er rae 
F. V. Hayden on the Geology of Northeastern Dakota, 21 
ite that rests upon it, that the rock has always been rare. For 
a mile or two before reaching the quarry the aise is strewed 
with fragments gsi have been cast away by pilgrims. 
early all of our writers on Indian history buve invested this 
th a muwlicn of legends or myths, They have rep- 
resented the locality as having been known to the Indians from 
remote antiquity, All these notions, Tam paring. will ed 
even as Jong a perio . Icould not finde trace of a stone im- 
plement in the vicinity, nor could 1 hear that any had ever 
been found; and indeed nothing could be seen that would lead 
one to suppose that the place had been visited for a longer pe- 
riod than fifty years. All the excavations could have been 
made within that time. There are many rade iron tools scat- 
tered about, and some of them were —_ out of the ditch last 
summer in a complete state of oxydati 
Again, it does not appear that in the anand which have been 
opened i in nits Mississippi oe so extensively, any trace of this 
rock has ever been found. It is well known that the pipe is the 
nats sarees: of the dead man’s possessions and is almost in- 
variably buried with the body, and if a knowledge of this rock 
had extended back into the stone age, it is almost certain that 
some indications of it would have been brought to light in the 
vast number of mounds that have been opened in the valley of 
the Mississippi. Pipes and other ornaments, made from steatite, 
have been in use among Indians from the earliest indications of 
their history, and they ¢ are still manufactured from this material 
on the Pacific coast. 
Now the question arises as to the age of the rocks we have 
attempted to describe and which include the pipestone layer, 
ies to the — of well defined organic remains, the prob- 
m becomes a cult one. ‘heir exceedingly close-grained, 
compat, apparent y metamorphic character, would direct one’s 
attention to the older rocks, perhaps some member of the Azoie 
series ; mt if the impressions seen at Sioux Falls are those of 
bivalve shells, we must look higher in the scale. But in order 
that we may arrive at an ap roximate conclusion, let us look at 
the geolog y of the surrounding country. 
ready know that the limestones of the upper Coal Meas- 
ures are exposed at Omaha City, and continue up the Missouri — 
river to a point near De Soto, almost twenty miles farther, where 
they pass from view beneath ‘the bed of the river. Overlapping 
them is a coarse sandstone com posed of an aggregation of ‘parti 
cles of quartz cemented with the peroxyd of iron. This a 
every color from a deep dull red to a nearly white. gehen 
