Because of a scar-
city of game during the 1840s many of the Athabascan Assiniboine were forced to move south. Thus the group, which settled in the Bow Valley-Morley area, was called the Mountain Stoney.
In 1896 J. MacLean described them: “The Stoneys are of medium height, well-formed, of pleasing countenance and especially active in their movements. It is not too much to say that they are the most energetic of all tribes of the North-West. They are excellent horsemen and had the reputation of being great horse thieves. They were famous as scouts and were used in that capacity during the Riel Rebellion of 1885. Many were used during the survey of the C.P.R.”
In 1858 Dr. James Hector of the Palliser Expedition passed through the western perimeter of our area. He camped at the foot of Dream Hill; this is believed to be one of the more southerly Wildcat Hills, as he reached the Ghost River the next morning. Hector travelled southward over rolling hills towards the Bow River, where he noticed seams of coal in the shale and sandstone banks of the river (this would be around the mouth of Coal Creek). From their camp at Dream Hill Hector’s party could see a level plain that swept to the base of the mountains; the next day he realized that it was the valley of the Deadman or Ghost River.
It was Palliser’s report that had considerable influence on the decision to build the railroad to the north of the arid stretches. If this plan had been followed the growth of Cochrane would have been stalled for many years.
The arrival of Reverend George and Reverend John McDougall in 1873 at the confluence of the Bow and Ghost Rivers was of great importance, as they built a mission at Morleyville, and built a fort on a high hill north of the Bow River, approximately three miles north of the present McDougall Church. Here the families of Reverend John and his trader brother, David, were relatively safe from the prowling Blackfoot when the brothers were absent on business.
By 1875 on the flats north of the Bow River a small community appeared, consisting of a church, a mission house, a day school, a store and stables. In 1878 an orphanage for Indian children was provided. David McDougall brought his store supplies from Fort Benton, Montana, or from Fort Garry via Edmonton. Of this original historic site only the McDougall Church remains.
Andrew Sibbald came to Morley in 1875 to teach the Indians, and was the first schoolteacher in the West. That winter Rev. George McDougall lost his life in a blizzard. Andrew Sibbald left the school in 1879 to establish a small sawmill for the McDougalls, thereby supplying the first lumber for buildings in Calgary.
The settlement of Morleyville provided the first small nucleus for the large settlements that followed. In 1875 the establishment of the North West Mounted Police at Fort Calgary helped to keep order between the Blackfoot and the Stoney, and in 1877 Treaty No. 7 was signed. In the early 1880s many people came to settle in this region. The Cochrane Ranche was established 25 miles east of Morley, and many small ranches sprang up in between the two centers. Large-scale settlement became possible when the Canadian Pacific Railway came to Calgary and on through to Bow Valley and the Kicking Horse Pass (instead of 200 miles north through the Yellowhead Pass as some had expected). The towns of Cochrane and Mitford came into being after the coming of the railroad; Morley ceased to be the focal point of so many activities as these new towns expanded their influence.
