Buechel, Eugene (1874–1954)

Fr. Eugene Buechel S.J. was a German Jesuit who labored as a missionary among the Lakota (Sioux) of the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservations in southwestern South Dakota. Although not formally trained as an anthropologist, he made important contributions to knowledge of the Oglala and Sicangu bands through his friendship with many Lakota people and through astute study and recording of various aspects of Lakota language and culture.

Fr. Buechel was born the last of 10 children in Schleid, Germany, 6 years after the Lakota signed the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 and 2 years before the Battle of the Little Big Horn. His father, Heinrich Joseph Büchel, was a farmer. According to his own reckoning, Eugene attended grade school in Schleid from 1880 to 1886, and then gymnasium, which was part high school and part college, from 1886 to 1896, and a year of seminary in the neighboring town of Fulda. He left the diocesan seminary in 1897 to enter the Jesuit novitiate in Blyenbeck,Netherlands.

In response to political and religious struggles in Germany and the growing spiritual needs of German Catholic immigrants in the United States, German Jesuits and members of other religious orders began immigrating to the United States as early as 1847. Fr. Buechel came to the United States in 1900, 14 years after Fr. Jutz S.J. inaugurated the first Jesuit permanent mission to the Lakota of the Rosebud reservation. Buechel continued his Jesuit training in the United States, studying philosophy at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin (1900–1902), teaching religion and music and serving as a prefect at the Catholic boarding school (1902–1904) on the Rosebud reservation, where he also began learning the Lakota language.

He completed his studies in theology in St. Louis (1904–1905) and was ordained in 1906, completing his last year of Jesuit training (tertianship) in Cleveland, Ohio. Although Fr. Buechel showed great aptitude for languages while studying Latin and Greek, his persistent headaches rendered him unsuitable for scholarly pursuits in his superior's opinion, and he was assigned to work as a mission pastor. Fr. Buechel's time was divided between the Catholic Jesuit missions of the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations. He was the superior at Holy Rosary Mission from 1908 until 1916, a remarkable distinction given that he had been ordained for only 2 years and was just 34 years old. He served as superior of St. Francis Mission on the Rosebud reservation from 1916 to 1926, returned to Holy Rosary on Pine Ridge until 1929, when he transferred back to St. Francis on the Rosebud, where he remained until his death in 1954.

His scholarly work began with the elaboration of a dictionary, the core of which was an earlier Dakota dictionary begun by the Pond brothers and worked on by Stephen Return Riggs. He also made use of the linguistic work of Dakota linguist Ella Deloria, who worked closely with Franz Boas. He collected artifacts for a museum, which he originally housed in the Jesuit residence. Later, his collection was moved to a separate building constructed in 1950 to honor his 50 years as a Jesuit.

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