Michichi & Hand Hills: Indigenous History

Overview

The Michichi and Hand Hills area of central Alberta — nestled between the Red Deer River badlands and the open fescue prairie southeast of Drumheller — represents one of the most archaeologically rich and culturally layered landscapes on the Canadian Plains. The name Michichi itself is a Cree word, and the Hand Hills rising behind it preserve tipi rings, stone cairns, and medicine wheels that testify to at least 10,000 years of continuous Indigenous presence.

The Name "Michichi": A Cree Word for "Hand"

The hamlet of Michichi, located within Starland County approximately 121 km northeast of Calgary, takes its name directly from a Cree word. The Cree word micihciy (ᒥᒋᐦᒋᕀ) means "hand," and the community was named after its proximity to the Hand Hills. The linguistic connection between the two place names is elegant and precise: the Cree language gave the creek and hamlet a name that mirrors the English translation of the hills themselves — "hand."[1][2]

The Cree word micihciy is not a simple standalone noun; in Plains Cree, body part terms like micihciy are fundamentally relational, requiring possessive prefixes in actual speech (nicihciy = my hand, kicihciy = your hand). The fact that the root form survives as a place name reflects how deeply Cree people understood and named this landscape through embodied, relational language.[3]

Michichi Creek drains into the Red Deer River, flowing through the rolling prairie and badlands terrain north of Drumheller. The Red Deer River itself sits at the boundary between Treaty 6 territory to the north and Treaty 7 territory to the south, making the Michichi watershed a genuine interface zone between historically Cree-speaking peoples and the Blackfoot Confederacy.[4][5][6][7]

10,000 Years of Human Occupation

Human habitation of the Hand Hills and surrounding area dates back approximately 10,000 years, since the retreat of the glaciers following the last Ice Age. This timeline places Indigenous occupation of the region at the very beginning of the post-glacial era on the northern plains, predating any known agricultural society in North America. The Hand Hills' elevated plateau — capped by a remnant Tertiary surface standing 146 metres above the surrounding badlands — would have provided commanding views of bison herds moving across the fescue grasslands below.[8][9][10]

Archaeological evidence of this long occupation is visible across the landscape in the form of tipi rings — circles of stones once used to anchor bison-hide tipi covers against the prairie wind. Alberta currently has over 8,000 recorded archaeological sites containing tipi rings; some represent a single camp of a small family group, while others have more than 200 rings in one location, indicating large gatherings of allied families or bands. Tipi rings recorded within the Hand Hills Ecological Reserve represent some of the most intact surviving evidence of this habitation.[9][10][11][8]

Traditional Territories: Blackfoot, Cree, and the In-Between Zone

Siksika (Blackfoot) Sovereignty

The Hand Hills fall squarely within the traditional territories of the peoples of Treaty 7 — specifically the Siksika (Blackfoot), Kainai (Blood), Piikani (Peigan), Iyarhe Nakoda (Stoney), and Tsuut'ina (Sarcee). The Siksika (meaning "Blackfoot" in their own language) were the northernmost of the Blackfoot Confederacy nations, and their territory extended from the North Saskatchewan River in the north to the Missouri in the south, and from the Rockies eastward.[10][12][13][8]

Starland County — the municipal district in which Michichi is located — was the home of the Blackfoot for centuries. Blackfoot bands followed bison herds through this region seasonally, hunting them for food, shelter, clothing, tools, and ceremonial materials. The Red Deer River, which marks the northern boundary of Treaty 7 territory, served as a key landscape boundary in Blackfoot territorial consciousness.[14][15][4]

The Red Deer River as Treaty Boundary

The Red Deer River represents more than an ecological transition zone — it is the formal northern limit of Treaty 7, signed at Blackfoot Crossing (Soyoohpawahko) on September 22, 1877. That treaty ceded approximately 130,000 km² of land stretching from the Rocky Mountains to the Cypress Hills, and from the Red Deer River south to the US border. The Michichi/Hand Hills area sits right at or just north of that boundary, in a zone that various sources acknowledge as Treaty 6 territory north of the Red Deer River.[16][15][17][6][4]

This boundary was not a rigid wall in pre-treaty times. The Cree and Blackfoot were long-standing rivals whose territorial conflicts gave rise to iconic place names throughout central Alberta — the Battle River was named for Cree-Blackfoot skirmishes recorded as early as 1793. The Hand Hills and Michichi Creek area, straddling that tension zone, would have witnessed both peoples moving through it.[18][19]

The Hand Hills in Treaty 7 Negotiations

Remarkably, the Hand Hills were the Indigenous peoples' first choice as a treaty negotiation site. When the Canadian government initiated treaty discussions in 1875, the Blackfoot submitted a memorial requesting the negotiations be held in the Hand Hills. The federal commissioners ultimately rejected this location in favour of Fort Macleod, and when Crowfoot objected to a fort setting, the signing moved to Blackfoot Crossing on the Bow River. The fact that the Hand Hills were the preferred site underscores their cultural and territorial significance to the Siksika in the 1870s.[20]

Sacred Landscape: Medicine Wheels, Cairns, and Effigies

The broader area around Michichi and the Hand Hills contains a remarkable concentration of sacred stone structures attributed primarily to the ancestors of the Blackfoot people.

The Rumsey Area: A Dense Archaeological Landscape

About 40 km north of Drumheller, the Rumsey natural area — adjacent to the Hand Hills — is recognized as one of the densest concentrations of Indigenous archaeological sites in Alberta. Within Rumsey, researchers have documented tipi rings, cairns, medicine wheels, effigies, ribstones, caches, buffalo jumps, buffalo pounds, and projectile points. This area was situated within Blackfoot Confederacy territory and was used particularly intensively in winter, when bison foraged on the rough fescue grasslands.[21]

The Rumsey Cairn (Indian Stone Pile)

One of the most significant recorded sites near the Hand Hills is the Rumsey Cairn — locally known as "Indian Stone Pile" — designated a Provincial Historic Resource in 1979. This stone cairn, surrounded by rings of stone and associated with effigy figures and tipi rings at the base of the hill, is believed to have ceremonial significance. Historical interviews recorded heights ranging from five to twelve feet, suggesting it was once an imposing monument on the prairie landscape.[22][23]

Medicine Wheels and Blackfoot Spirituality

Medicine wheels — called atsot-akeeh ("from all sides") in Blackfoot — are ceremonially significant boulder structures built by First Nations people across the northern plains. They were used as markers for the deaths and burial sites of prominent individuals, as astronomical and seasonal calendars, and possibly as pointers to hunting or war paths. The Archaeological Survey of Alberta has identified 46 known medicine wheels on provincial and federal lands in Alberta.[24][25]

The nearby Majorville Cairn and Medicine Wheel (southwest of the Hand Hills, on the Bow River) has been continuously used for the last 4,500 years, making it one of the oldest religious monuments in the world. Contemporary Blackfoot people continue to leave offerings of sweetgrass, sage, willow, cloth, tobacco, prayer, and song at such sites, maintaining a living spiritual connection across millennia.[26]

Buffalo: The Foundation of Plains Life

The entire cultural landscape of the Michichi and Hand Hills area was organized around the bison. For the Blackfoot and other plains peoples, bison provided food, shelter (hides for tipis), clothing, tools, ceremonial materials, and trade goods. The lush Northern Fescue grasslands of the Hand Hills — today recognized as the largest remaining stretch of this ecosystem in the world — were prime bison pasture, which explains the density of human habitation evidence in the area.[12][27][10][14]

Before the horse (which arrived on the northern plains by the early 18th century), Indigenous hunters employed communal hunting techniques including the buffalo jump — driving herds over cliffs — and the pis'kun (Blackfoot: "deep blood kettle"), an enclosure into which bison were driven and killed. Alberta preserves some of the most important buffalo jump sites in North America, including Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, which has bone deposits over 10 metres deep testifying to thousands of years of successful hunts. The Hand Hills' elevated terrain and surrounding coulees would have been suitable for similar hunting strategies.[28][29]

The Collapse of the Buffalo and Treaty 7 (1877)

By the 1870s, the world that had sustained Plains peoples for millennia was collapsing. Commercial American buffalo hunters, whisky traders, introduced diseases (particularly the 1837 and 1869–70 smallpox epidemics), and armed conflicts had devastated both bison herds and Indigenous populations. The last major inter-nation battle on Canadian soil — the Battle of the Belly River in 1870 — saw Cree warriors attack a Blood camp near present-day Lethbridge; Peigan allies entered the battle and drove the Cree back, with 200–400 Cree deaths. This battle marked the final violent confrontation of the Cree-Blackfoot territorial wars.[30][31][32]

Facing bison scarcity and the imminent arrival of settlers following the North-West Mounted Police in 1874, the Siksika, Kainai, Piikani, Stoney-Nakoda, and Tsuut'ina signed Treaty 7 at Blackfoot Crossing on September 22, 1877. In exchange for reserves and promises of livestock, farming implements, schools, and annual payments, they ceded approximately 130,000 km² of southern Alberta. Indigenous signatories have consistently maintained that they understood the treaty as an agreement to share the land and make peace — not to surrender it entirely.[33][15][34][16]

Within Starland County, the Blackfoot watched the bison herds vanish as settlers moved in during the late 19th century, transforming a landscape of seasonal bison hunting into one of homesteads and agriculture.[14]

The Michichi Watershed in Contemporary Land Acknowledgement

The Red Deer River Naturalists formally acknowledge that lands north of the Red Deer River fall under Treaty 6 — the ancestral territory of the Cree, Dene, Nakota Sioux, and Saulteaux peoples — while lands south of the Red Deer River fall under Treaty 7 — the territory of the Niitsitapi (Blackfoot), including Siksika, Piikani, Kainai, Tsuu T'ina, and Stoney Nakoda. Michichi Creek, draining into the Red Deer River, sits in precisely this boundary zone.[4]

The Michichi Creek Boardwalk, maintained by Starland County, features 11 interpretive signs covering the history, flora, fauna, geology, and ecology of the watershed — including the importance of the Red Deer River system and its beaver-created wetlands. This reflects growing recognition of the ecological and cultural significance of the area, though explicit Indigenous cultural interpretation remains an opportunity for expanded storytelling at these sites.[35]

Summary

The Michichi and Hand Hills landscape is, at its core, an Indigenous landscape. Its very name — Cree for "hand," reflecting the shape of the hills — encodes the presence of people who lived intimately with this land for ten millennia. The Hand Hills were significant enough to the Siksika that they asked for them as the Treaty 7 negotiation site. The surrounding area is dense with tipi rings, medicine wheels, cairns, and buffalo-hunting infrastructure. The Red Deer River running through this territory marks one of the most consequential cultural and political boundaries in Alberta's Indigenous history: the line between the Cree world to the north and the Blackfoot world to the south. All of this was transformed — but not erased — by the settlement era that followed Treaty 7.

References

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• Red Deer River | 555 km, Canada - WaterwayMap.org - Red Deer River is 555 km long, with 1 distributaries and 31 tributaries, with max. upstream of 0 m
• Land acknowledgement - CUPE 1012 - CUPE Local 1012 acknowledges Treaty Six territory to the North of the Red Deer River. Treaty Six ter...
• Where is Your Watershed? (Red Deer River - Central AB) - Do you have your facts straight about your local watershed? The Red Deer River Watershed is a beauti...
• Hand Hills - Alberta Wilderness Association - AWA’s vision for the Hand Hills Area of Concern is that its remaining public lands...
• B0129 Hand Hills Heritage Archives - The region of Hand Hills has been inhabited by Indigenous Peoples for approximately 10,000 years, si...
• Hand Hills - Indigenous Peoples have used the area for approximately 10,000 years, since the retreat of the glaci...
• Tipis, Bison and Dogs: Visualizing an Archaeological Feature in ... - Written by: Todd Kristensen and Emily Moffat, Archaeological Survey of Alberta Small rings of rock a...
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• Rumsey - Alberta Wilderness Association - Located about 40 km north of Drumheller, the Rumsey area constitutes the largest remaining tract of ...
• HS 15706 - Alberta Register of Historic Places
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• HistoricPlaces.ca - HistoricPlaces.ca - The Majorville Cairn and Medicine Wheel (EdPc-1) consists of a central cairn, which is linked to a s...
• Hand Hills Ecological Reserve - This site is situated on the lower south slopes of the Hand Hills upland. Elevations range from 815 ...
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• Blood Kettles and Buffalo Jumps: Communal Hunting on the Plains of ... - A number of ingenious methods were devised for communal (group) hunting – buffalo were lured into am...
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• Michichi Creek Boardwalk | Canada's Alberta - The Michichi Creek Boardwalk is an interpretive trail consisting of raised decking, a shale path, an...