A Brief History of Pipestone, Minnesota

compiled from, Pipestone, by Lisa M. Ray, Minnesota Calls, March/April, 1994

It was not Horace Greeley's advice, "Go west, young man, and grow up with the country," which brought the first white people to the area in extreme southwestern Minnesota where grasses on the upland prairie stood taller than the average man. It was instead a curiosity gleaned from Native American legends and the folklore surrounding a pipestone quarry that attracted the inquisitive pioneers.

George Catlin, an author and popular portrait painter, had heard about the red rock while visiting tribes on the upper Mississippi River in the early 1800's. He was confident that it was different from other known minerals and set out to find it. Reaching the area on horseback, he wrote that he was "crossing one of the most beautiful prairie countries in the world...covered with the richest soil, and furnishes an abundance of good water, which flows from a thousand living springs."

As he drew near the quarry he found "great difficulty in approaching, being stopped by several hundred Indians, who ordered us back and threatened us very hard, saying 'that no white man had ever been to it, and that none should ever go.'"

Catlin forged ahead, arriving in 1836. He recorded, in painting and writing, the Native American's activities at the quarry. Before he left, he collected a sample of the red stone and sent it to Washington, D.C., to be analyzed. The new stone was given the geological name catlinite.

Catlin's writings inspired author Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to include the sacred quarry in his poem, The Song Hiawatha, written in 1855.

In the poem, Hiawatha is sent by Gitche Manito, the Great Spirit, as a prophet to guide and teach his people. In the course of a winter, he is tested in many trials but by spring bids farewell, knowing he had fulfilled his mission. He departs in the glory of the sunset to the land of Hereafter. Longfellow illustrates the setting:

On the Mountains of the Prairie,

On the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry,

Gitche Manito, the mighty,

He the Master of Life, descending,

On the red crags of the quarry

Stood erect, and called the nations,

Called the tribes of men together.

Charles Bennett, a druggist from Le Mars, Iowa, was also intrigued by the legends of the pipestone quarry. He first traveled there in 1873 with a party of four others. He decided then that it would be the ideal place to establish a town. Previously, settlement of the region had been slowed by territorial disputes between the area's Native Americans and the U.S. government and eventually by the Civil War.

Bennett returned in 1874 and, using a load of lumber hauled from Luverne, built the city's first house. The five-foot tall building was only meant to serve as a marker to show passers by that a claim had been made. After the death of his wife and infant son in Le Mars, Bennett asked his friend Daniel Sweet to return and hold his claim site.

Bennett moved to Pipestone permanently in 1875. A grasshopper plague in 1876 drove some new residents away from the area, but Bennett and Sweet stayed on and platted the township of Pipestone City. New settlers arrived and by 1878, Pipestone was a small but thriving trade center.

Bennett was instrumental in bringing the railroad to Pipestone in 1879 by contributing cash and land to the rail companies. He also persuaded the Close Brothers Land Office, realtors from England, to open an office in Pipestone in 1884. The Close Brothers were partially responsible for a five-fold increase in the number of businesses within a year of the first train arrival and by 1880 the population of Pipestone was more than 200.

In 1883 an architect named Wallace Dow proposed using the abundance of local quartzite for exterior building block material. The concept was well received, and within a year, more than thirty commercial structures were built with quartzite. Stone block products were sold to cities as far away as Chicago. The quartzite quarry flourished as an important early industry.

An industry just as valuable today as it was in the 1800s is farming. Over the years the rich soils have produced grains and corn which have fed cattle and sheep.

The grassy prairie lands surrounding pipestone must look somewhat similar to what the Native Americans, George Catlin or Charles Bennett first saw as they traveled across the plain seeking the pipestone quarry. They could have envisioned the farmhouses and trees which now dot the more populated horizon, but probably never dreamed that Pipestone would evolve into the historic, hard-working and talented community which it has become.

Less than a mile north of the city of Pipestone lies a pipestone quarry, described in Native American legends as a square-cut jewel lying upon folds of shimmering green velvet. This is an accurate depiction of the red quartzite almost hidden by the vast prairie grasses. Designated a national monument by the United States in 1937, the quarry is as rich in Native American history as it is in the red stone for which it is named.

Pipestone National Monument is not a monument in the conventional sense, not a towering statue to pose next to for vacation snapshots. The quarry is located on the west slope of a high plateau, called Coteau des Prairies by French explorers, the dividing ridge between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. To the east of the square-mile area lies a red quartzite ledge; to the south, and outcropping of flat red rock. Pipestone Creek and Lake Hiawatha border the northern edge, and to the west lies a thin line of upturned earth and rock.

The pipestone originated, according to Lakota oral tradition when the great Spirit sent floods to cleanse the earth, and red pipestone-the blood of the ancestors-was all that remained. After the flood the Great Spirit gave the Lakota a pipe carved from red stone, which was to be used only for religious and ceremonial purposes.

Another account was recorded by author George Catlin during his visit to the quarry in 1836:

_{At an ancient time the Great Spirit, in the form of a large bird, stood upon the wall of rock and called all the tribes around him, and breaking out a piece of the red stone formed it into a pipe and smoked it. He then told his red children that this stone was their flesh, that they were made from it, that they must all smoke to him through it, that they must use it for nothing but pipes; and as it belonged alike to all the tribes, the ground was sacred and no weapons must be used or brought upon it.}

According to geologists, pipestone was formed when a stream system deposited layer upon layer of sand and other sediment. The sand was eventually compressed into sandstone, and the red clay under it into clay stone. Some sediment was removed by one of the four glaciers which traveled through the area and scraped the land down to the sandstone. Under the weight of the glaciers and with extremely high temperatures, the sandstone became quartzite and the red clay sediment turned into pipestone.

The vein of pipestone is sandwiched between two layers of hard quartzite, four to twelve feet below the earth's surface.

Outcroppings of pipestone are also found in Montana, Arizona, Kansas, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Ohio. Pieces of pipestone from Minnesota's quarry have been found in burial mounds in many different sections of North America, leading historians to believe that various tribes journeyed thousands of miles to quarry here. During the summer, tribal bands would divide into groups, each with its own task to complete. While some parties hunted buffalo, others would travel to the quarry to get pipestone.

As recorded by Catlin, Native Americans believed the ground was sacred, and strict peace was observed in the vicinity. As they approached the quarry, the tribe would lay offerings of kinnikinick, a mixture of dried leaves, bark and tobacco, on the ground and offer prayers. At sunrise, should their offerings be gone and their totem (or other prophetic symbol) traced in outline in its place, the men would advance to the quarry.

Dressed in ceremonial robes, a tribal leader would raise a heavy stone, swing it four times, then drop it onto the layer of quartzite covering pipestone. They believed that if anyone had been insincere in their prayers, the great Spirit would not allow the quartzite to break. If the great Spirit was pleased, he would permit the quartzite to break, and the soft pipestone beneath could be removed.

Early pipemakers developed simple tube-shaped pipes, which evolved into elbow and disk forms and elaborate animal and human effigies. A popular pipe form was the T-shape, which French explorers called le calumet de la paix. Today it is known as the calumet. The bowl of a pipe, made of pipestone, represents the female, and the wooden stem represents the male.

Native Americans smoked kinnikinick ceremoniously: when rallying for warfare, when trading goods or hostages, during ritual dances, when signing treaties and during medicine ceremonies. The pipes became widely known as the peace pipe because whites only encountered them at treaty ceremonies.

Philander Prescott, who worked for the North American Fur Company, was probably the first white man to see the quarry and document his visit. In 1831 he wrote, "Indians have labored here very hard with hoes and axes, the only tools except large stones...we found a six pound cannon ball that the Indians have brought there from the Missouri to break the rock."

Joseph Nicollet, a French scientist on a U.S. government-sponsored exhibition to map the upper Mississippi area, explored the quarry in 1838. Nicollet and his party left their initials on the northern end of the quartzite ledge, where they are still visible today.

These first appearances by whites was the beginning of the struggle for control of the land between the Native Americans and the white federal government which would continue for decades.

In an effort to gain control of more territory, the U.S. government, through the general Indian Appropriations bill of 1851, negotiated a treaty for the title to all of their Minnesota lands, which was most of southern Minnesota. The Sisseton and Wahpeton bands ceded their lands, including the pipestone quarry, in a treaty signed at Traverse des Sioux in 1851. However, the Yankton tribe was not part of the treaty and objected to losing the quarry. They tried to gain compensation by demanding a part of the revenue given to the Sisseton and Wahpetons, but were unsuccessful.

Seven years later, the Yanktons ceded eleven million acres of their land and were guaranteed "free and unrestricted use of the red pipestone quarry...to visit and procure stone for pipes so long as they shall desire." A 650-acre reservation was created around the quarry.

This by no means settled the conflict between the Native Americans and white people. With the coming of settlers, Pipestone City was platted, and by 1881 a large quartzite building-stone quarry was opened by a white settler. Two years later white pioneers including the mayor, C.C. Goodnow, settled on the reservation, filed claims and began to build homes. They refused to leave until four years later when a corps of ten enlisted men sent from South Dakota ordered the settlers to move.

An act of Congress provided for the establishment of Indian Industrial Training Schools in Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin. The government took possession of the Pipestone reservation when the school was established there in1892. Some tribal members wanted compensation for land, others wanted to retain the quarry altogether. A vote was taken of the male tribal members and by a narrow majority title to the reservation was ceded for $100,000; the government agreed to preserve the quarry as a national park. But this bill was never ratified by Congress.

Over the next few decades, the Yanktons fought to retrieve the money for their land through the U.S. Court system. Finally the Supreme Court ruled that the government was liable to compensate the Yanktons when it took possession of the entire reservation for the training school.

A total of $328,558 in principle plus interest was awarded in 1929. With the payment of this judgment title to the land passed to the United States, and all treaty rights of the Yanktons were at an end. Pipestone National Monument was signed into legislation in 1937.

Today, only Native Americans are allowed to quarry pipestone. It may take up to three to six weeks to complete the quarrying process, which usually occurs from late May to late October. Only hand tools, such as sledge hammers, chisels, wedges and shovels can be used.

The quarrier sets a wedge into visible cracks in the quartzite and drives it in with a sledge hammer. Large chunks of quartzite loosened and pried away from the quartzite wall until the pipestone layer is exposed. Although the layer of pipestone may be fourteen to eighteen inches thick, only two inches of it are suitable for carving pipes.