Details

Collection Summary
Collection: 1952 - Frank Bennett Fiske
Folder: 0000
Item: 00523
Title: Philip Shooter, Father Francis Gerschwyler, Jim All Yellow and Andrew Eli Swift Eagle at Cannon Ball (N.D.)
Date: 1930
Creator: Fiske, Frank Bennett,--1883-1952
Inscription/Marks: [history] History of the Catholic Indian Mission. A Catholic presence has existed on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation for 130 years – long before North Dakota was a state and before the Diocese of Bismarck existed. The Benedictine monks from Conception Abbey in Conception, Missouri, arrived in Dakota Territory on October 17, 1884, one year after the Standing Rock Reservation was founded and ministered to the Native Americans and the Whites on the reservation for the next 111 years. In 1876, Abbot Martin Marty, OSB, from St. Meinrad’s Abbey in Indiana, arrived on the Standing Rock Reservation. Under his guidance and direction as abbot and later as bishop, the Catholic Missions sprang up. Fort Yates came into existence in 1879; Cannonball in 1882, and Porcupine in 1890. White parishes were also established at Selfridge and Solen. Fort Yates and Kenel (in South Dakota) were the two sites where the missionaries, together with the governmental agencies, first established formal educational centers. Fr. Chrysostom Foffa, OSB, and Brother Giles Laugel, OSB, cleared an old agency building at Fort Yates, where shortly after Easter, 1877, they opened the first school. Four Benedictine Sisters from Ferdinand, Indiana, arrived in 1878 to help in the school. The school was opened as a governmental school under the auspices of the Catholic Church. Bishop Marty considered the care of the Sioux Indians his dearest work. He was constantly seeking new laborers in this vineyard. In 1880, he had only 13 priests in the entire Dakota Territory. Four of these were ministering on the Standing Rock Reservation. With the arrival of Father Bernard Strassmaier, OSB, and Fr. Francis Gerschwyler, OSB, Standing Rock saw the beginning of the longest tenure any two priests would serve there in the next one hundred plus years. Father Bernard arrived in 1886 shortly after his ordination to the priesthood. In 1880, he was made pastor of Fort Yates. This would be his only pastoral assignment, for he served on Standing Rock for the next 50 years! The Native people loved Father Bernard. This admiration was especially evident at the time of his golden jubilee of ordination in 1936 when they presented him with a new car, an extraordinary gift during the Great Depression years. Father Bernard died on the reservation in 1940. The Indian sermon was preached by Father Francis. Father Francis came to Standing Rock in 1890 and was ordained a priest in what is now the Diocese of Bismarck. Like Father Bernard, Father Francis’ assignment in Sioux County was the only one this priest would ever have. He believed that to reach the heart of the Indian people, he had to speak their language fluently. He moved in with an Indian family and became so fluent in the Sioux language that many people believed it was his native tongue. Failing health resulted in his leaving the reservation in 1940. He returned to Conception Abbey where he died in 1946 at the age of 86.
Summary: Seated L-R: Jim All Yellow, Andrew Eli Swift Eagle holding eagle wing. Standing L-R: Philip Shooter, Father Francis Gerschwyler. They are in front of the altar inside St. Elizabeth Mission Church.
Red ID: PH_I_38163 Image ID: 476789 Image Notes: 1952-00523

Collection: 1952 Digitized Images from Collection
Title: Frank Bennett Fiske
Date: 1880-1952

Summary: Includes prints and negatives of portraits, agriculture, education, wildlife, hunting, Frank Fiske studio portraits, and some views of South Dakota. Fiske’s Native American photographs include portraits, Indian gatherings and ceremonies, boarding schools, Indian houses and dwellings, and Native American agriculture. Fiske’s documentation of daily life on the reservation includes such shots as Sioux customers waiting for a Fort Yates trading store to open; a Sioux dance in the streets of Fort Yates; a plow issue before the agency boarding school; an encampment of tipis, including those traditionally painted; and three Indian men being taxied off the reservation to join the army in WWI.

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