Indian Agencies

Indian Agency Council House at Fort Snelling, 1835-37. By David Geister, 2012."The Indian . . . came into reservation life reluctantly. . . . He was practically a prisoner, to be fed and treated as such; and what resources were left him must be controlled by the Indian Bureau through its resident agent."

Ohiyesa (Charles A. Eastman), The Indian Today, 1915

 

Indian agencies were created as part of the U.S. government's efforts to control trade and settle disputes between the United States and American Indian nations. Government-appointed Indian agents oversaw the agencies, and reported any violations to the U.S. War Department. 

In Minnesota, agents at the St. Peter's Agency encouraged Dakota people to give up hunting as a primary method of subsistence, to educate their children according to European-American standards, to practice Christianity rather than their traditional religion, and to adopt European-American agricultural methods. 
 
The agents also encouraged changes to Dakota gender roles.  Traditionally, Dakota women and children had worked fields and gardens, and the agents wanted men to give up hunting and expand their approach to farming. Agents as well as missionaries encouraged the Dakota to adopt farming on a larger scale so it could serve as the main form of subsistence for their communities, and to utilize European-American cultivation methods, such as the use of plows drawn by draft animals.
 
 

Theme:

Shared History

Topics:

American Indian Policy U.S. Government
Cite
Admin. "Indian Agencies." https://www3.mnhs.org/usdakotawar/stories/history/newcomers-us-government-military/indian-agencies
Print This Page
copy-right-img

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at Copyright and Use Information.

Bibliography

Anderson, Gary Clayton. Kinsmen of Another Kind: Dakota-White Relations in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1650-1862. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1984.

Prucha, Frances Paul. American Indian Treaties: The History of a Political Anomaly. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994.
Prucha, Frances Paul. Documents of United States Indian Policy. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2000.
Prucha, Frances Paul. The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians. Abridged ed. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1986.
Sheehan, Bernard W. Seeds of Extinction: Jeffersonian Philanthropy and the American Indian. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1973.

Resources for Further Research

Primary

Lawrence Taliaferro papers. Minnesota Historical Society Manuscript Collections.

Historic Sites

Historic Fort Snelling

Glossary Terms

American Indian Policy

Key People

Joseph R. Brown
Joseph R. Brown
Lawrence Taliaferro
Lawrence Taliaferro
Thomas J. Galbraith
Thomas J. Galbraith
Joseph R. Brown

Joseph R. Brown


Joseph Renshaw Brown was born in York County, Pennsylvania, on January 5, 1805.
After enlisting in the U.S. Army in 1820, he was assigned to the Fifth Infantry Regiment, which had been sent to the upper Mississippi River area in order to build a military post at the river's confluence with what is now known as the Minnesota River. The post--Fort St. Anthony--was later renamed Fort Snelling. After leaving the army in 1828, Brown remained in the area, and in the ensuing years he was at various times a fur trader farmer; lumberman; stagecoach line owner; justice of the peace, clerk of court, and register of deeds; printer; newspaper editor, owner, and publisher; and U.S. Indian agent in Minnesota (1857-61).

Actively involved in politics, he served in the Wisconsin Territorial Legislature, as a delegate to the conventions that organized Minnesota Territory and drafted the state's constitution, and in the Minnesota Territorial Council and Legislature. He was also an avid promoter of a steam-powered traction engine which he purchased from a New York engineer. Brown was associated with the development of several Minnesota communities, including the town of Henderson.
In 1850, the twice-divorced Brown married Susan Frenier, whose forebears included a French fur trader, a Mdewakanton Dakota chief, and a Yankton Dakota chief.

During the U.S.-Dakota War, while he was away from Minnesota on business related to the steam wagon, Brown's house near what is now the town of Sacred Heart was burned and his family captured. They were later released. Following his return to Minnesota he served as superintendent of the Indian prison at Mankato, participated in the military campaigns against the Dakota, and was special military agent at Fort Wadsworth, Dakota Territory. He died in New York City in 1870, while on a business trip in connection with the steam wagon.


For more information, see: Nancy Goodman and Robert Goodman, Joseph R. Brown: Adventurer on the Minnesota Frontier, 1820-1849, Rochester, MN: Lone Oak Press, 1996

View full article: Joseph R. Brown

Lawrence Taliaferro

Lawrence Taliaferro

"I am disgusted with the life of an agent among such discordant materials & bad management on the part of Congress -- the Indian Office."
Taliaferro, in his journal soon after resigning, August 25, 1839
Major Lawrence Taliaferro (pronounced "Tolliver") was born in Virginia in 1791, and served in the U.S. military during the War of 1812. At the urging of President James Monroe, Taliaferro resigned from the Army in 1819 to accept a position as U.S. Indian agent in the area near the confluence of the St. Peters (Minnesota) and Mississippi Rivers. A fort was to be builit there, later known as Fort Snelling, and there Taliaferro mediated disputes between the Dakota and the Ojibwe. He attempted to ease tensions between both tribes, the fur traders, and the slowly increasing white population.
Taliaferro presided over the drafting of a treaty in 1837. He brought Dakota leaders to Washington, D.C., and negotiated what he thought were fair terms for Dakota lands east of the Mississippi River. Unfortunately, the U.S. government was unable to keep up its end of the bargain. The Indians ended up debt-ridden and desperate for their means of survival, and Taliaferro became increasingly critical of the United States’ inability to make good on their promises. In poor health, he resigned his position.

View full article: Lawrence Taliaferro

Thomas J. Galbraith

Thomas J. Galbraith

"For what reason we have commenced this war I will tell you. It is on account of Major Galbraith."
Little Crow in a letter to Henry Sibley, 1862.
Thomas J. Galbraith was an American politician. In 1857, he signed the Republican version of the Minnesota State Constitution. In the wake of Lincoln’s election in November 1860, Republicans swept the federal jobs in the Northern Superintendency of Indian Affairs and the thirty-six-year-old Galbraith was appointed Sioux Agent. As an agent appointed by the U.S. government, he was charged with fulfilling treaty obligations to the Dakota and with enforcing Indian affairs code, including regulating the traders.

By the spring of 1862, fed up with the inefficiencies of the Indian system in which he was enmeshed, Galbraith resigned his post as Agent, then agreed to hold his resignation until after the annuity payment was made. Throughout the summer he tried to deal with an impossible situation. When annuity payments were delayed, he tried to convince the Dakota to accept greenbacks rather than the gold promised them. He kept the few government rations he had left locked in a warehouse at the Lower Agency and he tried to convince traders to extend more credit to Dakota clients for much-needed food.

On August 18, Galbraith and a group of Civil War recruits known as the Renville Rangers took off from the Upper Agency. Galbraith believed he would deliver the recruits to Fort Snelling, return to the reservation to make the annuity payment, then accept a leadership position in a Minnesota regiment as thanks for his recruiting efforts.

News of the outbreak of war overtook Galbraith and his recruits at St. Peter on August 19. The Renville Rangers changed course and marched to the aid of Fort Ridgely. Meanwhile, Galbraith’s wife, Henrietta, and their two children were being led to safety from their home at the Upper Agency by the Wahpeton Dakota leader Anpetutokeca (John Other Day). Galbraith helped defend Fort Ridgely and was wounded at the battle of Birch Coulee. After the war Galbraith was exonerated in two congressional investigations into allegations that his conduct at the Agency brought on the U.S.-Dakota War. Galbraith died in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1909.

View full article: Thomas J. Galbraith

Related Documents

search-icon
LT journal 1
More Info
search-icon
LT journal 3
More Info
LT journal 1
LT journal 3

Indian Agency Records

Journal kept by Lawrence Taliaferro, Indian Agent of St. Peters from 1820-1839. Includes copies of letters sent by Taliaferro to Colonel Henry Leavenworth, Jean-Baptiste Faribault, General William Clark, Alexis Bailly and the United States Department of War. An index of notable letters is enclosed at the end of the volume.