Last updated: August 31, 2020
Person
Moses Crow and Estelle Crow-Wilson
Quick Facts
Significance:
Moses and Estelle established the Pipestone Dakota Tribal Community, and together they worked hard to ensure that future generations of Dakota people knew and respected the traditions of their ancestors.
Moses and Estelle established the Pipestone Dakota Tribal Community, and together they worked hard to ensure that future generations of Dakota people knew and respected the traditions of their ancestors.
Born Estelle Eugenia Pearsall in 1901, Estelle was the eldest of five daughters born to Fred Pearsall, a Euro-American, and Eunice Amos, a Sisseton woman. Estelle and her sisters were raised to speak both Dakota and English, and though her family moved around to some degree during her childhood, they were always heavily involved with the local Dakota communities. When Estelle’s mother passed away in 1914, the family returned to Granite Falls, Minnesota, and shortly thereafter, Estelle was sent to attend the Pipestone Indian School, an assimilation school built near the pipestone quarries. It was there that she would meet her future husband, Moses Crow, a Mdewakanton from Santee, Nebraska. He had served in the medical corps in World War I and worked at the school in the dairy barn and as a fireman. Together, they would build the foundation for today’s pipe-carving community.
Moses and Estelle fled the Pipestone Indian School and eloped in 1917, leaving the area for about ten years before returning to Pipestone in 1927. The couple had ten children, and were largely responsible for founding the Pipestone Dakota Tribal Community. All of the members of this group are enrolled or lineal Dakota people, many belonging to the Sisseton/Wahpeton Oyate of the Lake Traverse Reservation. Three families comprise the majority of this community, each of which can be traced back to Moses and Estelle Crow. Those families are the Bryans, the Derbys, and the Taylors. Estelle’s daughter Clara married George Bryan, and another daughter, Ethel, married Harvey Derby; both men were active pipestone quarriers in the early 1940s following the establishment of Pipestone National Monument. Moses’s sister, Julia, was married to Joe Taylor (“Indian Joe”), a Mdewakanton man who not only introduced Moses to pipe-making, but was almost solely responsible for keeping the quarrying legacy alive in the early 20th Century. These three families and their descendants are still considered the backbone of the pipestone quarrying tradition today.
Moses mentored the next generation of pipemakers until his death in 1938, but Estelle outlived her husband by 50 years. Estelle rarely worked with the pipestone directly, spending much of her time taking care of the children, but she was known to carve horses from time to time. She remarried one of Moses’s close friends, Robert Wilson, and continued to play an important role in the Pipestone Dakota Tribal Community. Over 100 people belong to the Community today, and most of them are direct descendants of Moses and Estelle. In her later years, Estelle was fondly called “Grandma Wilson,” not only by her own family members but by the Pipestone community as a whole. She passed away in 1988, but continues to be fondly remembered by many in the area. Their legacy lives on through the craftwork of their heirs.