Catlinite Pipe

maker once known

Plains Indigenous, possibly sioux 

ca. LAte 1800s?

Known as a “T pipe,” this style of pipe is produced by a number of Indigenous groups in the western and plains regions of North America. The distinct red stone in this pipe is catlinite, a sacred pipestone that can be found only at a quarry in Minnesota that is now designated the Pipestone National Monument. Many catlinite pipes were given as gifts to white colonists as “peace pipes” during the first decades of contact in North America, making it difficult to pin down the particular route that the pipe in our collection might have taken before reaching Nelson’s hands.

This could be the same pipe that Nelson writes in his diary about purchasing from the Inupiat at Port Clarence during the Alaskan expedition. Considering the vast network of trade within and between Indigenous and settler groups in the nineteenth century, the idea that a catlinite pipe had made it into the possession of an Inupiaq is not inconceivable.

However, there is also a chance that the pipe which Nelson bought from the Inupiat was not included by the donors in this collection, and that this catlinite pipe was acquired by other means. The pipe might have been traded to Nelson on the expedition by someone who had spent time in the plains regions, like Dellenbaugh or Grinnell, or perhaps Nelson acquired the pipe under circumstances entirely unrelated to the expedition.

References

Perttula, Timothy K. “The Temporal and Spatial Distribution of Catlinite and Redstone Pipes on Caddo Sites.” Index of Texas Archaeology (2015): https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1940&context=ita.

“Pipestone National Monument.” NPS History Library and Archive, https://npshistory.com/publications/pipe/index.htm.