In his interpretation of the introduction of the calumet ceremony into the southeastern U.S. in this journal, Brown (1989) has perpetuated a common error that the lithic nickname "catlinite" correctly describes any of the red Plains pipestones from the three well-known midwestern localities he cites. In truth, the mineralogy of each of the pipestones from those three geologic sources (provenances) are distinct from one another, and that of catlinite is diagnostic. Although most of the artifacts he evaluates are probably true catlinite, many of them might not be. Unless archaeologists know of what material an object is made, they do not know from where the material originated; thus they cannot know who obtained the material nor how the artifact reached its archaeological location (provenience).