In this dissertation I explore the space of cross-cultural encounter between the Maria Rickenbach Benedictine Sisters of Switzerland and the Lakota/Nakota peoples of Standing Rock and Crow Creek Reservations, South and North Dakota, in the period 1881-1924. This space emerges through the medium of story and report: stories told by the Lakota/Nakota in correspondence to the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions (BCIM), in petitions to the Government, in interviews with anthropologists and oral history collectors, in fictional narratives; stories told by Indian Agents in reports to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs; stories told by the sisters and their male cohorts in correspondence and periodic reports to their superiors, the BCIM and the government, in community histories. These stories illuminate the religious, cultural and gendered boundaries through which the encounter was negotiated. They make palpable the spiritual disciplines/practices by which missionaries attempted to make Catholics of the Lakota/Nakota. the complexity of native response, as well as missionary accommodations. Although told with very particular agendas for very particular audiences, these stories bear witness to how the encounter was mobilized, to what benefit and at what cost. This work constitutes a fresh reading of the Dakota Benedictine Catholic missions.