Winnewissa Falls is a key attraction at Pipestone National Monument in Southwest Minnesota.
The hand-hewn quarries at Pipestone National Monument in southwest Minnesota were underwater. The day before, Dianne and I had seen the same early-summer floods hurtling through the nearby bordering corners of South Dakota and Iowa, devastating communities and destroying infrastructure. And here at Pipestone, raging waters had wiped out a trail bridge at Winnewissa Falls and had submerged the quarries.
Pipestone is a 300-acre National Monument protecting prairie and wildlife and assuring the right of indigenous peoples to quarry soft pipestone rock as they have for at least 700 years. For centuries, peoples of the Oneota culture and its descendent nations came from throughout the Midwest to dig out the pliable, reddish rock and carve it into ceremonial pipes, effigies, and other sacred figurines.
The Pipestone quarries were an area for peace. No fighting occurred here when the nations came together to quarry. In pre-contact times, the pipes and figurines were traded among tribes throughout North America. Petroglyphs on the site—dating back 5000 years—indicate an even earlier sense of the sacred.
Dianne and I were visiting Pipestone after a bit of a washed-out regional trip in which a failed car transmission scuttled one set of plans and flooding on the Big Sioux and its tributaries altered the rest. We were frustrated. It wasn’t until the morning of our final campsite in South Dakota that I sensed a change in fortune. At sunrise, I hurried down a cold, dewy trail to catch the last mists of fog rolling off our camp-side creek. It seemed like a good omen.
When we arrived at Pipestone a short while later, the recent rains were now just a memory being carried away by the receding streams, though the quarries remained inundated.
Geology and the Creator had worked wonders here. Wedged in between layers of steel-hard quartzite formed from ancient sandy sea floors lay thin seams of pipestone molded from intermittent clays. Pressurized and uplifted, the formation offered itself to indigenous peoples.
The sixty-some active quarries on the site today are not industrial-sized, as the term might suggest. A typical quarry might be 20 feet long, a few meters wide, and a dozen feet deep. Indigenous peoples who work the small quarries even today use only hand tools. They first remove several feet of soil and glacial gravel from their small quarry sites, then painstakingly chip through six to eight feet of hard-as-nails quartzite before reaching the 11-18-inch bands of pipestone. The back-breaking toil is part of the sacred ritual.
The reddish rock, according to the oral tradition, has been colored by the blood of the ancestors. The place felt holy.
Strikes-the-Ree, the Ihanktonwan (Yankton) Chief credited with saving the grounds from American encroachment, explained in 1881 how tribes “approached the sacred ground. All of us followed a three-day long purification of fasting, prayers, and sacrifices, imploring the Great Spirit to expose the holy minerals buried beneath the rocks. On the fourth day, we painted ourselves and began working.”
The area began to draw the interest of Euro-American explorers in the early 1800s. In 1836 the famed western exploration artist George Catlin visited the quarries over Native American objections. His drawings, as well as the pipestone sample he sent back to eastern geologists, put the quarries on the White map.
Geologists named the new (to them) formation after him, calling it Catlinite, although the term “pipestone” is more frequently used today. Soon after this, Joseph Nicollet and six other explorers visited the site and literally left their mark on the landscape by carving their names and initials into a rock at the top of Winnewissa Falls, a graffiti still visible today.
When forced treaties signed away the surrounding landscapes from local tribes, Strikes- the-Ree in 1858 negotiated to keep Pipestone available to the Yankton tribe. Encroachments on the quarry lands eventually led to a Supreme Court decision against the U.S. government for illegal seizure.
Although the U.S. government then purchased the land from the Yankton rather than return it, some attitudes had begun to change. In 1937 Pipestone became a national monument, with guarantees that Native Americans could continue quarrying the sacred stone.
Dianne and I often feel cast into oppositional roles of trespasser and humble learner at such sites. As is the case among most of the 80,000 annual visitors to Pipestone National Monument, this is not our holy land, nor our sacred tradition. But we respectfully observed the “Do’s and Don’ts” advice the Park Service suggests to non-indigenous visitors, beginning with “Be open to learning” and “Listen and observe more than you speak.”
No one was quarrying during our visit due to the flooded work pits. Inside the visitor center, a local indigenous pipestone carver described to us what he was making, why, and how. He straddled two worlds as he told us about the good medicine the mallet he was shaping would bring while also explaining the geology underlying the quarry fields. A fifth-generation quarryist, he worried that no one from his family would carry on the tradition.
Outside we listened and observed as well. The 26- acre prairie harbors over 300 native plant species and offers habitat to 100 permanent and migratory bird species. The ¾-mile trail that winds among the prairie, quarries, quartzite cliffs, and wetlands are meant to be walked quietly and slowly, to be seen and heard rather than be talked over.
The rushing stream speeding past the washed-out footbridge, spilling over the rapids at the lip of Lake Hiawatha, and tumbling over Winnewissa Falls told us that the catastrophic rains had dissipated and were being carried away, that the drying had begun, but that there would be more waiting before the plentifulness of summer returned. Our frustrating trip had not been for nought.
We left nothing behind at Pipestone, and, as we returned to our car and to the road back home, took with us only the assurances given by the stream.
- August 2024
Pipestone is a 300-acre National Monument protecting prairie and wildlife and assuring the right of indigenous peoples to quarry soft pipestone rock as they have for at least 700 years. For centuries, peoples of the Oneota culture and its descendent nations came from throughout the Midwest to dig out the pliable, reddish rock and carve it into ceremonial pipes, effigies, and other sacred figurines.
The Pipestone quarries were an area for peace. No fighting occurred here when the nations came together to quarry. In pre-contact times, the pipes and figurines were traded among tribes throughout North America. Petroglyphs on the site—dating back 5000 years—indicate an even earlier sense of the sacred.
Dianne and I were visiting Pipestone after a bit of a washed-out regional trip in which a failed car transmission scuttled one set of plans and flooding on the Big Sioux and its tributaries altered the rest. We were frustrated. It wasn’t until the morning of our final campsite in South Dakota that I sensed a change in fortune. At sunrise, I hurried down a cold, dewy trail to catch the last mists of fog rolling off our camp-side creek. It seemed like a good omen.
When we arrived at Pipestone a short while later, the recent rains were now just a memory being carried away by the receding streams, though the quarries remained inundated.
Geology and the Creator had worked wonders here. Wedged in between layers of steel-hard quartzite formed from ancient sandy sea floors lay thin seams of pipestone molded from intermittent clays. Pressurized and uplifted, the formation offered itself to indigenous peoples.
The sixty-some active quarries on the site today are not industrial-sized, as the term might suggest. A typical quarry might be 20 feet long, a few meters wide, and a dozen feet deep. Indigenous peoples who work the small quarries even today use only hand tools. They first remove several feet of soil and glacial gravel from their small quarry sites, then painstakingly chip through six to eight feet of hard-as-nails quartzite before reaching the 11-18-inch bands of pipestone. The back-breaking toil is part of the sacred ritual.
The reddish rock, according to the oral tradition, has been colored by the blood of the ancestors. The place felt holy.
Strikes-the-Ree, the Ihanktonwan (Yankton) Chief credited with saving the grounds from American encroachment, explained in 1881 how tribes “approached the sacred ground. All of us followed a three-day long purification of fasting, prayers, and sacrifices, imploring the Great Spirit to expose the holy minerals buried beneath the rocks. On the fourth day, we painted ourselves and began working.”
The area began to draw the interest of Euro-American explorers in the early 1800s. In 1836 the famed western exploration artist George Catlin visited the quarries over Native American objections. His drawings, as well as the pipestone sample he sent back to eastern geologists, put the quarries on the White map.
Geologists named the new (to them) formation after him, calling it Catlinite, although the term “pipestone” is more frequently used today. Soon after this, Joseph Nicollet and six other explorers visited the site and literally left their mark on the landscape by carving their names and initials into a rock at the top of Winnewissa Falls, a graffiti still visible today.
When forced treaties signed away the surrounding landscapes from local tribes, Strikes- the-Ree in 1858 negotiated to keep Pipestone available to the Yankton tribe. Encroachments on the quarry lands eventually led to a Supreme Court decision against the U.S. government for illegal seizure.
Although the U.S. government then purchased the land from the Yankton rather than return it, some attitudes had begun to change. In 1937 Pipestone became a national monument, with guarantees that Native Americans could continue quarrying the sacred stone.
Dianne and I often feel cast into oppositional roles of trespasser and humble learner at such sites. As is the case among most of the 80,000 annual visitors to Pipestone National Monument, this is not our holy land, nor our sacred tradition. But we respectfully observed the “Do’s and Don’ts” advice the Park Service suggests to non-indigenous visitors, beginning with “Be open to learning” and “Listen and observe more than you speak.”
No one was quarrying during our visit due to the flooded work pits. Inside the visitor center, a local indigenous pipestone carver described to us what he was making, why, and how. He straddled two worlds as he told us about the good medicine the mallet he was shaping would bring while also explaining the geology underlying the quarry fields. A fifth-generation quarryist, he worried that no one from his family would carry on the tradition.
Outside we listened and observed as well. The 26- acre prairie harbors over 300 native plant species and offers habitat to 100 permanent and migratory bird species. The ¾-mile trail that winds among the prairie, quarries, quartzite cliffs, and wetlands are meant to be walked quietly and slowly, to be seen and heard rather than be talked over.
The rushing stream speeding past the washed-out footbridge, spilling over the rapids at the lip of Lake Hiawatha, and tumbling over Winnewissa Falls told us that the catastrophic rains had dissipated and were being carried away, that the drying had begun, but that there would be more waiting before the plentifulness of summer returned. Our frustrating trip had not been for nought.
We left nothing behind at Pipestone, and, as we returned to our car and to the road back home, took with us only the assurances given by the stream.
- August 2024
3. In addition to preserving sacred Native American pipestone quarries, the national monument also protects 260 acres of prairie with over 300 native plant species.
 The small hand-hewn quarries at Pipestone National Monument were underwater due to recent rains. |  An open bluff face at Pipestone National Monument displays layered bands of quartzite and pipestone. |