Showing results by author "Commissioner of Indian Affairs" in All Categories

Because the US Constitution gives the power of relating to (and control over) Indian tribes, Congress requires updates every year, and those reports are available to the public. In 1837, the Office of Indian Affairs was still under the War Department and did not publish the Commissioner's report as a separate document. In this era of removal and the apparent growth of the Office of Indian Affairs, the focus is on reports from the agents regarding specific topics, along with instructions to the agents, laws and regulations, and numerous blank forms to be completed (lest we fall into the folly ...

Because the US Constitution gives the power of relating to (and control over) Indian tribes to the federal government, Congress requires updates every year, and those reports are available to the public. In 1827, the Office of Indian Affairs was still under the War Department and did not publish the Superintendent's report as a separate document. The advantage to this is that---unlike in later years when the Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs and the individual reports from Indian agents was published separately---we can hear two of the diverse sides of the complicated story ...

On December 29, 1890, the US military entered the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation with the intention of disarming the natives. When met with resistance, the cavalry opened fire on the Lakota in a massacre that killed several hundred men, women, and children. A few months later, some of the Lakota survivors met with the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington to state their side of the story. These powerful testimonies present this horrific event from the perspective of those most hurt by it.