On Aug. 25, 1937, the U.S. established Pipestone National Monument in Southwest Minnesota. The monument covers 301 acres and includes quarry pits and the prairie landscape surrounding them. Today indigenous people from across North America come to the site to work the pipestone at 56 active pits, offering up the soft red stone so famously used for ceremonial pipes and other items. A gentle slope marks the eastern edge of a long plateau that begins in the Dakotas and runs southeast to Iowa. In Pipestone County, the slope is broken by stone outcroppings that native peoples have quarried for centuries.
For Native Americans, this land is sacred. For the Oceti Sakowin, the people of the Seven Council Fires, which includes Dakota and Lakota speaking tribes, it’s a place of creation. Among the Oceti Sakowin, the Yankton Sioux of South Dakota are known as the protectors of the quarry. Though pipestone exists at many locations in North America, the quarries at Pipestone National Monument became the preferred source of pipestone among tribes living on the Great Plains because of the quality of the stone.
Pipestone is a relatively soft stone that’s well-suited to hand carving. However, it’s typically found sandwiched between extremely hard layers of Sioux quartzite, and extracting the stone can be hard work. Contemporary indigenous people maintain the tradition of hand-quarrying stone using only sledgehammers, chisels, pry bars and wedges. They’re taught to use all the quarried stone, if possible, or return it to Mother Earth. Over the years, skilled artisans have created many pipe designs, including long-stemmed pipes, elbow and disk forms and a T-shaped calumet. Carvers also have made elaborate animal and human effigies.
Oral traditions of the Oceti Sakowin tell how pipestone was created by the red blood of the ancestors, and of how smoke carries prayers to the Great Spirit, making the pipes created from the red rock highly sacred. Pipestone pipes have been, and are still, used in ceremonies, given as gifts and traded. Native Americans store pipe bowls, stems and tobacco with other sacred objects. They also bury pipes with the dead. Sacred pipes have inspired stories that have been passed down for generations.
According to Lakota legend, the first pipe was brought to Earth 19 generations ago by a divine messenger known as White Buffalo Calf Woman (known in the Lakota language as Pte-san Win-yan). The pipe was given to the people who would not forget--the Oceti Sakowin, or Seven Council Fires of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota nations. The Buffalo Calf Woman came to the tribes when there was a great famine and instructed them about living in balance with nature. She gifted the people with a sacred bundle containing the White Buffalo Calf Pipe, which still exists to this day and is kept by Chief Arvol Looking Horse of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. Other members of the tribes are also pipe carriers: stewards entrusted with the care of particular ceremonial and personal pipes.
White Buffalo Calf Woman taught them all the things they needed to know about making, handling and caring for the pipe, and about how to use it for praying. She explained to the people that the pipe was a symbol of everything in the world. She told them that the red stone bowl of the pipe represented the Earth Mother and the feminine aspects of the world. The buffalo calf carved in the stone represented all the four-legged animals which live upon the Mother. She told them that the wooden pipe stem represented the Sky Father, the plants and the masculine aspects of the world.
The Buffalo Calf Woman explained that when the stem and bowl were joined, they symbolized a union and a balance between the sacred masculine and the sacred feminine. She told them that the smoking of the pipe linked the smoker to all things in the universe. The smoke from the pipe carried the prayers of the people directly to the Creator. When the pipe was used properly, the buffalo would return and the people would be able to eat well.
Over a period of four days, White Buffalo Calf Woman instructed the people in the Seven Sacred Rites: the seven traditional rituals that use the sacred pipe. When the teaching of the sacred rites was complete, she told the people that she must return to the spirit world. She asked them to honor the teachings of the pipe and to keep it in a sacred manner. Before leaving, the woman told them that within her were four ages, and that she would look upon the people in each age, returning at the end of the fourth age to restore harmony and balance to a troubled world. She said she would send a sign that her return was near in the form of an unusual buffalo, which would be born white.
The holy woman then took leave of the people. As she walked away, she stopped and rolled over four times, changing appearance each time. The first time, she turned into a black buffalo calf; the second time into a red one; the third time into a yellow buckskin one; and finally, the fourth time she rolled over, she turned into a white buffalo calf. These four colors then became associated with the powers of the four directions for the Lakota. The holy entity then disappeared over the horizon. It is said after that day the people honored their pipe, and the buffalo were plentiful.
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