Indian Affairs

The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is the office of the federal government responsible for many aspects of Native Americans life. Among the several different activities within its jurisdiction in the 20th century are EDUCATION, employment, police, welfare, AGRICULTURE, and industrial development. Because of the BIA’s enormous influence over Indian affairs, from the beginning it has been the source of great controversy among Native Americans and white Americans over its duties and their execution.

The BIA has a long history that is deeply enmeshed in the thorny relationship between the United States’s majority population and its Indian minority. After the U. S. Constitution was written and ratified, the new government organized in 1789 gave the War Department responsibility for overseeing all relations with Native peoples. This structure reflected the view that Indian peoples were a military issue, and so they were to be dealt with by the military arm of the government. Given the continuing confrontations between settlers and Native Americans in the 1780s and early 1790s, this position was understandable.

In 1806 a separate Office of Indian Trade was organized, again under the aegis of the War Department, to manage the factory system, an attempt to regulate trade with Indian peoples in a fairer and more honest manner than that pursued by private fur-trading companies. Although the factory system was a success in fostering better relations with Indian peoples, it was constantly under attack by fur-trading interests as unfair competition, and Congress abolished the system in 1822. Two years later, Secretary of War JOHN C. CALHOUN established a Bureau of Indian Affairs within the War Department, appointing Thomas L. McKenney its first chief. McKenney had been superintendent of Indian trade from 1816 to 1822. His duties, as defined by Congress, were to supervise the financial arrangements that arose out of “laws regulating intercourse with the Indian tribes.” In his reports, McKen-ney called the agency the “Office of Indian Affairs.” (The name remained in use until 1947, when “Bureau of Indian Affairs” again came into use.) In some ways, McKenney was more a financial officer than one concerned with policy. But as in so many cases having to do with the federal government, especially in the 19th century, financial issues became closely associated with issues of policy.

In 1830, when Congress passed and President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, it became clear that removal was to become the government’s favored solution to the Indian presence east of the Mississippi River. Partly in response to this new direction, Jackson replaced McKenney, although the latter had strongly supported the Removal Act in 1832. Congress then established the bureau-level Office of Indian Affairs, headed by a commissioner appointed by the president and confirmed by Congress. The office was still an agency of the War Department, and the new commissioner reported to the secretary of war. The commissioner was charged with the “direction and management of all Indian affairs and all matters arising out of Indian relations.” Two years later, another law provided for the reorganization of the Department of Indian Affairs, establishing several new agencies and superintendencies.

The Office of Indian Affairs was responsible for conducting removal negotiations as well as for oversight of existing treaties. In cooperation with the U. S. Army, the Office directed the removal of the remaining nations east of the Mississippi to new reservations in Indian Territory (later the state of Oklahoma). This process was accomplished through a series of treaties of questionable legality and legitimacy, and, where necessary, through the use of force. The most noteworthy example of enforced removal and its disastrous results was the roundup of the remaining Cherokee in Georgia in autumn 1838, and their enforced removal during the winter of 1838-39 on a march known as the Trail of Tears.

With the removal of Indians east of the Mississippi to the West, debate began anew over whether the management of Native American affairs properly lay within the War Department. In 1849, the Office of Indian Affairs was transferred to the newly created Department of the Interior. By this time, the bulk of its responsibilities had to do with the administration of the Indian Territory reservations as well as the other reservations scattered throughout the nation. The office has frequently been accused of fostering government dependency among Native peoples during this period by arbitrarily depriving them of their traditional lifeways, social structures, and even their own names. Certainly, there have been many examples of unscrupulous government agents. Some agents were known to withhold food rations from recalcitrant individuals; others cheated nations out of funds that the government had held in trust. Such experiences spurred feelings of bitterness and distrust on the part of Native Americans toward the government.

The agency’s name was changed to the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1947, although its mission and its place within the Department of the Interior remained the same. Today, the BIA attempts to work in concert with tribal governments to establish health, education, and economic development programs to benefit Native groups.

Further reading: National Archives and Records Administration, “Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.” URL: Http://www. nara. gov/guide/rg075.html. Downloaded 2001; Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Govern-mewt and the American Indians, 2 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984); James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1999).

—Mary Kay Linge