Agencies of the Bureau of Indian Affairs

In the United States, the office which created and maintained the largest amount of records of the American Indians was the field office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), known as the Office of Indian Affairs until 1947, called the agency. Agencies of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the United States are administrative offices supervising the relationship between and among American Indians and others. Usually an agency operated on a reservation and was responsible for only that reservation. Occasionally, an agency had responsibility for several groups of Native Americans.

Some field offices of the Bureau of Indian Affairs did not achieve the level of agency, but operated as a sub-agency, reporting to an agency, a school, or a superintendency of the BIA or sometimes as an independent office reporting to a superintendency or to the Commissioner's Office in Washington, DC.

The majority of records of individuals were those created by the agencies. They were (and are) the local office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and were charged with maintaining records of the activities of those under their responsibility. Among these records are:


 * Allotment records
 * Annuity rolls
 * Census records
 * Correspondence
 * Health records
 * Reports
 * School census and records
 * Vital records

For a description of the various records, their content, and their availability, link to the pages for each type of record. Each individual agency also has a page describing its history and the location of their records. An alphabetical list of the agencies of the Bureau of Indian Affairs can be found under the category of "American Indian Agencies." They are also linked under the topic "American Indians" for each state. Pages for individual sub-agencies are listed alphabetically under the category of "American Indian Subagencies" and are linked under the topic of "American Indians" for each state where they existed.