to download the Pipestone National Monument 75th Edition.

12 – PIPESTONE COUNTY STAR THURSDAY, AUGUST 16, 2012The evolution of Pipestone National MonumentGeologists believeclay was depositedat the bottom ofa sea where overmillions of yearsheat, pressure andchemical reactionstransformed it intopipestone.The datearcheologistsplace on theearliestpipestoneartifacts.Archeologicalevidence showsthat quarryingintensified duringthis time period.French fur tradersreport visits to the“village of the redstonequarry.” It isthe first report of awhite personvisiting thequarries.Explorer Philander HenryPrescott records thefirst written account ofa white person visitingthe quarries. Other whiteexplorers includingGeorge Catlin (1836) andJoseph Nicollet and JohnCharles Fremont (1838)visit quarries.WadsworthLongfellowpublishes “TheSong ofHiawatha,”which references“the great RedPipe-stoneQuarry.”PipestoneNationalMonumentcreated on115 acres ofland.Circle trail developed(1950). Additionalacres, including theThree Maidens area,are transferred to theMonument, bringingtotal park land to 282acres by 1957. TheVisitors Center opensin 1958.Today, the Monumenthas 301 acres; ninefulltime employees;and 23 affiliated tribes.1 billion years ago1000 B.C.700-1200 A.D. 1700 1830s 1855 1937 1950s2012 - 75thAnniversarySacred originsContinued from page 7this, she took from the bundle a pipe, andalso a small round stone which she placedupon the ground. Holding the pipe up withits stem to the heavens, she said: ‘With thissacred pipe you will walk upon the Earth; forthe Earth is your Grandmother and Mother,and She is sacred. Every step that is takenupon her should be as a prayer. The bowlof this pipe is of red stone; it is the Earth.Carved in the stone and facing the center isthis buffalo calf who represents all the fourleggedswho live upon your Mother. The stemof the pipes is wood, and this represents allthat grows upon the Earth. And these twelvefeathers which hang here where the stem fitsinto the bowl are from the Wanbli Galeshka,the Spotted Eagle, and they represent theeagle and all the wingeds of the air. All thesepeoples, and all the things of the universe,are joined to you who smoke the pipe — allsend their voices to Wakan-Tanka, the GreatSpirit. When you pray with this pipe, youpray for and with everything’.”-Black Elk, LakotaThese are a few of the many stories thathave been passed down over the years aboutthe sacred origins of the pipestone quarriesand the pipes made from the stone.Archeological surveys have revealedthat beginning around 1,000 B.C., artifactsmade of pipestone from the area around1106 8th Street S.W., Pipestone, MN 56164(507) 825-4201 Open 6am-MidnightPipestone National Monument were tradedas far east as modern Ohio, as far south asthe Kansas River, and as far west as northcentral South Dakota, according to thebook “Managing the sacred and the secular:An administrative history of PipestoneNational Monument,” published in 1992.Later examples of pipestone from theMonument area have been found all acrossthe North American continent.Archeologists say quarrying intensifiedbetween 700 A. D. and 1,200 A. D. when itappeared many different groups had accessto the quarries. This was most likely due tothe introduction of horses after the arrivalof Europeans, which gave the tribes moremobility and brought more people to theplains. By the 1600s, Otoes, Omahas, Iowasand other tribes were quarrying pipestone.White Frog of the northern Cheyenneexplained in 1914 that members of a warparty traveling toward the Missouri Riverwere the first Cheyenne to discover thequarries.“Along the way, they spotted a redbuffalo bull, which they killed,” he said. “Oninspecting the bull’s body, they realizedthat the red color came from dust and mud,which covered the animal. They followedthe bull’s trail and came to a ‘wonderfulplace where there were rocks and all therocks [were] bright red.’”Simon Antelope of the Dakota describedin 1927 the ceremonial use of the quarries.“The Indians, after digging a hole in theground and getting down to the rock theywere intending to remove, would take someof their paints and do various paintingsthere and offer up a prayer,” he said. Theywere not praying to the rock itself, but tothe great master, the Great Spirit, God; inother words, that this rock they intended toget out, that it would be easy to them andthey would have no difficulties in gettingit. In connection with their trip there theywould put other declarations on the rocksas an offering to the Great Spirit.”By the mid-1700s the Yankton Siouxcontrolled much of the area around thepipestone quarries and trade associatedwith pipestone became an important part oftheir economy, according to “Managing thesacred and the secular: An administrativehistory of Pipestone National Monument.”Records show that Europeans becameaware of pipestone in the mid-1600s, butdidn’t know where the stone came from untilmuch later. Father Louis Hennepin wroteabout the Sioux’s use of the pipe in 1683.In 1700, French trader Pierre Charles LeSueur identified a “village of the red-stonequarry,” suggesting that Native Americanswere living at or near the quarries at thetime.By 1830 an increasing number of whiteEuropeans were coming to the regionsearching for economic gain. As thisexpansion occurred, the United Statesgovernment sent out explorers such asMeriwether Lewis and William Clark. Otherexplorers also headed out into the frontier,including Philander Prescott, the firstfrontiersman to leave a written accountof the pipestone quarries, according to“Managing the sacred and the secular:An administrative history of PipestoneNational Monument.”The book says Prescott and his partyvisited the quarry in 1831 or 1832 andfound a 100-yard long quarry, 10-feet deepwith a one-foot layer of pipestone in it. Themen “blasted” the quartzite layer above thepipestone and collected enough pipestoneto make about 20 pipes.The man credited with bringing themost attention to the quarries was artistand ethnographer George Catlin, whovisited in September 1836 - and for whomthe pipestone was later named Catlinite.Catlin, who recorded his observations inletters and notes that were published in abook titled, “North American Indians,” wasstruck by the quartz formation around thequarries and the unique red stone withinand intrigued as to its formation. He notedthe evidence of a great number of tribeshaving visited the quarries over manyyears.“Here are to be seen (and will continueto be seen for ages to come), the totems andarms of the different tribes, who have visitedthis place for ages past, deeply engraved onthe quartz rocks,” he wrote.In 1838 Joseph Nicollet, a Frenchscientist, and John Charles Fremont, anexplorer, were hired by the U.S. Army Corpsof Topographical Engineers to survey andmap western Minnesota and located thequarries on survey maps. Six members ofthe party carved their initials in the pieceof quartzite near leaping rock during theirvisit. The initials are still visible today,nearly 175 years after their visit.The visits by people like Catlin and theNicollet and Fremont expedition broughtnotoriety to the area and it became part ofthe popular culture of the United States andEurope at the time. The most prominentexample is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’sepic poem “The Song of Hiawatha,”published in 1855, which referenced “thegreat Red Pipes-stone Quarry” and thepipes made from it.