Converting the Rosebud: Catholic Mission and the Lakotas, 1886-1916

By Harvey Markowitz
University of Oklahoma Press (2018)
301 pages

Review by Cheryl Crazy Bull

 Harvey Markowitz, who spent several years on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in the late 1970s and early 1980s, has written a historical account of how the Catholic Church established itself on the Rosebud reservation as St. Francis Mission. His examination of this history is substantive and based on the written accounts of the Catholic priests and nuns who ran the mission, as well as on the correspondence of Indian agents and others who were involved in educational and spiritual life on the reservation.

The author provides context by which Christian churches became involved with government policy and with tribes in order to aid the reader’s understanding of how Christianity and organized religion were intended to encourage assimilation of Native peoples into American society. In the late 1880s, Plains Indian tribes were still engaged in warfare with the u.S. and reservations were a fairly new approach for containing the “Indian problem.” Markowitz discusses extensively the dynamics of conflict, cooperation, and negotiation that occurred among Indian agents and advocates from both Catholic and Episcopal churches, as well as national figures who were involved in Indian policy. This approach offers us insight into the undercurrents that influenced how resources were allocated for both Christianization efforts and the educational focus of mission schools. Both the churches and the federal government collaborated with each other to reward and punish tribal peoples and to use access to food, shelter, and resources toward assimilation outcomes.

Converting the Rosebud is extensively cited with additional insights provided in the notes. Frequently, the author utilizes direct quotes from the priests and nuns who established St. Francis Mission and oversaw its efforts, demonstrating how they held the Native people they worked with in low regard. Regardless of whether they felt any type of “Christian charity” or “Christian love,” they viewed the Sicangu Lakota as manipulative, uncivilized, and without virtue. Catholics saw the Christian education of Sicangu children as the path to salvation. Priests and nuns took great pride in stories of conversion, particularly deathbed conversions. Markowitz’s history also illustrates the ways in which they actively contributed to the breakdown of Lakota family life and autonomy.

Markowitz utilizes terminology that reflects a more contemporary lens. For example, he references the people as “Lakota” although during that time they were commonly called Sioux. He devotes a chapter and other references to the ways in which the people of the Rosebud adapted the Catholic faith and its related practices—such as the Catholic Congress and St. Mary’s and St. Joseph’s societies—to serve cultural purposes and to replace or replicate social, familial, and spiritual practices that affirmed Lakota ways.

Converting the Rosebud contributes to the body of literature focused on the corroboration between the federal government and Christian churches to assimilate and colonize Native peoples. The book ends in 1916, when St. Francis Mission burned in a fire attributed to three Native girls. There was never any official response to the fire out of fear that any action would turn the people of the Rosebud away from the Catholic Church. That alone speaks to the deep-seated manipulation reflected in the words of church and Bureau of Indian Affairs personnel. It also speaks to the fragility of the Catholic Church’s place in Sicangu society.

Cheryl Crazy Bull (Sicangu Lakota) is president and CEO of the American Indian College Fund and served as the chief educational officer at the St. Francis Indian School on the Rosebud reservation.