Synopses & Reviews
During the turbulent final years of the Indian Wars, a young Catholic priest entered service as a missionary to the Sioux Indians in Dakota Territory. Father Francis M. Craft rode a three-hundred-mile circuit on the Standing Rock Reservation and, in 1890, was a witness to events at Wounded Knee, where he sustained serious wounds. His journals provide valuable insights into reservation life, including the federal acquisition of Sioux lands and tensions between the Catholic Church and the Indian Bureau.
Thomas W. Foley, author of a previous biography of Craft, now presents key selections from Craftand#8217;s voluminous journals and papers. In addition to documenting significant events, Craftand#8217;s writings reveal his driven, stubborn personality as he went about his day-to-day routines: performing sacraments, ministering to the sick, even working to create an Indian sisterhood. Sympathetic to Indian traditions, he provides valuable insight into Lakota spiritual life.
By drawing on Craftand#8217;s eyewitness report of Wounded Knee, Foley offers a bold reinterpretation of that event as a genuine battle rather than a massacre. The volume also features more than twenty illustrations, including two previously unpublished Wounded Knee maps drawn by Craft himself.
About the Author
Thomas W. Foley, a retired labor-personnel executive, is the author of Father Francis M. Craft: Missionary to the Sioux. Michael F. Steltenkamp, Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Wheeling Jesuit University, West Virginia, is the author of Black Elk: Holy Man of the Oglala.
Jesuit Father Michael F. Steltenkamp is Professor of Religious Studies at Wheeling Jesuit University, Wheeling, West Virginia. He is the author of Black Elk: Holy Man of the Oglala and The Sacred Vision: Native American Religion and Its Practice Today. Ordained a deacon on the pow-wow grounds of Manderson (Black Elk's reservation town), Steltenkamp was ordained a priest in Chicago. His first assignment was as pastor of an Indian parish in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. After acquiring a Ph.D. in Anthropology at Michigan State University, he taught at Bay Mills Community College, an Indian college on the Bay Mills Reservation.