Procure Father Francis M. Craft, Missionary To The Sioux Crafted By Thomas W. Foley Presented As File

bizarre, the human calculus that propelled the institutions that swarmed onto reservations in the's to reform, to save, to administer, to control, There's a certain unquiet pleasure/discomfort to be had in the tension between the author's frequent facevalue readings of Craft's selfreporting, and what one might suspect was really going on in Craft's largerthanlife, conflictloving yet strangely repressed brain.


To be always on the lookout for a good war, the way a voluptuary is on the lookout for a party, Physically threatening any young native boy who'd dare flirt with his favorite girls, who he coveted for his dreamedof prairie convent, His exaggeratedly partisan, proarmy response to Wounded Knee, where he nearly died, Though what reportage in the lateth C wasn't heavily slanted It was how things were done, If you didn't slant your words, it sounded like you didn't care, The real depression of riding a circuit in bleakest winter to administer last rites to so many of the children he loved, Drinking the mucus of the sick, His gutlevel hatred for the cheating whites around him, who don't understand the natives that way he feels he can, The mystical, delusionallytwee, almost loveaddled editorials written ostensibly by the nuns in his care, though conforming eerily to his own style, His literary hagiography, somehow devastatingly cold, and definitely performed with an eye to Catholic stagecraft, when Josephine Crowfeather, who became Mother Mary Catharine Sacred White Buffalo, the Sister he loves the most and on whom he pins all his hopes, dies young.
Then the accusations of living in open adultery, and the bitter, sordid way some of those nuns later described being stuck in Cuba with him, penniless, after the US army refused to bring these volunteer nurses back home after the SpanishAmerican war wrapped up.
All the meager, questionable joys of this book are hidden between the lines,

One thing to be said for repressive religious institutions: the tension of living within the terms of their imaginary logic seems to fertilize the imagination, and Craft definitely shows a certain fatedness throughout, tied to his heightened awareness of his own family's place in American history tracing descent from both white and native leaders.
However, the goodness or even originality of what Craft achieved, while heavily attacked at the time, seems even more questionable now,

Honestly, to seek out the brightest and best young Lakota women, to mount a campaign of pressure on them and their families so that they will leave their tribes and become Catholic nuns at a time when their people were persecuted by a regime that was not only forcing acculturation but also whether by policy or by happenstance resulting in 'depopulation,'.
. . Honestly, whether or not his intentions were good, how can the real effects of his efforts be seen as anything other than operating in sympathy with that regime, and against the Lakota
Of all the western frontier figures who played a role in the lives of the Sioux, perhaps none was more intriguing, eccentric, or controversial than Father Francis M.
Craft. Both fearless and compassionate, Father Craft ministered to the Sioux for two decades during the turbulent years after Sitting Bull surrendered at Fort Buford in, After recovering from a severe injury at Wounded Knee in, he struggled to found an Indian order of nuns and railed against government policies that, he contended, encouraged the corruption and degradation of Indians.
Thomas W.

Foley's wellresearched and balanced account of Father Craft's fascinating life examines his key role in Sioux and missionary history, his dedication to Indian causes, and his lifelong struggle against stereotypes and prejudice, which challenged many in the church and the federal government and led to accusations of insanity from his powerful critics.
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