Encyclopedia Dubuque
"Encyclopedia Dubuque is the online authority for all things Dubuque, written by the people who know the city best.”
Marshall Cohen—researcher and producer, CNN
Affiliated with the Local History Network of the State Historical Society of Iowa, and the Iowa Museum Association.
NATIVE AMERICAN RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE DAYS
NATIVE AMERICAN RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE DAYS. Annual event hosted by the UNIVERSITY OF DUBUQUE Theological Seminary. The sixth annual ceremony, held in 1986 and hosted by Native Americans at the seminary, featured a powwow at the end of the three-day event in April.
Native Americans used a soft stone mined in southwestern Minnesota to create ceremonial pipes often depicting wildlife. They believed their prayers were carried on the smoke to the Great Spirit. So important were these pipes that hostile tribes set aside war and mined the stone, later called catlinite, side by side in what became neutral ground. Pieces of the stone were then traded among tribes for hundreds of miles. Catlinite, or "pipestone" quarries at Pipestone National Monument just north of Pipestone, Minnesota may have been the source of this stone for centuries. (1)
---
Source:
Pipestone National Monument, National Park Service, Online-http://www.nps.gov/pipe/index.htm
