“My brother—You have made my picture and I like it much. My friends tell me they can see the eyes move, and it must be very good—it must be partly alive. I am glad it is done—though many of my people are afraid. I am a young man, but my heart is strong. I have jumped on to the medicine-rock—I have placed my arrow on it and no Mandan can take it away.[27] The red stone is slippery, but my foot was true—it did not slip. My brother, this pipe which I give to you, I brought from a high mountain, it is toward the rising sun—many were the pipes that we brought from there—and we brought them away in peace. We left our _totems_ or marks on the rocks—we cut them deep in the stones, and they are there now. The Great Spirit told all nations to meet there in peace, and all nations hid the war-club and the tomahawk. The _Dah-co-tahs_, who are our enemies, are very strong—they have taken up the tomahawk, and the blood of our warriors has run on the rocks. My friend, we want to visit our medicines—our pipes are old and worn out. My friend, I wish you to speak to our Great Father about this.” The chief of the Puncahs, on the Upper Missouri, also made the following allusion to this place, in a speech which he made to me on the occasion of presenting me a very handsome pipe about four years since:— “My friend, this pipe, which I wish you to accept, was dug from the ground, and cut and polished as you now see it, by my hands. I wish you to keep it, and when you smoke through it, recollect that this red stone is a part of our flesh. This is one of the last things we can ever give away. Our enemies the Sioux, have raised the red flag of blood over the Pipe Stone Quarry, and our medicines there are trodden under foot by them. The Sioux are many, and we cannot go to the mountain of the red pipe. We have seen all nations smoking together at that place—but, my brother, it is not so now.”[28] Such are a few of the stories relating to this curious place, and many others might be given which I have procured, though they amount to nearly the same thing, with equal contradictions and equal absurdities. The position of the Pipe Stone Quarry, is in a direction nearly West from the Fall of St. Anthony, at a distance of three hundred miles, on the summit of the dividing ridge between the St. Peters and the Missouri rivers, being about equi-distant from either. This dividing ridge is denominated by the French, the “Côteau des Prairies,” and the “Pipe Stone Quarry” is situated near its southern extremity, and consequently not exactly on its highest elevation, as its general course is north and south, and its southern extremity terminates in a gradual slope.