From: casarollnotes.blogspot.com
Tim and Linda BunyanAs we travel north, we are compelled to visit Pipestone, a National Monument in Minnesota. This story parallels an Indian culture in transition: the evolution of the pipes between tribes, explorers, traders, soldiers, and settlers.
Stone pipes were long known among the Indians of North America: 2,000-year-old specimens have been found. This location came to be the preferred source of pipestone among Plains tribes. The activities using variations in pipe designs were ceremonial smoking: rallying forces for warfare, trading goods and hostages, ritual dancing, and medicinal healings
George Catlin, the lawyer turned artist, arrived here in 1836 to find master effigy carvers of popular pipe shapes. In 1928 the Yankton Sioux secured access to continue to the quarries and Pipestone National Monument was established to provide traditional quarrying for Indians.
Catlin painted Pipestone Quarry. He described the area: "The principal and most striking feature of this place, is a perpendicular wall of close-grained, compact quartz, of twenty-five and thirty feet in elevation, running nearly north and South with its face to the West, exhibiting a front of nearly two miles in length".
The pipestone carvings are artworks as well as ceremonial use. We purchased a carved trinket created by Indian artist Terri Rose Beek....... for our granddaughter Rose Elizabeth; she is one month old now.
The original prairie remains today. Since 1937 Pipestone National Monument has protected a remnant of this threatened ecosystem, helping sustain a connection for American Indians with their sacred pipestone quarries.
We continue north to reach the fertile river valley of Wahpeton, North Dakota along the Bois de Sioux River at the confluence with the Otter Tail River, which forms the Red River of the North. The population is 8,000. Wahpeton was derived from the Dakota name of the local band of Dakota Indians who had been displaced by the Ojibwe Tribe.
Wahpeton, North Dakota
We are RV camping at the Zoo! It is located next to the Bois de Sioux Public Golf Course.......and we need to drive through
the Golf Course to reach the RV sites located at the Zoo.
RV site: electric & water $40.00/night.
The Prairie Rose Chapel is located next to the carousel, next to the Chahinkapa Zoo, next to the RV sites.
We are on a mission (and we found) the World's Largest Catfish. It is 40 feet long, 5,000 pounds, known to the citizens of Wahpeton as "The Wahpper." It is strategically placed to draw envious stares from Minnesota, which is only 100 feet away across the river!
North Dakota has been a place filled with surprise and amazement and wonder--
--a place Ya Just Have to Be There!
Time to move forward on our 2021 Travel Tour for our highly anticipated visit with our friends Van and JoEve Ellig. We met them in Mazatlan several years ago. We have just retired and now spend more periods of time in Mazatlan. After being owners of Quintas for over 10 years, our paths have finally crossed.
We have come to Fergus Falls, Minnesota to their home for a visit.
