PIPESTONE AND ROCK COUNTIES. 561 



Pipes. ] 



county, taken from a mound, has been described on page 490, composed of 

 a dark gray stone not at all resembling catlinite. A great majority of the 

 stone pipes found in America are made of other varieties of stone, some- 

 times of steatite, or of serpentine, or "slate," or some very much harder 

 material, even of granite.* A pipestone found on the international boun- 







dary, in Minnesota, is of greenish, chloritic rock, which becomes darker and 

 harder in some places, and is properly described as gray. 



The Indians of the Northwest have resorted to this place ever since 

 their acquaintance with Europeans, for the purpose of getting this material 

 for their pipes. If there be" not a direct connection, genealogically, be- 

 tween the mound-builders and the Indians, there is at least an identity of 

 practice in the quarrying and manufacture of pipes from this material, no 

 less than in the mining and use of copper.f 



At the present time the remnant of the Sioux Indians living at Flan- 

 dreau, Dak., extract the catlinite from the same locality, in the rudest 

 methods, and derive a substantial revenue from the sale of pipes, hatchets 

 and various other articles made from it. In this manufacture the whites 

 have begun to compete successfully with the Indians, and many orna- 

 mental as well as useful objects made of catlinite can be purchased in the 

 open markets of Flandreau and Pipestone City. 



Squier and Davis, Ancient monuments of the Mississippi valley, p. 228. 



tPop. Serf. Month., vol. xix, p. 601; Lewis H. Morgan, Contribution* to North American Ethnology vol. iv, p 199 

 36 



