 Welcome back to the 2019 Virtual Genealogy Fair. If you are following along from home, this is session number five. The lecture is for the experienced skill level and entitled, Discovering and Researching Bureau of Indian Affairs School Records, and our speaker is Cody White. During this session, he will describe boarding and day school related records, both for individual students and schools in general that are found in Record Group 75 Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Mr. White is an archivist with the National Archives at Denver and subject matter expert for Native American related records. And now turning the broadcast over to Cody White. Thank you. Well hello there to everyone listening and watching live. I'd also like to welcome those in the future as we are recording this for posterity's sake. We are now live. It's high noon in the Mile High City and I want to thank everyone for tuning in and listening to me talk a bit today on BIA records. Next slide please, slide number two. Let's go over a bit of what my plan is for today. I'd like to start with a brief history of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, what we'll call BIA for short, and its education efforts over the years. We'll look at the types of schools American Indian children attended, the types of records generated, restrictions on certain records, and those files that no longer exist. Then we'll look at what's in student case files throughout the years, we'll examine what can be found in administrative records, and then we'll wrap it all up with a research example before finishing with how to start your own research and what resources are available online. Next slide please, slide number three. So what is the BIA? Well with predecessor agencies dating back to nearly the start of the U.S. the Bureau of Indian Affairs was formally created in 1824 by the Department of War, the handle relations with native populations entry pressed westward. A few decades later the Bureau had evolved into its own agency under the purview of the newly created Department of Interior where it remains today. The structure of the agency has varied over the years with superintendencies covering entire territories giving way to individual agencies, sub agencies, sub stations, all created to administer to a particular tribal nation or multiple nations on one reservation. I'll mention agencies a lot today and that's what we're talking about, a local office that works directly with one or many tribal nations. For example the Red Lake Agency in Minnesota administers the Red Lake Reservation home of the Red Lake Chippewa. So later the superintendencies were brought back in a fashion as area offices to manage the various agencies under their geographic location. As one can imagine relations between the agency and the tribal nations they administer have ebbed and flowed, more often ebbed as we will see today. Next slide please, slide number four. So as a primary connection between the government and the various tribal nations the BIA features a pretty tortured history and it is from one such dark chapter that of the drive for assimilation that BIA schools emerged from but let's go back even further for a minute to show how the idea of education had been floating around a while, excuse me, missionaries were embarking on education efforts even before our country was founded. William and Mary in the early 1700s had one such program and in 1819 the federal government first made funds available to support missionary schools aimed at the native population. Five years later there were 32 missionary schools educating nearly 1000 native children in the east. The BIA though at this time having moved on largely from the trading focus with the factories were now engrossed with the removal in the east and yet to deeply push into the west nor really fully concern itself with education efforts. Next slide please, slide number five. So that brings us to the mid 1800s, the treaty era where the federal government signed and ratified 377 treaties with various tribes. These including the one seen here on this slide are in our holdings and were recently the focus of a preservation and digitization program thanks to an anonymous donor and are all available online via our online catalog which we'll touch on more in a bit. But I digress, it was from in many of these treaties where the BIA run schools were established as the texts would clearly call out the creation of schools or education programs. So within the spate of treaties in the 1850s came the first on reservation boarding school at Fort Simcoe on the Yakima reservation which opened in 1860 and was an operation until 1922. Next slide please, slide number six brings us to the assimilation era. So by the late 1870s this policy that had been kicked around for decades had taken firm root in the BIA and dramatically altered the lines of American Indians and what was left of their lands. So with tribes already forced on the reservations through the treaties the new movement pushed further contending that if American Indians adapted European style clothing, the English language, institutional education and the concept of land ownership and farming they could better assimilate into the population at large. In conjunction it was at this point we see the first non-reservation boarding schools. The most well-known, researched, written about and referenced of which is the first, the Carlisle Institute in Pennsylvania in operation from 1879 to 1918. The BIA was ruthless in stocking these schools with students so much so that in 1885 Congress had to pass a law forbidding the taking of kids without parental permission and then later specifically the tactics of withholding rashes to force parents to give up children. So even seeming progressives like Estelle Rio from up in Wyoming, an early champion for women's rights as superintendent of Indian schools from 1890 to 1910 espoused the common views that American Indians were racially inferior. So in these two school images from schools thousands of miles apart we see prime examples of the assimilation movement notice the uniforms, the Eurocentric art they're creating. There are many great books, memoirs, essays out there that well document this era and they're worth checking out. Next slide please, slide number 7. The off-reservation schools began faltering by 1920 though with attacks from both sides. One side argued that they weren't assimilating the children well enough and as the other side simply pointed out they were cruel. The few that remained were able to be pickier about students. Students had to apply and the schools shifted from the militaristic sort of industrial education to more liberal arts. So vocations were still taught and encouraged. The 1928 Merriam report which deeply, deeply criticized the BIA's education efforts and helped usher in the Indian New Deal in the 1930s. Further forced schools to change, numerous schools closed in the 1930s while others most notably the Santa Fe Indian School embraced or started to embrace native culture and fostering native art. So here on this slide we see a 1935 photo from the steward Indian school grounds right outside Carson City, Nevada and the uniforms, they're long gone. Jumping ahead 40 years the Cherokee Central Elementary School classroom looks no different from a regular public school. Now a side note, this school today is in fact tribally run. In 1962 the BIA shuttered all of these schools in the quality boundary, the land that the eastern Cherokee bought in the early 1800s and opened the Central Elementary School and in 1990 it was turned over to the Tribal Council to run. So speaking of elementary schools, the public ones, another education trend in the 20th century was the increase in native children attending public schools which saved the agency money and saved it from criticism, yet were no less assimilating. This is documented in the blisterings 1969 Senate report on American Indian education which as a time frame is about where this presentation will end as our BIA collection here at the National Archives starts to taper off at that point with more recent records still with the agency. Next slide please slide number eight. So let's dive into the type of schools and start with the most well known, the non-reservation boarding schools. These were built apart from reservations often at former RV fort sites and operated independently of BIA agencies reporting directly to the BIA commissioner and at times, as seen in both Michigan and New Mexico, superintendent of these schools would also be put in charge of nearby BIA agencies. For these reasons, these schools alone will often have their own dedicated record series in our collection and so are the most researched in reference. The student body was also often diverse with students from a variety of tribal nations. Speaking of Michigan, here is the Mount Pleasant School seen on this slide in operation from 1893 to 1934. Next slide please slide number nine. The reservation boarding schools were those built on the reservation. Now these were the earliest of the boarding schools and it was actually from them the idea that educators needed to remove the students even further from their people to fully assimilate them that the non-reservation boarding schools emerged from. Yet these schools continued alongside. They were run under the respective BIA agency. So while there can be dedicated series to be found, often the records will be mixed in with general records as we will see. In this slide, we see a student body photograph from the Cherokee boarding school in operation from 1890 to 1954. Next slide please slide number 10. These schools were by far the most numerous and least controversial given they were based on the traditional concept of a student going during the day and returning home at night. As BIA education efforts were standardized, these schools became the sort of equivalent to elementary schools feeding students into either boarding schools or local high schools and you could have dozens and dozens on one reservation split up per reservation district for example. In this slide we see a shot of students down in New Mexico along there with an inquisitive deer off to the left. Important to note, records for individuals attending these schools often move with the students along to their next school. So strictly day school student case files are rare to find. As with the reservation boarding schools, records of these schools are usually mixed in with general agency records and we'll see that later in the presentation today. Next slide please slide number 11. As mentioned earlier, we're not run by the BIA often erroneously thought not to be documented in our collections. So many early on were boarding schools but they dropped that aspect. The costs were high and they couldn't retain students so they largely switched to the day school model. And while there is not the level of detail we have for other schools, mission schools were required to submit monthly reports to the respective agency of which students were there, attendance, dates and the like. So depending on the agency these were sometimes saved. Many of these schools, as with the accompanying churches, are located deep in tribal lands. Part of the allotment process during the assimilation era granted allotments to schools and churches. One such example, St. Ann's Indian School in North Dakota, seen in this image from our holdings, still educates Turtle Mountain Chippewa children today and is still open. Next slide please slide number 12. So if an individual you're researching doesn't show up in any BIA school records, there is a strong chance they simply attended a public school which shouldn't be looked as being superior to BIA schools. The assimilation aspect was just as acute given the curriculum and prejudices. The number of students attending public schools really took off around 1920. Here, 10 years later on this slide, we can see a snapshot from just one reservation of how many students were attending each type of school and over half were at a public school. Again, as with mission schools, the local BIA agency required reports from public schools. So if these were saved, one can find proof of attendance and some limited information. You see public school records come up a lot in financial files. Since reservations are exempt from property taxes, some school districts require the BIA to pay for each student, setting off a complicated formula for that exact cause. This image here from the Library of Congress, it's simply the best image I could find for an early 20th century rural school. Native children probably didn't attend this one in Huron. It's a few hours from both the Flathead Reservation to the East and the Coeur d'Alene Reservation to the Southwest. Next slide, please. Slide number 13. So for a visualization of school locations and how they changed, I want to show you a couple of maps. Next slide, please. Slide number 14. Here are the schools in 1899. Both types of boarding schools are marked, and the day schools are simply numbered. So in both of these for a second, take a look at Colorado. You see two non-reservation boarding schools noted, Grand Junction and Fort Lewis. Now with that, let's jump ahead 20 years. Next slide, please. Slide number 15 to 1919. Now, look at Colorado again. Those two schools are long gone, and the other is only a new reservation boarding school on the southern youth's land. As mentioned earlier, this was emblematic nationwide, the closure of schools throughout the years, and it leads us to a records problem that I like to call. Next slide, please. Slide number 16. Law schools, or at least that's what I call them. As I mentioned before, non-reservation schools were sort of their own little island reporting directly to D.C. The rule of thumb I seem to have signed that if they closed before World War II, the records of the school were often not saved. What remains is a spattering in various general BIA files. Some agencies at different time periods, like the Navajo Agency and the Wind River Agency, compile student case files from all types of schools across the country of all reservation children, and so case files from law schools can show up that way. Agency reports on who they send, agency student sentences, or annual and statistical reports into D.C. are all additional sources about the activities of the law schools. In this slide, we see some records from one such law school, the Genoa Boarding School that was in Nebraska, closed in 1934. This graduation commencement program can be found in New Mexico's Charles Burke School records, and this list of students found in Montana's Flathead Agency records. Often in these cases, too, local institutions and colleges will work to assemble what little documentary record is left on the school, as well as collect oral histories and whatnot, so they sort of create a more of a localized history for them. Next slide, please. Slide number 17. Before we go any further into our talk today into student case files, let's detour quickly to restrictions. General school and agency records typically have few privacy restrictions given their age, in case with student case files. Privacy laws are in place to protect the individual. There can be information that isn't the most flattering or whatnot in these files, so even with those that are old enough to be open, bear that in mind when researching. But really, they were kids. Kids often in horrible places, horrible situations. I myself got into trouble in that sense, great. Convictive obstruction of justice ended up on probation, so such troubles or disciplinary records are hardly indicative of the individual. Generally speaking, a student case file is closed with the public for 75 years after record creation. As long as a student is alive, only they or someone with the power of attorney can access it. If a student dies, that restriction ends, and this can be proved with a death certificate or given at later records to have social security numbers, the social security number death index. But it is on the researcher to prove it. Many student case file series are mixed with dates, so the entire series is closed to blanket reference until all the files are older than the 75-year restriction. The case files used in the rest of this presentation today are all open, either because they're old enough or unfortunately are from students who passed away. Next slide, please. Slide number 18. And one more stop before we dive into student case files. I want to talk a little about names. In the early years, the formulation process was the assigning of English names, and dissertations have been written on this very topic, so I won't dwell, but to say that school records can be a useful tool in reflecting this, where one can see what was changed and better help connect other genealogically useful records. But here we see an excerpt from a list of students showing the assigned English names. Later in history, names also present a roll block of sorts for research, especially in tribes to the idea of surnames, so generic ones, meaning son of or grandson of were created. And then, as unfortunately given the high mortality rate, even into the 20th century cost, children shifting around and thus acquiring new surnames. Then lastly, you have the possibility of incorrect different spellings by official. So the shifting of family and misspellings are both seen here on this slide. All four of these records are for the same Betty. So all these issues can add wrinkles in researching. And with that caveat, let's now look at some actual student case files. What one can find in the boarding and high school case files up through the 1970s. Next slide, please. Slide number 19. So, the earliest student case files. They are really even hardly that, when you can find them. For some schools like the Albuquerque Indian School, opened in 1881, history destroyed early records. So, here's one for Francis King, who came from the Oklahoma Territory to Carlisle. And this is it. There's scant biographical info, how long she was there, and then a follow-up form of what she did after school. Throughout the history of BIA schools, they were really big on learning what a student did after the school, which can be useful in learning who they married, where they moved and such. Next slide, please. Slide number 20. So, now at the turn of this century, you start to see more records saved. Medical records, applications for the non-reservation schools, outing forms where the students went and how they were, correspondence, detailed grades, promotion records. Financial records start to appear, usually in regards to travel to and from the school. And that's the topic of the handwritten note down at the bottom of this slide, where Ramona was given permission in 1918 to go home for Christmas. Ramona was given permission to return her file with a letter from 1917, where the school superintendent forbid her from going home that Christmas. Her Pueblo, only roughly 35 miles due west of Santa Fe. He wrote that no students should go home for Christmas. A real peach, but sadly that was the norm in the era. Next slide, please. Slide number 21. Between the world wars, we start to see more standardized forms across schools, buildings and what schools they attended, parents' jobs, and we see the first official student photograph. We also start to see more student counselor type records, behavior ratings, as well as standardized testing results. It never fails. I see some of these and I have flashbacks to those Iowa basic tests that we had to take in elementary school. Also presents starting around now will be earlier school records from day schools and other boarding schools, starting to give one a more complete glimpse of the career. Next slide, please. Slide number 22. As we saw to a limited extent in Francis' early file from Carlisle, we now start to see extensive documentation of post-school life. Actual questionnaires that are mailed to students after graduation to inquire as to what they've done. With John's case, it was most likely due to his closeness to the principal as evidenced in the personal postcards he sent here as he trained to become a side note where Etho did go on to serve with distinction in the Pacific earning the Bronze Star and Purple Heart in his three battles. We also start to see records that are more personal, writings or artwork from the students themselves as well as more detailed transcripts. Counseling records, health records, standardized testing results, travel records, however mundane, do lead to large files at times. Students and work programs will have forms detailing that work and location where as and in the evals for the work. And then harkening back to the early years of BIA schools, vocational training was again emphasized for some students. There was a special six-year program for older students, 16 to 20 years old with little or no education. They had received the basics and then some sort of vocational training and lead with a certificate. Next slide, please. Slide number 23. And this is similar to our last slide with some extras. Here at the Intermountain School, we have a lot of different photographs, yet more detailed academic records and often sound scriber discs as a student's diction exercise. The poor material and recording system means the quality varies and cannot handle many playbacks. Our motion picture branch does have the capability of attempting to capture the audio so our field units have nothing locally to do so. In this era, you also may see university transcripts. Again, the BIA was very interested in collecting such records. Next slide, please. Slide number 24. So for mentions and records of individual students, we talked about the case files, but now let's talk about where you can find additional files about students, the type of records and how to locate them. And in some cases, it's easy. There are dedicated series from a school, whether it's a tenant ledger or an administrative file series from a certain school. However, in other cases, you have to dig into the agency files to glean out the school-related records. BIA agencies used a host of filing codes varying by agency for many years until a standard decimal code system was put in place in 1926. With those codes, one can narrow their hunt within hundreds of boxes to zero in on school records that might be abused. It is important to note the records do vary greatly by agency. So what you might find, say, in the Fort Bidwell agency records won't be the same or as detailed as what you might find in the Shawnee Indian agency records down in Oklahoma. Now, some agencies will lump all their administrative files together in a massive series, and others would split them out into education, construction, financial. Again, it varies greatly by agency. Next slide, please. Slide number 25. Let's dive into what's out there. I've mentioned reports before, so we'll start there. The government loves reports, and here are two examples detailing mission and public school attendance found in the Fort Bell map agency files under the 800 file code of education. So in the earlier years, the agencies would compile these descriptive lists of pupils, this one here from 1887, for kids sent to each particular school. Now, these reports evolved, but the information stayed larger the same as seen in this 1936 attendance report. Likewise, even more reports emerged in the 20th century. Student censuses found in the 54 decimal code are the massive list of all the students overall and the schools they attended. Then there were the annual, semi-annual, quarterly, monthly, I'm not joking here, reports that were generated for the headquarters in D.C. that were both statistical and narrative discussing the operations and accomplishments of the schools. Now, remember back when I said non-reservation schools reported directly to D.C.? It's in these four more reports, which are largely reproduced on Microfilm Series M1011 that are one of the best sources to find out more about those law schools we talked about. But back to this slide, this report on attendance of students at public schools are a boon to find, because if you're researching someone who didn't go to a BIA school, you might still find where they attended via such reports, as long as you know the tribe. Again, though, it can be a crapshoot if they were saved. Now, all right, we've talked enough about reports. Moving on. Next slide, please. Slide number 26. Let me just get a drink of water quick. Individual health records. They can be found in the student case files, but general health records can also be found. And while they may not be perhaps of the greatest use to individual researchers, the aggregate information found in them can be a gold mine for academic researchers studying health issues. Schools struggled with illnesses, outbreaks of smallpox, measles, tuberculosis, colma were constant issues. Here we see a form for documenting students' weights. We see a monthly report from the Charles Burke School down in New Mexico. Sorry, again, for bringing up reports. And then, unfortunately, a plat of the cemetery at the Santa Fe School. BIA records, especially early on, show how cold the agency could be in these regards. Sending sick students home seemingly before they passed, or demanding parents pay to shift the body's home of deceased students or else, not get the body's back. Again, this academic topic is better explained and addressed elsewhere, but here is where the records are found. Next slide, please. Slide number 27. I'm not really pertaining to individuals, but I've found that researchers often enjoy the records of the school buildings in Ancestor attended, where they were and how they were laid out. These can be found in several filing codes within general files, education matters, social building and construction. This 1861 classroom diagram comes from our cartographic branch in College Park, Maryland, and the school land plot, showing, for instance, where the well water was good and bad, comes from a lodge pole school up in Montana. Next slide, please. Slide number 28. As we all probably remember, school newspapers are newsletters from our own education. BIA schools were no different. These are very sporadic. These are not grade records, but were saved anyways and are now found in our collections. Some schools were good about saving them, and others, not so much. Our online catalog, which we'll talk about later, is a good place to start to see what might be easily discoverable. For the Chilaco School in Oklahoma, our Fort Worth branch has digitized many of the Indian School Journal magazines from there, and placed them online through our catalog. These seen here were saved for whatever purpose. Next slide, please. Slide number 29. Sports. Sports were a big part of the BIA school experience, and this is really seen in the general admin files, with rosters, photographs, letters, detailing, equipment acquisition. Here we see the dominating 1933 season of the Albuquerque Indian School football team, as well as the women's basketball team from the Rapid City Indian School. Early on, women's basketball was pretty big. The girls team from Fort Shaw in 1904, after going undefeated across Montana, beat an all-star team in St. Louis, Missouri twice to be crowned the world champions at the World's Fair that year. Next slide, please. Slide number 30. Schedules are another of those items, along with menus, too, that one can find in agency records that further flesh out a student's tenure. What exactly they didn't when. Here we see one such daily schedule from the Sherman Institute, out to Riverside, California. Slide, please. Slide number 31. Then there are the generic photographs, capturing student life. Here we have a classroom shot from a glass plate negative of the Chilaco School, along with the 1971 shot, one of my favorites, of a student band up in Oregon at the Chimois School. Slide, please. Slide number 32. And then, lastly, student art, found either in case files or in dedicated folders or scrapbooks. Here are a couple pieces from students here in the Southwest. Slide, please. Slide number 33. Alright, so let's tie it all up in a research example. Gretchen O'Larking was born on the Fort Belknap Reservation back in 1922. Here we see her at age three, captured in the photographs that accompanied her family's industrial survey entry taken in 1925. Next slide, please. Slide number 34. So you go the easy route first. You run her name through our online catalog of collections, folders and items. And you get a student case file hit. Next slide, please. Slide number 35. Which, after clicking on and reading, you see the file is located here in Denver. That's the National Architect Branch. So you reach out. Next slide, please. Slide number 36. And we get our student case file. The file is thin, but given it's from a reservation boarding school, it is somewhat rare and gives us some good info. Again, note we have a misspelled name. Old King, that was corrected to O'Larking. Had that not been caught, our research would have been derailed a bit. This is also why when we get a student file request, we then come up empty. We often think outside the box and for different iterations in case the name was misspelled in this regard. Next slide, please. Slide number 37. And we also get a copy of an application to the half skill school. Now this is the best source of seeing exactly what other schools she attended. Note how she first attended a boarding school then a day school before heading to a non-reservation boarding school. Now these applications are filled with genealogical information on the family as well as personal info on the student such as hobbies and books they enjoyed. Next slide, please. Slide number 38. In other school names, we then dig into the four Belknap agency records regarding schools and we find some rosters from her time at the day school and the boarding school. Note the one week gap in attendance of everyone at the big warm school there on the left. Elsewhere in the folder it was noted that the school was shut down due to a measles outbreak. Slide, please. Slide number 39. We also get a schedule of what her day was like at the boarding school. Now I know there's lots to read in so I'll take a break here to note at this point that all these slides are available for download and reviewing on the National Archives Virtual Genealogy page. Slide, slide number 40, please. So researching further since she applied to the Haskell Institute she might have went there. So we go back to our online catalog and look up records from that school and we see they're at our Kansas City facility. Next slide, please. Slide number 41. Slide number 42. And it turns out she did. The Bismarck Indian School she was attending closed another of our law schools so she transferred. We now have an updated photograph and again a misspelled name. Gretcham, Gretcham, I don't even know why I think it was spelled that way. Next slide, please. Slide number 42. But as is sometimes the case the previous school records are carried over so we still get a snapshot of our time at Bismarck seen here on the left. In addition to Haskell seen here on the right. Slide, please. Slide number 43. And we also get the original version of our application. As I mentioned before these standard four page applications have a great deal of information. Gretcham enjoyed volleyball for instance. And reading. Call of the Wild, Tale of Two Cities, Indians at Work magazine which was actually published by the BIA and these are highlights. CCCID activities. The Smithsonian at the complete run of these online are a little more scattered but getting a little bit off topic. Now next slide, please. Slide number 44. Gretcham's entire Haskell student case file has 132 pages. Largely because of material like this. Memos, evaluations, schedules. Next slide, please. Slide number 45. And lastly Gretcham actually doesn't have much for health records. Typically you'd find physicals, immunization records but not here. This is about it. It's a doctor's note regarding a swallowed pin in her sewing class. Slide, please. Slide number 46. So how does one do their own research? Our online catalog is useful as we have seen throughout this talk for learning what records series are out there which schools have their own collection or where agency records are at and it can be searched by keyword, creating agency, date, record group, NARA facility feel free to play around at catalog.archive.gov In some cases, student case files can be inquired into via phone or email and copies made out to send but as many of the research avenues mentioned today, one will need to visit in person at a National Archives location and really dig into the records. As very little is digitized and available online and the work needed to go through the folders is beyond what our staff can do for the public. BIA records are located coast to coast from our grand facility on Pennsylvania Avenue to the National Archives of San Francisco with a host of additional locations within that 2,817 miles span. Slide, please. Slide number 47. Start is our American Indian records webpage where you can learn more about starting genealogy research explains the type of records, provides information on which tribes are covered and where those records are at. There is a page here that lists agencies and tribes by state as well as a page for BIA schools that have dedicated record collections arranged by state. We have some big improvements coming to this site in the next year so please, please check back. Next slide, please. Slide number 48. Before I open the floor to questions I wanted to pause a moment to tell a story of a former student at the Intermountain Indian School in Brigham City, Utah. Tony Dedman of the Navajo Nation graduated in 1964 with vocational training to be a welder and was widely praised by a school advisor. One year later, however, he found himself arriving in South Vietnam and 10 months after that he was killed in action in an ambush on a no-name hill along with 11 of his airborne comrades. So I'd like to dedicate this talk today to Tony to all the other BIA school alumni, the warriors who gave their lives in defense of a country but often looked upon and treated them as second-class citizens, if as citizens at all. Thank you. Next slide, please. Slide number 49. So do we have any questions queued up? Any questions live? Yes. Thank you, Cody, very much for your excellent presentation. You've already had a number of compliments and you might be having invitations for some other conferences. Here I am battling a cold too and I appreciate that. You're welcome on behalf of our online audience. So far I have about looks like six questions. We'll start with a very hopefully easy one. Are there any records of teachers at these schools? Yes, yes, they're actually often that's another common research topic. Well, people coming in who have ancestors that were teachers. A lot of the school records and the general records will have letters handwritten by the teachers. Additionally, I'd like to give a shout out to our St. Louis facility. It's not part of the record group 75, but the employee files for people that work for the BIA are kept with the civilian records in St. Louis at our facility there. So if you have an ancestor you believe worked for the BIA teacher or whatnot, you should reach out to them and see if you can get the employee case file. From that you can then see what agencies they worked at and then reach out to the different units to see if you can find more records on what your ancestor did or that person did. That's great news to hear. Thank you so much. We're going to start on one side of the coast of the U.S. and go to the other with our next set of questions. So your next question is my great-grandmother is 100% Native American and believed to have been raised by a white family. Are there any other records for children in New England about 1842, specifically New Hampshire? Your records, especially for that area, get a little difficult because at the time they weren't really concerned with, I don't want to say cataloging, but listing. At the time it was the removal area and whatnot, especially in the east. The BIA hadn't really did the widespread censuses that they would do later on. Generally speaking, it's a lot easier to pin down relatives starting around 1880 when the BIA required censuses from all the different agencies. In the 1840s there were only some limited ones going on with the tribes that they were unfortunately trying to push out. So with that said, it might not have a lot of luck within our federal records, but again, sometimes local institutions might have stuff. The earlier back you go, the better luck you'll have with local historical societies and whatnot as the government just didn't keep that detailed record. Okay, thank you for that answer. Our next question is about treaties. The question is, and then I'll give you some more detail about what they're looking for, the question is, is there a link that can be provided to the new online images of the treaties? Specifically looking for the treaties made in California, 1850s that were not ratified. Let's break that into two. I'm drawing a blank. The treaties are kept in a different record group, not record group 15, that's VA. I can't remember the record group number, but they all are in the catalog under a particular series in that record group and then you can kind of browse them. Now as for non-ratified treaties, last I heard that they actually are still working on digitizing that collection. They had some extra funds left over from doing the ratified ones and they found that the non-ratified ones needed some conservation and work and whatnot. So those are in progress. I don't have any kind of idea on the time frame of when they would come out, but rest assured they are being worked on as far as digitization goes. Okay, that's great news. We have a glimmer of hope there. So the next two questions are about specific schools. The first question is, I did not see anything about the Shawnee Mission School in Kansas. Was that because it was not associated with the federal government? Yeah, and usually if it said mission school, it was run by some religious institution. The Catholics ran most of them, but there were other denominations that did have schools as well. Again, like I said, if you know the tribe that your ancestor or the person you're researching was from, you can go to that agency and see if you can find any mentions of them being sent there. But as far as school administrative records from those mission schools, they just weren't collected by the federal government. In the case of Catholic mission schools, they did have a Bureau of Education in the Catholic bureaucracy and those records are at Marquette University. Again, I'm not too familiar with what they have, though. Well, it's great that you did have an answer about Marquette. That's wonderful. Thank you. Going back to the National Archives Holdings, are there certain BIA schools that are particularly well-documented compared to other schools? Yes. By far, Carlisle is. And I think that's for two reasons. One is the first. So it was kind of the bell weather for what was to come. And the second reason is that there's a lot of information that we can use to the symbol in that regard. And also that those records are found in D.C., which have always been a little more just better described and better accessed. I may have a little bias because I'm in the West, but there's quite a few other non-reservation boarding schools out here that have pretty extensive collections that are really starting to describe and get better into. So I think there's still a wealth of information that we have a few more. But for now, our last question looks to be about... It's a general research question, and it is, how do you get pictures of the documents when making a personal visit to the National Archives? Well, you know, even in the short time I've been here, it's really shifted. You can bring in your own scanner, at least out here in the field, and now we're simply taking them with cell phones. As long as there's no flash, there's really no problem. A lot of the older stuff is a little more fragile, so that's actually a better way of capturing the image than, say, using a photocopier or a flat-bed scanner. But yes, feel free to drop in to any of our regional facilities by what you like and make copies or pictures. Let's give the audience a moment to see if there's any more questions. You were very thorough, apparently. Again, you had a lot of really nice compliments that came in. It's a lot of info. So again, if anybody has questions later on down the line, you know, feel free to shoot them to inquire, and we'll get you set up. Wonderful, thank you. So as Cody said, if you have questions that we did not get to or you think of them later, please send them to inquire at narra.gov and please reference Mr. White's session, so we know that the question is for him. Videos and handouts will remain available after the event from this YouTube page and from the FAIRS web page.