Boulder Effigy Monuments in the Northern Plains

Bibliographic Data

ID2811497
AuthorsThomas F Kehoe, Alice B Kehoe, Alice Β Kehoe (0000-0001-8835-920X)
Year1959
Volume72
Issue284
Pages115
Publication date1959-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of American Folklore (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8715 • E-ISSN: 1535-1882
PublisherUniversity of Illinois Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.2307/538474
OpenAlexW2061490103
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited3

IN September 1956, the writers visited an interesting aboriginal monument on the North Blackfoot Reserve near Cluny, Alberta, a few miles from Blackfoot Crossing. Our guide, a local resident named Joe Black Face Chief, led us four miles west of the bridge by which the road south from Cluny crosses the Bow River, down the bluff and into the flats bordering the Bow. Here, amid the grass of a haying camp owned by Many Bears, lay a human effigy outlined by boulders. As can be seen from the accompanying diagram (Figure 1), the effigy, somewhat larger than life-size, is a crude representation of a spread-eagled human figure. It is constructed of local boulders, placed on the ground surface; a few have been displaced by animals. Leading south from the figure's head is a trail marked by twenty-two more boulders, arranged like steppingstones, and ending at a low cairn built of thirteen stones. A similar but shorter trail of eight boulders leads north from the figure's left foot, terminating in a cairn of roughly the same size as the first, but containing twenty-two stones. The total extent of the monument, cairn to cairn, is 836 feet. It lies on the edge of a shallow coulee draining the flat, with the Bow River flowing about seventy-five yards to the north. The existence of this effigy had been first brought to our attention by S. Victor Day, an amateur archaeologist who has spent a lifetime in southern Alberta, and who recalled having seen it years ago in the company of Many Bears, owner of the land. Day, however, knew nothing of the effigy's history. Joe Black Face Chief, a younger man, could tell us that the figure represented Young Medicine Man, a participant in a fight which had occurred many years before on the spot. Walking along the trail marked by boulders from the southern cairn, this man had been shot by an opponent, Walking With A Scalp, advancing from the other cairn, and had fallen dead where the figure now lies. Black Face Chief suggested that we interview one of the older Indians on the reserve to obtain the full story of the incident. Accordingly, the next morning we visited Pete Little Light, aged seventyeight, at his home west of Gleichen, Alberta. Little Light, one of the three elderly North Blackfoot who still preserve and honor beaver bundles, retains an interest in the legends of his people, and agreed to tell us the story of the effigy we had seen. Since he speaks no English, his tale was translated as he told it by a neighbor, Mrs. (Rosie) A Young Man. Little Light explained that as a boy of seventeen he used to gather the old

Archaeology · Bluff · Geography · Yard · Archaeology and Rock Art Studies · Geology

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