PINE RIDGE - High on a windblown hill overlooking the Red Cloud Indian School here, one Lakota name stands out among the gravestones in the Holy Rosary Church cemetery.

Chief Red Cloud, the Lakota warrior for whom the Jesuit-run educational mission is named, is buried in the school's historic cemetery. The school, and its annual art show, draws more than 10,000 visitors each year, many of whom make the pilgrimage up a path to pay their respects at Red Cloud's grave, said Tina Merdanian, director of institutional relations for the mission.

"That is Red Cloud's final resting place," Merdanian said of the gravesite that is often decorated with tobacco pouches, trinkets and other tributes to the Lakota leader. "A lot of visitors leave their prayers, mementos and some sense of themselves with him."

Red Cloud was born in 1822 and died at the age of 87 on Dec. 10, 1909. He converted to Catholicism later in life, sometime around 1900, Merdanian said.

The parish cemetery also contains the graves of members of the mostly Lakota congregation, as well as the priests, brothers and sisters who belonged to the Society of Jesus and the other religious orders who staffed Holy Rosary Mission when it first opened in 1888. The church and cemetery were founded one year later, and the school eventually changed its name to Red Cloud Indian School, in honor of the man buried on the hill.

The old cemetery is closed to new burials now, but the history of that transitional time period for the Lakota tribe is written in its granite headstones. The graves tell of a nomadic warrior culture rapidly replaced by life on a reservation, Merdanian said. There are graves of numerous Lakota men that are also engraved with the words "U.S. Army Scout." The graves of schoolchildren who died while attending the boarding school tell the history of assimilation through the U.S. government's educational policy. The victims of several deadly blizzards that hit in the early 1900s speak of the dangers and deprivations that were part of daily life.

"The grave markers really document the events that were happening back then, in terms of people who you find that are buried there," Merdanian said.

Red Cloud took a lot of criticism within his own tribe for his decision to lay down his arms and invite the "Blackrobes," as he called the Jesuits and their long black cassocks, to educate future generations on the reservation.

Red Cloud saw that the traditional life he was accustomed to was ending and that in order for his people to prosper, their children must be educated to be able to walk in both the Lakota world and the white man's world, she said.

Today, 100 years after his death, Red Cloud's gravestone speaks across the century to the "bridges and partnerships that were developed back then and continue today at the school," Merdanian said.