The skeleton of a child who died 11,000 years ago may hold answers to the mystery of man's earliest adventure in America—but the past has a way of hiding the truth

By Doug Peacock
Photography by Raymond Meeks

Raymond Meeks

Reopening an old case: Early hunters killed buffalo by driving them off the cliff, far left; on the same spot, some 11,000 years ago, a child was buried.

About a day's walk upstream from the confluence of the Shields and Yellowstone rivers, a sandstone bluff looms above the willow bottomland. The highest point in the valley, this sloping ridge rises a hundred feet above the floodplain, then runs gently up to a second summit that drops off abruptly. From the north the isolated hill looks remarkably like the head of an elephant.

Ancient people came here for as long as the valley formed by the Shields River teemed with mammoth. On the eastern side of the bluff, the bones of extinct species of bison attest that the promontory was once used as a buffalo jump. In recent centuries, the area was a crossroads for various tribes, including the Blackfeet and the Kootenai; Shoshoni and Crow people left tepee rings of river stones that still decorate the hilltop. The bluff is the kind of place you might pick to leave an offering in honor of the Serengeti-like abundance of game, or to bury someone important. And apparently, some 11,000 years ago, that's exactly what happened.

Standing on this elephant-head bluff, I often think about what it must have been like in the last days of the Ice Age. You'd see the blue ice of glaciers capping the mountains and receding into the passes, then the slow movement of distant herds feeding on the steppes below: now-extinct species of camel, long-horned bison, tapir, deer, giant sloth, and horse. You wouldn't see them at first, but sabertooth tigers, gigantic short-faced bears, and dire wolves prowl the land, stalking the grazers. The valley is wet, the high benches are pocked with pothole lakes, springs, and ponds, and mastodons browse along a braided watercourse snaking across the bottomland at the foot of the cliff.

And you'd see people. A wisp of smoke curls up from a tiny fire. A man wearing a bearskin robe squats, mixing pulverized iron oxide with his own blood on a flat rock. He prepares red ocher, the most holy of pigments, a token of life. A child has died. At the foot of the bluff, the band mourns the child who represented its future. The bluff faces north, the sacred direction from which their ancestors came, where the declining herds of great mammoths still roam.

The shaman rises; the red ocher is ready. A section of mammoth hide lies on the ground next to a shelter dug out of the soft gray clay at the foot of the bluff. Spread out on the hide are dozens of exquisitely flaked stone tools of different colors. These huge spear points, knives, and mammoth-ivory implements possess power; they are alive. The shaman carefully paints the child red, sprinkling the remaining ocher over the tools and weapons. The hide bundle is drawn taut with sinew and placed inside the shelter with the body. Large flat stones are placed over the burial to keep animals out. The people turn away, facing into the frigid wind that pours down from the mountains to the north.