For thousands of years people have come here to this in the Bow valley at the junction of the Bow and Elbow Rivers, Calgary has been a place where people from across the prairies gathered to meet, hunt, and trade. Prior to the 1600s the First Nations in the area did all of their bison hunting and travel on foot. When the Spanish reached what is now Mexico they brought with them horses which quickly became a useful tool to indigenous populations. Eventually, horses made their way North through escape and trade changing hunting and transportation for the Plains First Nations When Europeans settled in Southern Alberta they were intrigued by the bison and began to hunt the bison for their coats. While the First Nations had been strategically hunting the buffalo and using every part of the animal, Europeans hunted the herds en masse fur and drove them to the edge of extinction. Ranching life was the height of the Western aesthetic. Roping, busting broncos, cowboy hats, and wrangling became how easterners and others outside of the prairies envisions the 'Wild West.' The Calgary Stampede has become a preservation of cowboy life, imprinting a 'Wild West' past on a modern present.