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LITTLE KNOWN FACTS ABOUT PINE RIDGE |
RED CLOUD HISTORY Red Cloud Indian School (Grades K-12) was founded as Holy Rosary Mission in 1888 by the Jesuits at the request Chief Red Cloud, a leader of the Oglala Sioux Indians residing on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Chief Red Cloud had continually petitioned the government to allow the "Blackrobes" (Jesuits) to come to the Reservation in order to establish a school. His persistant efforts brought about the development and existence of Holy Rosary Mission by the Jesuits and the Franciscan Sisters. The Story of Red Cloud Indian School Several treaties, including the famous Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, were made, and then broken as a result of this slowly rising conflict. Chief Red Cloud rose up as a great leader of the Oglala, and led the most successful military campaign ever waged against the United States by an indigenous group. The result of Red Cloud's great military success was the signing of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, which established the western half of South Dakota as Lakota land, and provided a short period of peace in the area. Sadly, the peace did not last. Custer's 1874 expedition into the Black Hills breached the treaty, and war again rose up in the Black Hills area. The war raged for many years. In the end, Red Cloud's followers were given a "permanent place" on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1878. Red Cloud had had several dealings with a group of men he knew as the Sina Sapa, the "black robes", a reference to the black cassocks worn by the men of the Society of Jesus. Knowing that the Society was reknowned for its educational emphasis and the freedom that it gave to the indigenous people it educated, Red Cloud sent a petition to Washington, D.C. to allow the Jesuits to come to the Reservation and set up a school "so that our children may be as wise as the white man's children." Red Cloud saw that the way of life to which he was accustomed was ending, and that in order for his people to prosper, their children must be educated to be able to walk in both the Lakota world and the white man's world. U.S. Government policy at that time had designated the Pine Ridge Reservation as an Episcopal reservation--that is, the only religious sect allowed to prostelytize to the Oglala was the Episcopal Church. This complicated the granting of Red Cloud's request, but before Red Cloud died, his wish was granted. More information on Red Cloud and the history of the Lakota is available at the Oglala Sioux Tribe's History page. In 1888, a group of Jesuits and Franciscan Sisters came out to the site designated by Red Cloud for the new mission. Using primarily their own labor and that of local Indians, they began construction of the main Mission building. All of the bricks for the building were made on the Mission ground from local clay and lime. It was the only two-story building in the area.
Students of the Mission were divided into three classes--one for all younger students attending, one for the older girls, and one for the older boys. Older students spent half their day learning reading, writing, and arithmetic, and the other half performing various domestic duties required to maintain the Mission--girls working in kitchen and laundry services while boys worked at the wood and metal shops and in the farm.
Eventually, the classes became integrated, the boarding parts of the school were closed, and the farms associated with the school turned into football fields, fieldhouses, parking lots, volunteer and teacher housing and the other spaces utilized by a modern-day school system. As enrollment grew, a second K-8 campus, Our Lady of Lourdes School, was opened in Porcupine. Enrollment has slowly continued its growth so that today, almost 600 students attend Red Cloud each year.
To this day, Red Cloud Indian School, Inc. looks forward towards a brighter future for the children of the Pine Ridge Reservation. The schools work towards achieving Chief Red Cloud's dream of a Lakota youth who are able to walk equally in both worlds--a Lakota people who are educated and able to do whatever they want, on the reservation or off, and who will choose to live in a good way and strive to succeed wherever their path may take them.
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Later that same year, the first classes at the new Holy Rosary Mission were admitted. The local Indian agent, a well-loved man named Colonel Gallagher, permitted children of the government schools in the area to attend the Mission school instead if they chose. By the end of the year, the school supported one hundred students.
Over the years, the Mission fought poverty and disease as best it could, and drew in students from as far away as Wyoming and New Mexico. Crops grown on the Mission grounds were often almost the only form of sustenance provided to the students and staff. Each year, the Catholic Indian conference was held on the Mission ground, a large affair which drew in both clergy and religious and Indian laity in large numbers. It is recorded by the Franciscan Sisters that the mass held at the beginning of the conference featured singing in both Latin and Lakota, a telling symbol of the cooperation between the Lakota and the Jesuits and Sisters that make Red Cloud what it is today. 
In 1969, Holy Rosary Mission School officially changed its name to Red Cloud Indian School, both as a token of respect for the man whose work had made it possible to found the school, and as a part of a program of reidentification meant to demonstrate to the world that Red Cloud was not meant to be an organization of cultural imperialism, but rather the product of a lasting bond formed between groups of two separate cultures, hoping to enhance the best parts of both and serve the people of the Pine Ridge Reservation.