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Writing-on-Stone Provincial
Park [Entry Page] [About This Site] [Park Information] [Thumbnails] [Back] [Next] Writing-on-Stone Nothing about the gently rolling prairie of south-central Alberta – not even Montana’s smoky Sweetgrass Hills on the southern horizon – prepares you for the sudden spectacle of Writing-On-Stone. The experience is akin to stumbling upon a cathedral in the desert, only in this instance your gaze travels not up but down for this remarkable place abruptly descends into the earth, away from the heavens. At the end of the last ice age, 11,000 years ago, torrents of water from melting mountain glaciers turned into a raging river slicing through soft sandstone deposited 80 million years earlier on what had been a shallow marine shelf. As the glacial waters ebbed and the Milk River slowly shriveled to the gentle meander it is today, a steep and immense canyon was left, its exposed cliffs, some as high as 50 metres (164 feet), further eroded by wind, water and the cycles of freezing and thawing. The result: a landscape at once compelling and forbidding. In sunlight, it is a garden of shadows, unearthly, almost unnerving. Even the most dedicated disciple of the rational can’t elude the feeling that Writing-On-Stone is a supernaturally charged spot. The Siksika, the people of the Blackfoot Nation which began to dominate southern Alberta several hundred years ago, named the site along the Milk River Aisinai’pi – "it has been written." What they found (and what they themselves augmented) were hundreds of petroglyphs (rock carvings) and pictographs (rock paintings), the largest single concentration of native rock art on the North American plains. While Archaeological evidence suggests that people have camped at Writing-On-Stone for at least 3,000 years, it appears most o the rock art is between 100 and 500 years old with some of the depictions possibly as old as 1,000 years. Very early works may have simply weathered away. An important stop on the seasonal round in pre-contact times for the nomadic Shoshone, Kutenai and Atsina peoples as well as for the Siksika who supplanted them, the Milk River Valley was attractive for its abundance of game and berries, its available water, and its shelter from the wind. The petroglyphs (incised, using sharpened bone or stone) and the pictographs (painted, using ochre – iron ore mixed with water) vividly record in stylized fashion both the ceremonial and biographical details of native life. Chief among the latter are the accomplishments of successful hunters and warriors, the weapons they used (bows and spears), the animals they hunted (bison, bear ,mountain sheep, deer and antelope) and the enemies they slew. But the spectacular cliffs and otherworldly rock formations of Writing-On-Stone undoubtedly quickened the spiritual pulse of Alberta’s first peoples. Many of the details carved into the rock – heraldic devices on shields, headdresses of horns and sunbursts, cryptic lines and shapes – appear to have a ceremonial purpose and may represent the relationship between individuals and the spirit world or commemorate visions. Such art is strongly associated with the vision quest, the rite of passage in which a young person fasted in an isolated sacred location waiting for a guiding vision, even though Writing-On-Stone was not a typical vision quest site. Since the Siksika believed the "writings" were the work of the spirit world in earlier times, elders often visited Writing-On-Stone to consult the rock art for signs and portents and to create new works based on their own visions of the spirit world. Accounts of the Blackfoot suggest their people maintained a respectful distance from the writings on the steep cliff walls, visiting rather than camping. Until recently, archaeologists believed this to be true of other cultures as well. While arrowheads, stone tools and firepits had been found in Writing-On-Stone Provincial Park, no tipi rings were evident. More recently, however, such rings, as well as a medicine wheel on the valley rim seem to indicate that the valley was used as more than a temporary camp. Further, near the cliff walls, graves have been found, apparently of men of stature, for with the bodies were grave goods such as tools, clothing and beads, underscoring the status of the deceased and the sacramental nature of the site. Life changed dramatically for the people of Alberta with the intrusion of Europeans into the northwestern plains. That change is readily discernible in the altered style and content of the glyphs, notably by renderings of the horse and the gun, each of which was introduced into the area after about 1730AD. In pre-contact glyphs, human figures are represented by either distinctive V-neck or rectangular body shapes, accompanied by lances, bows or clubs, and, notably, by large shields with heraldic designs. After 1730, the human figures become more stick-like, less precise in execution but more fluid in motion, often engaged riding horses in combat. Lines of dots indicate gun fire and dashes represent flying arrows. The shields, likely too cumbersome for mounted warfare, are gone. One of the most elaborate of the 58 rock art sites at Writing-On-Stone is from this period. Featuring 71 warriors in an attack on an encampment of tipis, it is thought to be the portrayal of a great battle fought in 1866 between the Atsina and Peigan or Piikani, one of the three tribes of the Siksika nation. By the end of the 19th century, with the bison gone and the traditional Siksika way of life under severe stress, rendering visions and stories on the sandstone cliffs of Writing-On-Stone virtually ceased. What has endured on the cliffs will one day be lost. Natural erosion cannot be stopped. But for now, the tantalizing images remain, drawing us nearer to a past that may never be gully illumined. Reprinted from Barbara Huck and Doug Whiteway’s In Search of Ancient Alberta with kind permission from Heartland Associates, Inc. |