Priests of the Sacred Heart
In the early 1920s, some parents on the Lakota reservations expressed interest in gaining additional educational opportunities for their school-age children. In 1922 some Lakota asked the Catholic Church to establish a school on the Cheyenne River reservation. Priests of the Sacred Heart (referred to as the "Dehonians") established a mission in the area in 1923, and worked to organize a school. They found they needed to have the school operation based in Chamberlain in order to have a reliable water supply from the Missouri River.