Description
President U.S. Grant’s national Peace Policy of 1869 set in motion the South Dakota Missionary movement. The peace plan assigned one religious denomination to each and every Indian Reservation to ‘Christianize and civilize’ the Indian. When religious groups protested the federal government’s policy of exclusion, the limitations of the policy were lifted in 1881. Soon thereafter, many denominations were allowed to determine missions where they wanted. Soon missions, churches, and schools of a variety of Christian affiliations dotted the reservations, regularly within a couple of miles of each other. In Lakota Sioux Missions, over 200 historical photographs illustrate the tale of the mission era, its intended policy of assimilation, the resistance to switch, and eventual compromise.