Pipestone National Monument is located in southwestern Minnesota, just north of the city of Pipestone, Minnesota. It is located along the highways of U.S. Route 75, Minnesota State Highway 23 and Minnesota State Highway 30. The quarries are sacred to many tribal nations of North America, including the Dakota, Lakota, and other tribes of Native Americans, and were considered neutral territory in the historic past where all Nations could quarry stone for ceremonial pipes. The catlinite, or "pipestone", is traditionally used to make ceremonial pipes, vitally important to traditional Plains Indian religious practices. Archeologists believe the site has been in use for over 3000 years with Minnesota pipestone having been found inside North American burial mounds dated much earlier. From the 15th to 18th centuries the Iowa people lived by the quarry. By the 1700s, the Sioux were the dominant tribe in the area. In 1851 the Sisseton and Wahpeton bands of the Dakota signed the Traverse des Sioux treaty ceding southwest Minnesota to the U.S. Government including the quarry. However, some of that ceded land was claimed by the Yankton people and they were not present nor signers of the treaty. To protect the site, the Yankton Sioux secured unrestricted access via article 8 of the Yankton Treaty signed on April 19, 1858. That created a one-mile square reservation, of over 600 acres, which was encroached upon by settlers multiple times. In 1891, the United States took a 100 acre parcel of the Yankton's Pipestone Reservation to build the Pipestone Indian School. The Yankton tribe contested this seizure as illegal taking their claim to the U.S Supreme Court. The court ruled in their favor in 1926 and ordered that they be compensated. Afterwards, the land came under full control of the U.S. Government. The Pipestone Indian School closed in 1953 with the acreage remaining from the school transferred to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to create the Pipestone Wildlife Management Area. A boundary change occurred on June 18, 1956 with the original reservation reduced to just 108 acres. In 1863 conditions at the Crow Creek Reservation were so dire that Congress appropriated money to send supplies. The Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Northern Superintendency, Clark W. Thompson, turned the aid into a corrupt scheme for himself, his brother and an associate. Instead of buying the provisions at the closest source and sending them by the quickest riverboat