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A drive lane (originally a narrowing trail into which buffalo were herded) off Highway 842 follows a long, slow S -curve along a shallow coulee between two hills. Rows of stones in a V -shape directs you to the building: on the north side is a series of stone piles nicknamed ‘the women’ (women would hide behind them, ready to jump up and wave their robes to stam- pede buffalo to their death over a cliff or into a pound). The south side has a series of large buffalo rub rocks which can still be found on patches of unbroken prairie today. Offerings were placed on the rock to honour the buffalo that rubbed against them to relieve the itch- ing of the insect bites that plagued them. Over time, these rocks became polished, shining with the oil in the woolly hides of hundreds of thousands of buffalo. On the north side of the drive lane entry is a high hill that looks down on the centre’s flat teepee cover roof. It provides an opportunity to view some of the key features of the former vast prai- rie domain of the Blackfoot peoples. The ap- proved concept called for a spoke-like design, similar to the medicine wheels that are found on high points throughout southern Alberta. The spokes, marked by rocks, point to signifi- cant landscape features such as the old North Trail, the Crawling Valley hunting grounds, the Majorville medicine wheel, Writing-on-Stone, Chief Mountain and Waterton Lakes, where it is said that the Beaver dove down during the time of the great flood and brought up soil to cre- ate the earth (the origin of the Beaver Bundle). Blackfoot Crossing and Treaty Flats can be seen over and beyond the interpretive centre’s roof. Ancient burial grounds upriver, west of the site, can be seen in the distance. The building itself slowly reveals itself from the drive lane, floating on the western horizon. On its roof seven Sacred Society teepees gather around a sun dance lodge — inspiring a sense of an encampment; at night when the teepees and Sundance Lodge are lit, they glow like lan- terns made by ancient cooking fires. The main entrance faces east, as does the tra- ditional teepee, protected from the strong pre- vailing west winds of southern Alberta. A high straight wall on the south runs east-west, the directions of the rising and setting sun, and was named the Chief’s Walk by now deceased and former Chief Leo Pretty Young Man. It com- memorates the great hereditary pre-contact chiefs.
from top: drive lane landscape from the highway to the building, Floyd Royal at a buffalo rub, the roofscape of the interpretive centre, camp at Blackfoot Crossing at the time of the Sun Dance (ca. 1900)
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