Bureau of Indian Affairs

[Diane Merkel]

"The Interior Department and the National Archives are trading denials that either was responsible for filling some trash bins with what appears to be documents of interest to U.S. tribes. The discovery came to light on Sept. 1, when Archives staff noticed federal records in one of the trash bins behind the National Archives Building near the Capitol in Washington.

"At least a portion of the documents were Bureau of Indian Affairs records dating to the 1950s. There were dark suspicions that the old records had something to do with mismanagement in the Interior Department."

The brief article doesn't tell what was tossed, but you can read it in its entirety at www.journalnet.com/articles/2005/09/28/opinion/opinion01.txt

The discussion about Dewey Beard, who lived until 1955, has me wondering what sort of records are available through the BIA. Their website has been "made temporarily unavailable due to the Cobell Litigation." What on earth is that? Has anyone researched the BIA records?

[Ephriam Dickson]

Diane:

I have done considerable research in BIA records. They are quite extensive, both at the main archives building in Washington D.C. and at the regional archives in Kansas City.

If you want to know more about what is available, you can request from the National Archives an inventory for Record Group 75, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (Preliminary Inventory 163, published in 1965). These inventories give brief descriptions for each of the many types of available records. More detailed inventories of records at the regional archives in Kansas City are available from them. And there is a small publication listing which of these records are available on microfilm.

If you are interested in knowing what documents exist beyond just BIA records, I would also suggest the book Guide to Records in the National Archives of the United States Relating to American Indians, published in 1981 and available through the archives.

As to what might be available about a specific individual like Dewey Beard, there is a great deal. The most useful is the agency census records that were made at each of the Lakota agencies beginning in 1886 (and somewhat sporadic before that). You can follow his family through time for information about him, his wife, children and other relatives living with him. There are also a number of other ledgers of personal information, including payments for annuities or treaties, maps of allotments, and in the decimal files, possibly correspondence from that individual. And after allotment, when a Lakota died, there is paperwork relating to his genealogy as efforts are made to determine how his allotment will be divided among relatives.

[markland]

To follow up Ephriam's post, here are a couple of National Archive links that feature Native American material.

The main site:

www.archives.gov/research/native-americans/

Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs

www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/075.html

[shan]

Ephriam,

I tried asking, and indeed paying the people at the Cheyenne river agency to dig around for any information they could find on the Oglala Low Dog, who, according to Hardorff ended his days there. Sadly, they came up with absolutely nothing.
I'm not sure why, as the people at Nara did unearth a few things on him, not much, but they found some documents which reported that he was arrested after the Ghost dance outbreak, spent six months in jail in the East, and was eventually returned to the Cheyenne River agency. Unfortunately, they found nothing else, telling me that there was a tremendous amount of information on microfilm, but that much of this had not been seen, or evaluated, in other words, looking for information would be an expensive way of looking for a needle in a haystack.
Shan

[Diane Merkel]

Ephriam and Billy, thank you both very much. After looking at the websites, I can see what Shan means about looking for a needle in a haystack!