Adventure-Crew.com

The Visitor Center and Upper Midwest Indian Cultural Center are open from May 29th through Labor Day, 8am-6pm daily. It is closed Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and New Years Day. The Visitor Center will have extended hours during the Hiawatha Pageant held July 22-24, July 29-31, and August 5-7, 2005 – 8am-8pm. Rest of the year, 8am-5pm. The Visitor Center Museum and the Upper Midwest Indian Cultural Center feature pipestone pipes and artifacts. The Exhibit Quarry allows visitors to enter a former quarry and view the layers of prairie soil and Sioux quartzite overburden, as well as the pipestone layer, up close. American Indian craft demonstrations take place April through October.

Pipestone National Monument is located in the region commonly known as the Coteau des Prairies (the Highland of the Prairies). It is shaped like a triangular wedge pointing north. To the east is the Valley of the Minnesota River. The western margin is the James River valley in South Dakota. The dominant plant communities at the Monument include; virgin native prairie, restored prairie, degraded prairie, and oak savanna. The 282 acre Monument is bisected by several features: the Red Pipestone Quarries, a Sioux quartzite cliff line, and Pipestone Creek. Quarries excavated by American Indians dot the middle of the monument in a north-south line running most of the length of the Monument. In the eastern half of the Monument, a Sioux quartzite outcrop forms a 10-15 foot tall cliff line. This cliff line stretches across the Monument from its most northern to its most southern parts. The Sioux quartzite outcrop supports the Sioux quartzite prairie, which has been identified by the Nature Conservancy as a globally significant and endangered plant community type. Pipestone Creek flows west through the park until it reaches the middle of the Monument where it drops over the edge of the Sioux quartzite cliff line at Winnewissa Falls. West of the waterfall, the creek forms Lake Hiawatha which is home to Painted Turtles, Snapping Turtles, and many small fish. The creek continues to meander through the park and finally exits at the north boundary.

The blending of cultural and natural resources at the Monument makes this a remarkable place to visit. Over a century ago, bison, antelope, and elk roamed through this area. Today, it is primarily home to smaller animals. Some of the Monument’s current native residents are thirteen-lined ground squirrels, bobolinks, painted turtles, and Topeka shiners. Other animals, such as raccoons, opossums, beavers, and turkeys, extended their historical ranges to include this area due to changes in land use. There are also several species in the park that are considered exotic or introduced to this region. These species include pheasants, gray partridges, and walleye. The animal populations include both vertebrate and invertebrate species. There are over twenty-five mammalian species, over one hundred bird species, approximately twenty-five fish species, eight reptiles and amphibians, and numerous insect families. Some birds found in the park are Great Blue Heron, Green Heron, waterfowl, Canada Goose, Snow Goose, Mallard, Northern Shoveler, Wood Duck, and hawks.

Pipestone National Monument has several different environments that support over five hundred native plant species. Virgin tallgrass prairie, restored tallgrass prairie, wetlands, and oak savanna are all located within the boundary. The Monument is home to one threatened species, the western prairie fringed orchid, and approximately sixteen other rare species of plants. The tallgrass prairie is a vanishing ecosystem, and the staff of the National Park Service is making every effort to preserve this valuable resource through the use of controlled burns and reintroduction of native plant species. The Monument’s Sioux quartzite prairie supports two species of cacti. The rocky outcrops and shallow sandy soil along the cliffline areas provide one of these, the Plains Prickly Pear Cactus (Opuntia macrorhiza), with a niche where it can thrive in abundance. The Prickly Pear cactus blooms for a short time in early July, displaying beautiful and fragile looking yellow flowers. Where the Sioux quartzite ledge drops off, ferns can be observed growing from cracks in this relatively protected area. The lowland bladder fern (Cystopteris) is most commonly seen taking advantage of this shady and moist environment.

Countless numbers of wildflowers color Pipestone National Monument’s landscape. The pink of the Prairie Rose, the purple of the Blazing Star, and the silvery appearance of Lead Plant make the Monument a breathtaking sight to behold. Wildflowers are an important food source for the fauna of the area, and are used by American Indians for religious and medicinal purposes.

The landscape of Pipestone National Monument has changed significantly since European expansion. Early explorers and ethnographers of the mid 19th Century report finding no trees to obscure the view along the cliffline. As late as the 1900′s, the Monument had few trees. Today trees thickly line the banks of Pipestone Creek, as well as several locations along the quartzite cliffline and in quarry areas. Approximately twenty native species of trees now occur within the boundary, but likely did not grow in the Monument in the past. About twenty species of native shrubs are found at the Monument and more than ten non-native species of trees and shrubs are also present. A planting effort by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930′s introduced several non-native tree species within the boundaries of the Monument. These largely invasive non-native species have significantly changed several ecosystems and landscapes in the park. Resource Management has adapted to these changes, and plan to restore the woodland to resemble what it would have looked like if it originally occurred here.

The unique variety of pipestone at Pipestone National Monument is called catlinite. It consists largely of microscopic crystals of pyrophyllite (pie-raw-fill-ite), diaspore (die-ah-spore), muscovite (musk-oh-vite), and kaolinite (kay-oh-lihn-ite). Traces of the iron bearing mineral hematite (heem-ah-tite) give the catlinite its red color. Most other red pipestones found in the world contain the mineral quartz; catlinite has little or none. Catlinite formed when mud layers were buried within the earth, under temperature and pressure conditions very different from those at the surface. The original minerals were unstable in this new environment, and their chemical components recombined to form new minerals.

The catlinite beds are sandwiched between thicker beds of quartzite. Most of the sand grains of which the quartzite is made are rounded crystals of quartz “glued” together by other quartz crystals that grew between the sand grains after the layers were buried. After millions of years of heat and pressure pressing the grains together, the rock is presently a mineral harder than ordinary steel. Although Sioux Quartzite is extremely hard, the underlying layers of catlinite are very soft. Since the catlinite contains no quartz, subjection to the same natural heat and pressure metamorphosed it into a very dense material which is roughly the same hardness as a human fingernail. It can therefore be easily carved using only the simplest of tools. At least five different catlinite layers are now exposed in the quarries at the Monument. These extend in a roughly north-south line which is two-thirds of a mile long, following a zone with the Sioux Quartzite containing many pipestone beds.

Pipestone National Monument was not covered with ice during the Wisconsin phase, so most of its glacial features date to much older periods. On the surface lie many erratics, boulders of many types or rock picked up and carried south by the ice sheets from outcrops in northern Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Canada. The ‘Three Maidens’ near the Monument’s entrance drive are fragments of what was once a single very large granite boulder. This original boulder was split apart by thousands of years of seasonal freezing and thawing of water that seeped into fractures. Where the glaciers moved directly over the quartzite bedrock of the Monument, hard stones embedded in the ice left grooves and scratch marks called glacial striae. Outcrops of exposed stone were also sand-blasted by strong winds from the north, which picked up silt and fine sand from the glacial plains. This produced the natural polish seen on the bedrock outcrops by the Monument’s Winnewissa Falls.

Human beings utilized the soft pipestone they found on the prairies of what became southwestern Minnesota. Archeological surveys reveal that beginning about 1000 B. C. and ending around A. D. 700, artifacts made from pipestone found in the quarries of southwestern Minnesota were traded as far east as modern Ohio, as far south as the Kansas River, and as far west as north central South Dakota. Studies in the Ohio area suggest evidence of the greatest concentration of the stone, with a number of sites clustered along the Oletangy River. During this time, few Indians lived on the Great Plains, offering an explanation for the scant presence of local pipestone in the region. Until after the arrival of Europeans in the New World, Native American permanent presence was limited to a few scattered agricultural villages, such as those of the Mandan, Pawnee, Caddoe, and Wichita, in the various river drainages of the plains.

More intensive quarrying began around A. D. 700 and certainly before 1200. There appears to have been easy access to the sacred stone for many different groups. As a result, the pipes were traded or carried widely across the North American continent. Examples of stone from what is now Pipestone National Monument have been found in Anasazi and Hohokam sites in the Southwest, in villages located along the Arkansas River, up and down the Missouri River, throughout western Iowa, and as far east as the Ohio River area. The extent of the distribution suggests that more than one group of Native Americans traded raw quarried pipestone or artifacts made from it.

The horse revolutionized the lifestyles of the Native American tribes that surrounded the Great Plains. Introduced by A. D. 1500, horses spread widely as a result of Spanish presence, infiltrating the plains from all directions. Through trade and theft, Indians acquired horses, also utilizing the feral animals that roamed the plains. Horse culture gave Indians a measure of mobility that they previously lacked and allowed the transformation of the economy of some tribes from agriculture to hunting. Before the horse, few Native Americans lived on the prairies. Most of these people lived in river drainages. But the mobility that horses provided brought tribes from the surrounding area on to the plains. By the early 1600s, Otoes, Omahas, Iowas, and other groups were among them. These Indians quarried pipestone material. Valued for ritual and religious purposes, the stone was an integral part of Native American ceremonial practice.

Whites were aware of pipestone long before they found the source of the stone. French traders reported seeing pipes and other artifacts made from the stone as early as the middle of the seventeenth century. But to these early trappers and priests, the source of the material was a mystery barely worth the effort to consider, much less solve. The real popularizer of the quarry first visited in September 1836. George Catlin, on his way to fame although not fortune as an artist and ethnographer, was stopped at Traverse des Sioux, near modern St. Peter, Minnesota, by a band of Native Americans. He thought they sought to stop him from “trespass(ing) on their dearest privilege—their religion.” The Sioux thought Catlin and his party were government explorers, sent to assess the material worth of the quarries as a prelude to seizure. Catlin and his companion explained otherwise and were allowed to continue on their journey. What he found when the party reached the quarries astonished and impressed him.

Catlin was captivated by the quarries. The people, the stories associated with the pipes made from the stone, and combination of sentience, spirituality, and scenery mirrored Catlin’s views of Native Americans. While there, he painted a panoramic view of the quarries that reflected his sensibilities and experiences among Native Americans. Far more sympathetic than most observers of his time, Catlin saw an image of noble savagery in the use of the quarries and the importance of ceremonies involving pipestone. The quarries and their environs confirmed what his experience taught him about the aboriginal inhabitants of the American West.

Even more important for the image of the quarries were the display of his paintings and a series of lectures that he gave throughout the eastern United States. Beginning in the winter of 1836-1837, Catlin prepared his work for public view. On September 25, 1837, his “Indian Gallery” opened at Clinton Hall in New York. It was a rousing success. Catlin tried to sell his portraits to the federal government but was repeatedly rebuffed. In 1839, he took his collection to England, where the popularity of Indian themes and issues far exceeded the level west of the Atlantic Ocean. There Catlin again showed his work to the public and prepared his book, North American Indians: Being Letters and Notes on Their Manners, Customs, and Conditions Written During Eight Years’ Travel Amongst the Wildest Tribes of Indians in North America, 1832-1839, for publication. While much of Catlin’s art had as much ethnographic as artistic value, his prose struck a chord with audiences on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Catlin’s work closely reflected the nature of Indian life, showing sympathy and greater understanding of the ways of Native Americans. His work became part of the popular culture of the time. The quarries figured importantly in this process, for major authors began to use them in a symbolic manner. The most prominent of these was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whose epic poem, The Song of Hiawatha, first published in 1855, offered a romanticized view of Native American life with the quarries at its center. Building on Catlin’s work, Longfellow created a legend as well as an epic. After an introduction, the poem opened “on the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry,” where Gitche Manito smoked the calumet as sign to all nations. This deity offered compassion and wisdom, embodied in the location and the sacred pipe, to solve the quarrels of his children. In Longfellow, the quarries acquired a cultural meaning that equaled even the reverence American Indians felt for the place and its products. In the Romantic cosmology of the middle of the nineteenth century, the Pipestone quarries came to represent the best of human endeavor.

Between the popularization that followed Catlin’s trip east and overseas and the location of the quarry on maps of the region, the Indian presence at the quarries faced genuine threats. The Coteau des Prairies began to fill with Anglo-American settlers. After 1840, the American government compelled Indians to sign treaties relinquishing their lands, usually in exchange for other land farther west and sometimes substantial annuities. The Sisseton and Wahpeton Sioux left after signing the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux in 1851; the Yankton’s followed seven years later, after a number of Yankton chiefs went to Washington, where they insisted on their right to quarry pipestone. When that right was recognized, a treaty was concluded in April 1858. [33] With that treaty, Yankton control over southwestern Minnesota ended—except for the approximately 650 acres that became the reserved area at Pipestone. The disposition of that area in law was theoretically complete; working out an accommodation was a more complicated process.

The establishment of Pipestone National Monument was a direct result of the settlement of the court case with the Yankton. The Indian School had been a prize catch in the late nineteenth century, but the people of the twentieth century demanded different kinds of federal support. Minnesota’s singular lack of national park areas, the cultural significance of the quarries, active local support, and the depressed economic climate of the 1930s, in which the federal government rescued local economies, made the location of a national park area at Pipestone desirable. Local leaders and the Minnesota congressional delegation pursued this opportunity. This confluence of factors led to serious efforts to create a national park area at Pipestone that came to fruition in 1937.

Stone pipes were long known among the prehistoric peoples of North America; specimens from 2,000 years ago have been found at Mound City in present-day Ohio. Digging at this Minnesota quarry likely began in the 17th century, a time which coincided with the acquisition of metal tools from European traders. Carvers prized this durable yet relatively soft stone, which ranged from mottled pink to brick red. By all accounts this location came to be the preferred source of pipestone among the Plains tribes. By about 1700, though, the Dakota Sioux controlled the quarries and distributed the stone only through trade.

Ceremonial smoking marked the activities of the Plains people: rallying forces for warfare, trading goods and hostages, ritual dancing, and medicine ceremonies. Bowls, stems, and tobacco were stored in animal-skin pouches or in bundles with other sacred objects. Ashes were disposed of only in special places. Ornamental pipes were often valued possessions buried with the dead. There were as many variations in pipe design as there were makers. By the time George Catlin arrived here in 1836, the simple tubes of earlier times had developed into elbow and disk forms, as well as elaborate animal and human effigies. The Pawnee and Sioux were master effigy carvers. A popular pipe form was the T-shaped calumet.(insert picture) Calumets became widely known as peace pipes because they were the pipes whites usually encountered at treaty ceremonies.

As America grew westward in the 19th century, pipes found their way into white society through trade. Increasing contact between whites and Indians inspired new subject matter for carvers. Sometimes these effigies honored white politicians and explorers; sometimes the images were caricatures far from flattering. Pipes became a source of income for their makers, thus significant beyond religious use. To protect their source, the Yankton Sioux secured free and unrestricted access by an 1858 treaty. Even as the quarry became increasingly lucrative, American settlement threatened to consume the square-mile Indian claim. Outsiders were digging new pits and extracting the sacred stone. In 1928 the Yankton’s, now resettled on a reservation 150 miles away, sold their claim to the federal government. Pipestone National Monument was signed into existence in 1937 and opened to the public with quarrying limited to Indians.

Summer is warm and pleasant, with high temperatures generally in the 80s F and lows in the 60s F. Occasionally, highs will reach 100 F with high humidity. Winter is generally cold, with temperatures ranging from near freezing to below 0 F. Snow generally accumulates. Dress in appropriate clothing for the season and wear sensible shoes for walking.

For your safety and for the protection of sacred sites, please stay on paved trails. Travel is prohibited in quarries, on rock rubble piles, and on quartzite outcroppings.

The animals in the Monument are protected. Please do not feed or harass them.

Pipestone National Monument Annual Pass is $15.00. Family fees are $5.00 – 7 days. Individual fees are $3.00 – 7 days. Golden Access pass is free. Golden Age pass is $10.00. National Park Passes, Interagency Access, Senior passes are also accepted. Children 15 and under are free, and American Indians are free.

Commercial service is located in Sioux Falls, SD, approximately 50 miles from the monument. Car rental is available at the airport. A small airport is operated in Pipestone, MN, however, no commercial service is available.

The monument is easily accessible from the south by interstate highway I-90 to Minnesota 23 or US 75, from the west by interstate highway I-29 to South Dakota 34 and Minnesota 30 to US 75, from the north by US 75, and from the east by Minnesota 30 or 23 to US 75. From US 75, road signs will lead you to the monument.

Approximate Mileage from the following major cities to Pipestone National Monument:

By Car:

Sioux Falls, SD – 48.79 miles

Worthington, MN – 60.86 miles

Mankato, MN – 154.91 miles

Granite Falls, MN – 74.53 miles

Nassau, MN – 87.49 miles

Sioux City, IA – 139.09 miles

By Plane:

Sioux Falls Regional Airport – 46.99 miles

Car rental is available at the airport

Pipestone National Monument , 36 Reservation Ave, Pipestone, MN 56164-1269

Headquarters (507) 825-5464

Fax (507) 825-5466

http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?formtype=address&cat=Pipestone%20National%20Monument&address=&city=&state=&zipcode=&country=US