Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, December 1837

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 of thinking that bureaucracy generated less paperwork in the nineteenth century). The agents reported on the overall situation in their areas (including information about geography and climate), schools and education, and thoughts about what additional laws needed to be passed. Most of the authors of the individual sections are not recorded. Only a single section purports to be written by a Native tribe--a petition from the Shawnees. Keep in mind that these reports were written as argumentative or persuasive pieces. The reader should be alert to determine the problems about which they are arguing and their proposed solutions. The New York Public Library extracted these documents into a separate volume. The bibliographic information can be heard in Section 00. - Summary by stepheather