pg 12, A Peep into the Past Vol II, Gordon and Belle Hall , 1990.
When my family moved from Calgary to Springbank in 1916, the first world war was in full swing. We moved onto a quarter section belonging to Frank Young. The quarter was about a mile east of the Red Dutton Arena in lower Springbank. The countryside in those days were covered with buffalo bones. The bones were gathered into piles and hauled to Calgary where they would be ground up for fertilizer and I understand they were also used in the manufacture of explosives. My dad had gathered a huge pile of bones and they sat in front of the house. One day mother heard a noise outside and in going out, she discovered two wagons with Sarcee natives helping themselves to the bones. In her best English she told them to leave and leave the bones alone. Promptly one native told her he didn’t understand English. Going into the house her eyes fell on dad’s double barrel shotgun. Picking it up she went out again, pulling the hammer back. The natives hastily unloaded their wagons and in 10 minutes were gone. This was one language they understood.
By the 1920s and ’30s there were not many bones left laying around, some however were being dug up in gravel pits and excavations. There is a spot in the Jumping Pound area called the Pile of Bones Hill. The oldtimers would tell you that they were the bones from Cochrane Ranche cattle lost in storms in the 1880s. The last buffalo was shot in this area in the 1880s. W.D. Kerfoot and his men ran an old bull into the the Cochrane Ranch corrals with a herd of cattle, where Kerfoot shot him.
In later years buffalo jumps or kill sites have been discovered along Jumping Pound Creek and also Big Hill Creek, one site was found at Big Hill Springs in 1968. It was excavated in the spring and summer of 1972 by students from the University of Calgary archaelogical division, with the permission of the landowner Jonathon Hutchinson. A number of arrowheads, spear points and other artifacts were found. The site is now catalogued as the Hutchinson Buffalo Jump “EHPO7”. Archaelogical evidence to date indicates that the Huchinson Buffalo Jump was primarily a jump site and butchering station that was used mainly in the fall of the year. There are teepee rings in four or five nearby locations, Some were on the high ground east of the springs. They were located there I would imagine as lookouts for the presence of other tribes. The dating of the Hutchinson Jump was somewhere between 300 AD to 1500 AD. There are three or four other sites along Big Hill Creek, but with the advent of acreage people, permission to explore the land is almost impossible.
