Sacred Pipestone
Sacred Pipestone
"They give me some idea of the form they want," says Erickson, a member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux tribe. "Then I talk to them to get to know them and to get a feeling for their desires, and work from there."
American Indians have been coming to the quarries a half-mile north of Pipestone, Minn. (pop. 4,280), for centuries to remove the stone that gave the town and the national monument their names.
The soft red and pink stone, also called Catlinite for artist George Catlin who visited the area in 1836, formed millions of years ago when marine deposits were compressed between layers of quartzite by glaciers.
Erickson, who demonstrates pipestone carving in the monument’s visitor center, gets his Catlinite from a quarry that he’s been working for 25 years. To remove the stone, Erickson shovels off several feet of topsoil and then hammers and pounds through 12 to 16 feet of quartzite.
"It’s hard work," says Erickson, 41, who carved his first pipe when he was 11. Some of his creations, which sell for $50 to $1,000 depending on size and intricacy of carving, are displayed in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
In 1937, Congress designated the pipestone quarries a national monument, entrusting the National Park Service with the care and stewardship of the 282-acre monument for American Indians and all American people.
"It remains a sacred place to be quarried only by Native Americans using hand tools," says Jim LaRock, the monument’s superintendent, explaining that members of many tribes apply for a limited number of quarry permits, and there’s always a waiting list.
About 400 hundred years ago, Indians discovered pipestone near the surface and found that it could be carved into pipes, beads and amulets. The stone remains a prized commodity among the native peoples who dig for it or trade for it. Ceremonial pipes made from the stone are considered sacred.
The pipes are "just rock and wood" before they are "awakened," says Bud Johnston, president of the Keepers of the Sacred Tradition of Pipemakers, a group formed in Pipestone in 1996 to protect the quarries and preserve the art of pipe making and other cultural and spiritual traditions.
"New pipes are first smoked, or as we say, awakened, in a special ceremony, either by the pipe owner or by a respected elder or tribal leader chosen by the owner," says Johnston, a member of the Lake Superior Chippewa tribe. "The stone has spiritual significance because those who came to the quarries gave thanks to the Creator and Mother Earth through tobacco offerings for allowing them to gather the special red stone."
The quarries aren’t Pipestone’s only link to an American Indian tradition. Catlin’s 1836 quarry description inspired poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to write The Song of Hiawatha, and each summer a cast of more than 200 local residents performs a colorful pageant based on the poem at an outdoor amphitheater adjacent to the monument.
Members of the Pipestone Exchange Club revived the pageant in 1948 after the local Indian Boarding School, whose students staged the annual program, was shut down. "The government had just closed the school, so we decided to try to carry on the tradition," says Wanita Beal, one the club’s charter members.
Still, it’s the soft red stone that gave Pipestone its name that forever will be identified with the town. Some estimate that the local quarries have Catlinite reserves for another 1,000 years, but no one knows for certain. The easily accessible pipestone is gone, and uncovering new veins now requires deeper pits, which means carvers such as Erickson will have to keep digging to unearth the stone to make their pipes.
For more information, log on to (507) 825-3316 or www.pipestoneminnesota.com.
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