The photo above is of Dakota, Winona, She was the daughter of Red Iron, and was imprisoned in Fort Snelling. As you can see she looks as if she was pregnant. The photo is one you can't forget. I have decided to have her on this page as the Ride leaves Pipestone, for a reason.

I am now going to jump to the Woman's Commemorative March of 2002, Chuck was asked if he would make a Pipe for the March and so we went to a meeting with the Women, and that was when I realized how dedicated they all were, and offered to make their website for them. They accepted and so I did. But that isn't the story..

Back to the Pipe; we got back to the Center and Chuck immediately looked for the right piece of Pipestone (Catlinite) for the Woman's Pipe. He always did this whenever he had a special order for a Pipe, the stone just had to be right and he knew that if he had been asked to make a special pipe, the stone had to be at the Center for it. I was used to him doing this and left him to it. He found the piece that he thought was the right one, and started work on the Pipe. Now Chuck was a Pipemaker of 50 plus years and his hands and eyes took over while he was making a Pipe, by instinct he worked on each sacred Pipe, and always when it was done he and the person it was for were really pleased with it. I usually didn't see them until they were finished, so I was surprised to be called to come and look at something. He had a grin on his face, and said, 'Look at this', so I did, and there in the stone was a picture of a woman, not just any woman, I knew who it was, I said, 'hang on I'll be back', and went to look through some old photos I had, found what I was looking for and brought it back to him. I put it next to the picture in the stone, and wow, sure enough, I was right, except it was a reversed picture.

The woman in the picture was Winona, the young woman above. At that point we knew that this Pipe was supposed to go to the Women's March. They were retracing the route that the women in 1862 went on from the Lower Sioux to Fort Snelling, and then they did a ceremony at Fort Snelling for these women, in a lot of instances their ancestors. This young woman, Winona was one of the women they were marching for. It could not have been more perfect.

I have pictures of the Pipe and somewhere the picture of the picture, but I don't feel comfortable putting the photo on a web site. It is too sacred to show as it has now been smoked a lot. Any of you who took part in the Marches will have seen it, It is a large Plains 'T' pipe, one side dark red the other a pinker color, this was where Winona showed herself. The plain sumac stem had the 4 colours of material tied to it as well as fresh sage and with it went my photo of Winona that I gave to go with Chuck's spiritual work.

Why did I chose today to show Winona, well yesterday the Ride was for these same women, (along with others of today) the Pipe was made for the Women in the Little Feather Center where the Ride had breakfast today, and they left from there to go on the route of their ancestors. The Pipe left the Center to go on that same route. If any of you go to the Ceremonies at Fort Snelling with these women, you will see the Pipe and know it's history, or should I say HER-story.

I feel I have not given you enough on this, most of you won't know what I mean by a picture in the stone, so I will show you one on a different piece of stone, this was before the Pipe took shape, you can see the marks made by the tools used, and so I am sure that it's OK to show

This is of a Canada Goose's head and neck. Chuck had turned away from this piece of stone 3 times and when it called to him on the 4th try he accepted it was right. It was. This Pipe ended up with an elder in Canada!