Bureau of Indian Affairs. The federal agency responsible for dealing with American Indians, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) was created within the War Department in 1824. In 1832, Congress authorized a commissioner of Indian affairs to direct it. The BIA shifted to the Department of the Interior when that department was established in 1849. The creation of area offices (eventually twelve in number) decentralized the bureau in 1949, and in 1977 an assistant secretary of the interior for Indian affairs replaced the commissioner.
As the nation's relations with Indian tribes grew more complex, the bureau's responsibilities multiplied. The Washington, D.C., office directed the work of Indian superintendents and Indian agents in the field, arranged treaty negotiations, and distributed annuity goods and money mandated by the treaties as payment for land cessions and handled claims of white citizens for depredations by Indians. Later, the BIA organized a national Indian school system, provided health services, and directed forestry and irrigation projects. The BIA held tribal lands in trust and managed the assets of individual Indians held in trust by the federal government.
Although sharply criticized for mismanagement and inefficiency, and for perpetuating Indian dependency by dominating Indians' lives, the BIA survived. Indians denounced it but were unwilling to see it disappear, for it provided a special connection with the federal government. Moreover, under preferential hiring practices, the BIA's staff by the end of the twentieth century was nearly all Indian. Since 1966, every BIA head has been of Indian heritage.
From the mid‐twentieth century on, many of the BIA's operations were assumed by other federal departments, by the states, or most important, by the tribal governments themselves. By the 1990s, the BIA, once the controlling force in reservation life, had become a service agency for the increasingly autonomous tribes while still remaining the chief federal agency concerned with federal trust responsibility.
See also
Federal Government, Executive Branch: Other Departments;
Indian History and Culture: From 1800 to 1900;
Indian History and Culture: From 1900 to 1950;
Indian History and Culture: Since 1950.
Bibliography
Donald J. Berthrong , Nineteenth‐Century United States Government Agencies, and Philleo Nash , Twentieth‐Century United States Government Agencies, both in Handbook of North American Indians, ed. William C. Stuyvesant, vol. 4, History of Indian‐White Relations, ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn, 1988, pp. 255–75.
Francis Paul Prucha
