A Message from Garcia: ‘Pipestone’

Pipestone is a city located in southwest Minnesota, within Pipestone County. Near this city is the Pipestone National Monument under the jurisdiction of the United States National Park Service. The site is situated on 301 acres containing 56 active extraction sites. Native people can signup for a daily, weekly or monthly Quarry Permit. American Indians enrolled in a federal recognized tribe can apply for annual permits. There is a ten-year waiting list for a permit. No power tools are allowed in the extraction process. The person with a permit generally employ wrecking bars, sledge hammers, iron chisels, pry bars and wedges to bust through the hard layer of Sioux Quartzite some four to ten feet thick covering the Pipestone.

One and one-half million years ago a river covered southwest Minnesota which deposited sand topped with sand quartz. Heat and pressure on the quartzite and clay produced a soft Pipestone, which is sandwiched between a rock layered on Sioux Quartzsite. Geologically Pipestone is a claystone (ergillite), scientific name: Catlinite named for a famous artist, author, and explorer named George Catlin, who “Discovered” the site.

Pipestone’s red color comes from oxidation of trace amounts of iron (Hematite). This Minnesota Pipestone is the best known of the other locations, such as Barton County, Wisconsin, Tremper Mound, Ohio, Yavapai County, Arizona, Minnehaha County, Garretson, South Dakota, northwest Kansas, and Jefferson Lake, Lincoln County, Montana. A black Pipestone (steatite) and Blue Pipestone are also located in various places in the North American Continent. There is Black Pipe on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota and Pipestone Creek on the Pipestone First Nation in Manitoba, Canada. The Red Pipestone is officially affiliated with 23 Tribal Nations. The quarry was first claimed by the United States Government with the Louisiana Purchase of April 30, 1803. The Minnesota Dakota sold most of their land with the Traverse des Sioux Treaty of 1851. The Yankton’s reserved the right to the quarry land, but were forced to sell it to appease the onrush of Anglo-American settlers. Their Chief Strike-the-Ree (Padani Apapi) refused to sign the treaty. The Treaty was made with the Yankton (Ihanktonwan) Sioux Tribe, without the Chief’s signature in 1858. The Pipestone quarry was officially established in 1937, to preserve the red stone quarry. A visitor center was built in 1958. Smoking pipes and other Catlinite items are offered for sale to the general public. They are made by local Dakota artists who work on site to demonstrate the process’s using woodworking hand tools to manufacture the pipes. Pipestone Creek flows through the property and forms Winnewissa Falls.

Bibliography

. Corbett, William P. The Red Pipestone Quarry: The Yanktons Defend a Sacred Tradition, 1858-1929. South Dakota History, South Dakota Historical Society, Pierre: 1978.

Densmore, Frances Teton Sioux Music. Smithsonian Institute, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 61 Washington DC. Government Printing office 1918.

Drapeau, Gabrielle The Sacred Quarries of Pipestone National Monument, No date

Durand, Paul C. Where the Waters gather and Rivers Meet: An Atlas of the Eastern Sioux. Privately Published. 1994.

Kappler, Charles, editor Indian Treaties Volume One: An act for the disposition of the agricultural lands embraced within the limits of the pipestone Indian reservation in Minnesota. March 2, 1889, Page 343.

Indian Treaties Volume Two: Treaty with the Yankton Sioux, 1858, Pages 776 to 780.