HISTORICAL SKETCH. 63 



1837, Catlin.J 



visit the quarry, he carried out his design, starting from New York, "a dis- 

 tance of. 2, 400 miles, for which purpose I devoted eight months, traveling 

 at a considerable expense, and for a great part of the way with much 

 fatigue and exhaustion." 



Starting on horseback from the falls of St. Anthony, in company with 

 "a young gentleman from England of fine taste and education," and under 

 the guidance of a faithful Indian, he followed the usual route along the 

 south side of the Minnesota river to the Traverse des Sioux, where he 

 crossed the river; he recrossed it at a point about thirty miles above the 

 mouth of the " Terre Bleue," near the mouth of the Waraju, and thence, 

 leaving the Minnesota, pursued a course "a little north of west," steering for 

 the Coteau des Prairies. He represents the vast prairie that he passed over 

 as one of the most beautiful countries in the world, for a distance of one 

 hundred and twenty or one hundred and thirty miles. It everywhere 

 showed the richest soil, and an abundance of good water which flowed from 

 a thousand living springs. 



For many miles in the distance before us we had the Coteau in view, which looked like a blue 

 cloud settling down in the horizon ; and when we had arrived at its base, we were scarcely sensible 

 of the fact, from the graceful and almost imperceptible swells with which it commences its eleva- 

 tion above the country about it. Over these swells, or terraces, gently rising one above the other, 

 we traveled for a distance of forty or fifty miles, when we at length reached the summit, and also 

 the pipestone quarry, the object of our campaign. From the base of this majestic mound to its top, 

 a distance of forty or fifty miles, there was not a tree or a bush to be seen in any direction. The 

 ground was even where covered with a green turf of grass, about five or six inches high ; and we 

 were assured by our Indian guide that it descended to the west, toward the Missouri, with a sim- 

 ilar inclination, and for an equal distance, divested of everything save the grass that grows and 

 the animals that walk upon it. 



On the very top of this mound or ridge, we found the far-famed quarry, or fountain, of the 

 Red Pipe, which is truly an anomaly in nature. The principal and most striking feature of this 

 place is a perpendicular wall of close-grained, compact quartz, of twenty-five or thirty feet in 

 elevation, running nearly north and south, with its face to the west, exhibiting a front of nearly 

 two miles in length, when it disappears at both ends by running under the prairie, which becomes 

 there a little more elevated, and probably covers it for many miles, both to the north and south. 

 The depression of the brow of the ridge at this place has been caused by the wash of a little stream, 

 produced by several springs on the top of the ridge, a little back from the wall, which has gradu- 

 ally carried away the superincumbent earth, and having bared the wall for a distance of two miles, 

 is now left to glide for some distance over a perfectly level surface of quartz rock, and then to 

 leap from the top of the wall into a deep basin below, and from thence to seek its course to the 

 Missouri, forming the extreme source of a noted and powerful tributary called the Big Sioux. 



This beautiful wall is perfectly stratified in several distinct horizontal layers, of light, gray 

 and rose, or flesh-colored, quartz ; and through the greater part of the way, both on the front of 

 the wall, and over acres of its horizontal surface, it is highly polished, or glazed, as if by ignition. 



At the base of this wall, and running parallel to it, there is a level prairie of half a mile in 

 width, in any and all parts of which the Indians procure the red stone for their pipes by digging 

 through the soil and several slaty layers of the red stone to the depth of four or five feet. From 

 the very numerous marks of ancient and modern digging, or excavations, it would appear that this 



