Buffalo Jump Trip
Some months ago while wandering through the basement stacks of the Portland State University library, I came upon a journal that was unknown to me–Plains Anthropologist. Arbitrarily choosing the 1978 volume, I pulled it down and opened it randomly to an article entitled “Buffalo Jump Complexes in Owyhee County, Idaho.” The author was Larry D. Agenbroad, originally a Nampa, Idaho boy who began college studies at Boise Jr College; at the time of the article he was professor of Geology and Paleontology at Northern Arizona University. While I had heard people speak off-handedly of buffalo in the Owyhee region, the information was more in the form of canards than fact. My interest was piqued, and after looking around a bit I came across some other articles about the putative Owyhee buffalo jump complex. I say “putative” because Dr. Agenbroad’s conclusions were not universally accepted.
In the course of field work conducted in 1967 and 1968, Dr. Agenboard identified two jump complexes on Wild Horse Table, a basalt mesa that straddles the divide between the Owyhee river and Snake river drainages. He designated these the Five Fingers Buffalo Jump and the “Y” Buffalo Jump. An initial report appeared in a short article in 1968 that I have not seen and then, eight years later, in a longer piece published by the Idaho State University Museum of Natural History. (For publication details, see “Resources: History, Culture, Geography & Basques” in the sidebar.). The longer piece was then abridged for a symposium on “Bison Procurement and Utilization” published in Plains Anthropologist, giving him three publications from a single project. (As an erstwhile academic, I can appreciate the importance of that.) The last article, which contained no new research, was challenged by Mark G. Plew, an anthropologist at Boise State University. Agenboard composed a testy response to which Plew responded mollifyingly. This exchange only served to further pique my curiosity. In any case, jump site or not, Wild Horse Table now rested near the top of my list of Owyhee sites to visit.
I shared the articles with Tim Davis, who agreed that a short visit to Wild Horse Table was in order. So, we made plans to meet this past June 14 in Murphy, Idaho, which is one of the smallest county seats in the country with just ninety-seven residents. Our meeting point was the Owyhee County Historical Society Museum, chosen in hopes that someone could give us directions to the buffalo jump site. They couldn’t, but since we had been able fairly easily to identify the site on Google maps, we were unconcerned. The map showed the nearest identifiable place name to be Wickahoney. We decided to take both our rigs lest one had a breakdown.
Finding Wickahoney wasn’t particularly challenging. It had been a stage stop between Mountain Home, Idaho and Mountain City, Nevada; it still warranted inclusion on road signs. Although there remained but a shell of the original building, the dome-shaped oven was in good shape and looked ready for baking bread or perhaps even a pizza. From Wickahoney we followed a track that surely had not been improved since it last saw a stage coach. By sunset we found a flat area not far from our destination where we decided to camp and grill up some of the ground beef Elias Eiguren had given us for the trip. I must say, the flavor of Elias’ beef beat any of the feed lot product available in Portland markets. It was late, and not wanting to bother with pitching tents, we spread our sleeping bags in the back of our rigs.
Tim Davis on Wildhorse Table
At dawn I was startled awake by the bawling of a cow peering through my rear window. About twenty feet away, Tim leaned against his Suburban laughing. Seeing that I was awake, the cow turned and trotted down the road to catch the rest of the herd. I didn’t ask, but I suspect Tim may have put her up to it. After coffee and breakfast, we drove the rest of the short distance to Wild Horse Table. From where we parked to the top of the table was about 0.70 miles with a 300 ft gain. We made the rim not far from a large pond, which was shallow and filled with vegetation. Indeed, the entire shelf was covered with low but surprisingly lush vegetation that obscured most of the stone remnants described by Agenboard. To see them–the 800 foot wall included–required being almost on top of them. Agenboard described a number of cultural (i.e., man made) features that he interpreted as part of a buffalo jump complex, including stone piles, fences, breastworks, stone circles, and drive lanes. The stone piles were pretty easy to identify. Agenboard concluded their purpose had been to mark the drive lanes, though to me some of them resembled cairns of the sort hikers are wont to use to mark where they’ve been. Such things are difficult for the non-specialist to interpret–and perhaps too easy for the specialist to over-interpret. The 800 foot rock wall was easily identifiable and is visible even on Google maps, if one knows where to look. It and several shorter walls were designed to keep the animals moving in the desired direction. Agenboard believes the walls were originally about four feet high.
The 800 Foot Wall
On the five runs that he identified on the Five Finger Buffalo Jump, Agenboard found over 200 projectile points; he concluded that the notched point types indicated that the site had been used over 7000 years. Though he collected only diagnostic examples and left many where they were found, we came upon only one broken piece that Glenn Fretwell (see earlier post) would later identify as Elko chert. Admittedly, we did not make a serious search, but Agenboard noted that collectors had been there sifting for potsherds and projectile heads. Near the north rim, stone rings were easily found and may have been tipi rings.
Rock Pile
As we headed back to the cars, we walked along along the bottom of the rim to check for petroglyphs. We did indeed come across a spot on the rim wall about thirty feet wide and perhaps fifteen feet high filled with rock art. The images on the rim wall were similar to others found on top of the Five Fingers Jump that are illustrated in Agenboard’s 1976 article. But interestingly there is nothing at either site that could be identified as a possible buffalo. Agenboard concluded there was no zoomorphic representation on those at the Five Fingers site, but I’m not so sure. Generally, however, both sets of rock art seem concerned with astronomical phenomena. Images common to both reminded me of those found elsewhere that have been identified as supernova. It would be interesting to know what supernova were visible in this area; it could perhaps help with dating occupation of the site. Additionally, I am always struck by how closely some of the petroglyphs in the Owyhee canyonlands resemble archaic Chinese graphs. No doubt those who are bent on proving that the Chinese first discovered North America would be delighted with such “evidence.”
Agenboard (1968), 22.
Although Dr. Agenbroad recognized that the jumps may have been used for hunting other animals as well, namely pronghorn, he declared it “a monument to the initiative, ingenuity, foresight, and success of prehistoric settlers….” He also deemed the hunting complex “an extension of the known range of the bison in western America.” That assertion was made forty years ago, and I confess I don’t know what has since been found to prove or disprove it. While I am hardly qualified to judge, there is little question bison were at one time present in the Northwest. (See “Yes, Buffalo Did Once Roam Here.”)