Petroglyphs which were around the Three Maidens in Pipestone
written by Gloria Hazell

These are some of the Petroglyphs removed by Charles Bennett from the Three Maidens area. A few of the slabs are now located in the National Monument building. The above photo is of one of the slabs showing two petroglyphs. I (Gloria) put my foot in the picture to show the size of the pecking. This looks like a deer and an arrow. Below is the alien looking figure, it has five fingers but really strange ears, it is noticable that the figures that look more human only have three fingers.

I have manipulated the pictures below to bring the engraving out more. These are from the old Bennett picture from 1890's I find the next one the most interesting, it is hard to see in this picture but the human like figure which again has strange ears, is holding a woman's pipe, in his hand. To me this one and the one under it which shows a humanoid figure holding a Plains or T Pipe, shows that the Pipe had to have been used in this area for many centuries or why would it have been on a petroglyph which was probably put there thousands of years ago. This design can be seen clearer on the picture below when Chas. Bennett showed the collection.

deer with antlers The Elbow Pipe man. dragonfly and humanoid

T Pipe man Bird tracks and deer bird track

Photo from Calender published by the Pipestone Historical Society.

This is the photograph of Charles Bennett with all of the Petroglyphs he had removed. He had them on show and took them to places like State Fairs and in actual fact won an award at one of them.

By the time Bennett died many of the pieces had been lost. They were never found and there has been much speculation about where they had gone.

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Incidently Chuck discovered a group of Petroglyphs on the Monument grounds, in 1992, (not near the Three Maidens,) which was named the 'Derby' Petroglyph. We are trying to get a good photo of the group to put on this page. We do have a newspaper article about them in the Museum in the Center.

 

This is one of the subjects we speak about in the Beads & Buckskins Program.