Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, December 1827 by Commissioner of Indian Affairs

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 of the relationships of the various offices within the US government, various Native American tribes, and US citizens. The New York Public Library extracted these documents into a separate volume. The bibliographic information can be heard in Section 00. Keep in mind that these reports were written as argumentative or persuasive pieces. The reader should be alert to determine the problems about whi