 Welcome to the National Archives and Records Administration's 2023 genealogy series. My name is Andrea Matney, the program's coordinator, and we are so happy you've joined us. In recognition of public service, we are offering a themed program that will provide family history research tools focused on both military and civilian records. You will also learn how to preserve your own family collections. Our presenters are topic experts broadcasting from across the United States and offering sessions intended for beginners to experience family historians. All are welcome. In addition, we invite you to join the conversation. Participate with the presenters and other family historians during each session's premier time. Here's how to engage in live chat. You can ask questions via chat by first logging into YouTube. Feel free to watch chat because the speaker will answer your questions there in the chat. Type your questions about today's topic at any time. In addition, please select Show More to find links to handouts and the events evaluation forum. We are offering six genealogy sessions on Wednesdays at 1 p.m. Eastern Time, starting in May and ending in mid-June. If you missed the premier broadcast, know that the videos and handouts will remain available after the event and at your convenience. Welcome to today's presentation entitled, Civilian Conservation Corps, Indian Division on the Reservation by Cody White. Cody is the subject matter expert for Native American related records and an archivist from the National Archives at Denver. He holds a Bachelor's of Art in History from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and a Master of Library and Information Science from UCLA. He has been with the National Archives since 2012. Welcome Cody, thank you for your presentation today. Well, hello there. My name is Cody and I'm coming at you from the National Archives at Denver, the only NARA facility in the Mountain Time Zone at an elevation of 5,280 feet here in the Mile High City. Today we're talking about the CCCID, the Civilian Conservation Corps Indian Division. So what is the CCCID? It's complicated. The end. Any questions? Okay, okay, okay, I'm just joking. I've in fact, the whole talk today, chalk full of records and pictures to tell this story. A story that I feel has been overlooked a bit. You'll find articles and essays looking at specific tribes and the program. Maybe a side note in a book on the CCC that many times just lazily reiterates realities of the regular CCC as applying to the CCCID. I really wanted to cover this topic to get it out there more for all of you to maybe help plant the seed with academics. There's a rich book here just waiting for someone to write it. So today, I just want to talk about the program, tell its history through our records, talk about the over 85,000 natives that worked on 70 reservations within it. So let's dive in. So the CCCID started out as the IECW, Indian Emergency Conservation Work Program. I show a picture of John Collier here, FDR's Bureau of Indian Affairs Commissioner, because he was largely responsible for the creation of the CCCID. When in the flurry of New Deal legislation, he was pushing for bettering conditions for tribal nations in what has been called the Indian New Deal, the Wheeler-Howard Act, the Indian Reorganization Act, all of which sought to largely end the assimilation and allotment processes, allow tribal nation governments to be stood up being the centerpiece. Okay, so for brevity and the fact that we federal employees love acronyms, I'll just be saying BIA instead of Bureau of Indian Affairs from now on. So at the same time, the Civilian Conservation Corps was being proposed to give jobs to unemployed and to improve our public holdings. This grabbed Collier for the reservations nationwide were in dire need of material improvements and those natives living on them, like most Americans at the time, needed work and a paycheck. The idea of a native CCCID was broached and started to be developed along the lines of the regular CCCID, but then soon diverged when the various agencies involved in the regular CCC realized it just wouldn't work. Now I've read that the U.S. Army balked at establishing work camps on reservations, but then the BIA said no anyways, so the Army's stance was moot. The BIA's point makes perfect sense here. Only 40 short years before you have Lakota women and children is butchered by the Army, so military run camps on tribal lands were not going to fly. So 90 years ago, in April of 1933, the semi-autonomous CCCID was authorized, which Collier immediately envisioned as not only a jobs program for the battered tribes, but a way to improve the reservations and make them self-sufficient. The BIA's Forestry Division initially ran it, but soon it had its own division and it was off to the races. Now I'll hit on things throughout this talk on how it was different, but I just wanted to start by driving home that this was not the regular CCC, or really even a branch of it as some academics will breezily toss out there and then move on. The regular CCC was a partnership with the Army, Labor Department, the CCC Administration, and the individual agencies doing the work. Here the BIA controlled all aspects, the enrollment, management, implementation. The cash came from the regular CCC and that was about it. Now the BIA was, is structured rather decentrally, with reservation superintendents having a lot of power, which led to each superintendent picking and molding the projects to fit their reservation. Unlike the regular CCC, there were no age requirements. Well, I mean 17 was the minimum, but I have seen academics say there was a maximum age and that is wrong. We have records showing Pueblo men in their 70s were enrolled at one point. Unlike the regular CCC sending enrollees across the nation from their homes, these native men and women worked on the reservations. Now I say women, because native women also took part. CCC ID enrollees could live at home while they worked or if they had to work in remote areas on the res, they could bring their families. They were not limited to working just one period. In fact, the whole regular CCC six month period didn't exist. They could and did work for years. Only funding was the overall limiter and sadly, given the war and labor departments were not involved, enrollee records were not uniformly saved, but I'm getting ahead of myself. So how did they enroll? By applying, here's an application example, noting what they had skills in, if any, and how many dependents again, if any, since a big focus was on relief. I've seen records noting that if one reservation had too many applications and another too few, some were offered the chance to go help elsewhere. Then on some reservations, either too few projects or too little money, the superintendent would limit things, say to just one enrollee per family. The degree of native blood is noted on this application. Some white men who were married to native women were enrolled and this was allowed after the question had been posed to the BIA headquarters. Some agencies, as I mentioned, enrolled women as well. Finding applications as seen here is hit or miss and so I tend to see these fingerprint records seen on the other side much more often. These were taken for each enrollee and then since the Department of Justice. Usually a medical exam was also required at enrollment. I say usually required because some tribes objected. For instance, in Arizona, on one rez, it was a nurse giving the exam and there were protests and the Santa Domingo Pueblo protested the examination stating that tribal rules prohibited it and so the physicals were waived in that case. So it's important to note here the distinction of workers. In the program itself, you had leaders, assistant leaders, and then enrollees. It appears they regarded the leaders as permanent BIA employees or were considered as such and they would get regular OPFs, official personnel files, which are today found in our St. Louis branch. While many enrollees became BIA employees, this was another push of the program to create jobs. I have seen CCCID service noted in later OPFs but there appears to have been no overall effort to ensure that every CCCID enrollees cumulative record, like seen here, was saved, which shows when they worked, the pay they received, skills they had, classes taken, basic vital info. For regular CCC enrollees, you can write to our St. Louis branch and they have all the microfilmed enrollee files the War Department saved. This is not the case with the CCCID. Please note it varies greatly if these were saved and it depends on the reservation. Same goes for evaluations, which you'll also see more often with the leaders and assistant leaders. Now these, like seen here, are interesting for two reasons. One is simply the ranges that they're evaluated on. For instance, for the fitness of leading others, they were ranked from getting complete cooperation to provoking hostility. And secondly, there is an entire section about their suitability for regular BIA employment and skills, again, showing how they use the CCCID program to create new native regular employees in the BIA. Now back to this slide, being a federal employee still subject to the Hatch Act, I had to include a Hatch Act form here signed by a thumbprint. And these were the rigorously maintained record across reservations. So where did they work? Well, that's where maps come in. For example, our cartographic branch in College Park, Maryland has a whole collection of CCCID maps. This one on the slide seen here comes out of local agency files, maps by themselves or they're more often attached to a report and fold it up in a way that takes like 300 attempts to refold back. Now these are great for showing locations of projects, camps, and what not in relation to the work they did. So we've talked about how they joined, where they worked, but what did they work on? Now as I mentioned earlier, Collier saw this as a way to improve the land. And with the droughts of the 1930s, as well as just being a massive rural areas, the room for improvement on the reservations was great. So here's an example of a list of projects and there was often no shortage of ideas. Rush removal for fire prevention, range improvements in general, road and control, erosion control, so many of these mirror what the regular CCC was doing. And sometimes regular CC crews did help on the more larger reservations where other agencies like the Forest Service overlapped. But the goal overall was for natives to improve their own lot. Now I love this photograph seen here from our Kansas City branch. This not only always makes Glenn Campbell's, I am a lineman for the county, you know, play in my head, but also it really shows an example of the basics of what the CCC ID accomplished. Simply bringing phone lines to Indian country. You could probably use a new CCC ID to bring broadband to more people out here now. But 90 years later, all right, digress. Let's keep on. And they built stuff. Now, okay, coming from rural Minnesota, where every farmer knew his way around a welder for machinery repairs, I was doubly impressed by this trailer they built seen here. I mean, that is a professional job right there. And like the regular CCC, they also built buildings. Here is an Adobe storehouse down in New Mexico they constructed. You start to get a lot of these photographs from reports highlighting accomplishments. Sometimes they're in dedicated albums or within textual reports that provide great detail into what the image shows. In fact, most of the images that I have in this talk overall are from such reports. Water in the West is crucial. So naturally, water projects were big. Spring development, reservoirs for stock, the buildings of dams, lots of dams. So we have plenty of dam pictures. Here's a shot of a dam sign. How many times did you say dam today, Cody? 233 sounds about dam, right? Okay, all right, moving on. And so while there were general projects, you'd see nationwide, like some of the ones I have mentioned. Some were a little more tailored to the particular place. For instance, the small pueblos down in New Mexico didn't build massive trail networks or the like, but rather smaller projects or buildings. Tree planting was huge in California. So in these images from our Riverside branch of a nursery on the Mission Agency, it also goes with the then decades long push to make natives into farmers. But this time with some real support, unlike the alumnus era of just sort of tossing them then deep in. Now I pulled the shot of the little black walnut trees seen here largely because we had one in our yard as a kid. You know, you could make such a mess with those black walnut husks and, okay, sorry, another tangent. All right, moving on. As with the regular CCC, the CCC ID would train their enrollees in trades in basic things and these can fill files in series. Here we see some examples of first-aid training, practical instruction, and then they would take tests. Now, I don't know if you can make it out in this first-aid exam that I highlighted here, but it's not just giving the right answer. If you use what they think is too many words, you even got points docked off your exam. On other files I've seen and kind of a sign of the changing times in the 1930s, they'll talk about acquiring films for training. So on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, I recall one series of films they'd show every week. So one week it was for stock-raising training and they showed a Swift and Company film Feeding the Nation and then they followed that with the animated Tom and Jerry short Barnyard Bunk. I talked a bit at the start about living conditions. This would come up in reports a lot, so we're able to get a good glimpse into the camp life. And it was a variety, depending on the reservation, its climate and its size. On small reservations, there was no need for camps. The enrollees lived at home. Then they did have boarding camps where they could live while working. Based on pictures I've seen, these varied from tents to more established cabins. As I mentioned earlier as well, families were sometimes taken along, and then training and lessons and various things were provided to the family while the enrollee worked. Like a sort of daycare, which is kind of advanced when you look at working conditions today. Again, I once saw an academic essay that dismissed the family camps, acknowledging their existence at the beginning of the program, but then saying that they quickly fell out of use. That is wrong. They were still documented in annual reports being used up through 1941. So we'll talk a bit about enrollees not taking room and board in a few slides. But if they were eating on the CCCID's dime, we do get a record of what they had. In administrative files we get bits and pieces of what they ate, camp menus, grocery lists. The list I highlighted here is actually just the first of five pages. And it's interesting in what they did and didn't order for the camp. So chocolate crinkles were apparently an option, but did they order chocolate crinkles? No. I mean, why not? After working hard all day, maybe a chocolate crinkle would hit just right. Not even fig cookies either. They just skipped right over that and just ordered crackers. On the final page, they know that they provided 1,635 meals at 16 cents a piece if you're interested in the statistics. Okay. So say you're researching your ancestor and you have discovered nearly everything. So you start to joke to your genealogist friends that all you need now is their shoe size. Well, look here because here is the shoe sizes of a CCCID crew. You can't get more detail than that. Now I threw the slide in here so I could make that entire joke. Not that you should ever expect to find this sort of record, which based on the handwritten nature seems it should have been quite temporary, but was somehow safe. My big point is you just never know what you're going to find in the archives. Medical records are present. The first here is a chart showing work injuries and what they cost. Like the regular CCC, accidents did happen. And as with so many records, the financial aspect was well documented or concerned with. Then here is an example of the enrollment physical examination that I mentioned at the start. So these are all now over 75 years of age and fully open to the public, by the way. Elsewhere in our records, you'll see weekly sanitation reports of the more permanent camps by agency physicians that detail the health goings on of the enrollees and the camp in general. Sports seem to have been quite popular as recreation, and they got competitive taking on other crews and units. Here we see a photograph of a six man football game on the Standing Rock Reservation. Now I've never seen a six man football game, but my high school played nine man football, so I can sort of imagine the matchups. Anyways, the invaders team here said they scored a touchdown, but in this photograph, I can't see if the ball breaks the plane. So we're going to have to turn to our rules analyst in New York and the records. The records here just aren't photographic. Here on the slide as well is a meticulously kept in colored in softball score sheet in the Northern Cheyenne CCC ID League. And I mean, if you look close, these were shootouts. Look, Ashlyn hung 26 runs on a lame deer. Now these records are anomalies. They're frequently in reports and then general files. Boxing was another common competition between camps, and the camp newsletters make it clear that boxing wins were a port of pride for the crews. So reservations and BIA schools, which had limited CCC ID activities on their grounds as evidenced by school decimal admin files, they celebrated together. Banquets, especially on the anniversary of the CCC ID. Now I love these records. They're found in reports usually because, you know, they're happy. And in BIA records, there is a lot of unhappy stuff. So yeah, parties. This one in Pierre, in this shot from our Kansas City facility, is pretty formal. A band, school auditorium, lots of bunting balloons. The other shot of the log sawing contest seen here, this is from an entire montage of photographs from the Flathead Reservation. They had a 100-yard dash, a three-legged race, horse shoes, log chopping contest, which aid K1, and then this contest, money. As with anything in the government, by far, the most CCC ID records I've seen are about money, what costs what, who's paying who, where it's coming from. In fact, in some reservations I've seen, financial records are all that they have saved. Pictures of a three-legged race, no, no. But 12 cubic feet of project cost sheets, oh yeah. And as the program went on, the budget steadily decreased nationwide. So the focus on economics did become more acute. The record keeping makes sense. The pay for enrollees started out like the regular CCC, $30 a month plus room and board. But what if you're living as home as they could? Well, that's $3 more a month. Eating at home or bringing your own food, that's another $12 a month. Or if needed to be broken down by day, which was allowed, 40 cents a day for food, 10 cents for lodging. Using your own horse for work, that's another $1.30 a month. Now, is Cody the Archivist just making up all these numbers? No, no, and they come directly from the massive official 1944 CCCID handbook. As for payroll records, in the absence of enrollee cumulative records or crew rosters, the prevalence of pay records can list individuals and with those one could loosely pin down and enrollees data service through them. Some are generic, just the overall payroll totals, but some are broken down by individual. Given how the pay could vary so much, as we've just described, the need for payment details does make sense. So going along with the idea that many of these photographs come from reports to publicize the program internally, there was a concerted effort to program the work and program outside the BIA. Indians at work, which I've seen scattered issues of in various places in record group 75. It was actually created as purely an instrument to promote CCCID projects. But in a few years, it grew in scope to encompass all the BIA agency news and actions. Noted here on this slide, the Smithsonian has them online and they can be a great resource to browse on a variety of topics until the plug was pulled on the publication in the mid 1940s. Local reservation based newsletters published are another source for CCCID activities. Some are scanned and online via our online catalog, which is catalog.nara.gov. Our Riverside branch has a great, rich mother load of the Mission Indian ones online, and they talk about the CCCID in those on occasion, as seen here. Some great illustrations in these, I mean, I just love browsing them. Our Fort Worth branch has some scanned and online from down there as well. This Tom Tom Echoes is the only one of a few I've seen in our Blackfeet agency records, but it was written, illustrated by the CCCID staff. So it just focuses on that. This one is great. It's very similar to high school newspapers. So it's just filled with inside jokes and quotes and the like. And then there's happy days, Sunday, Monday, happy days, Tuesday went. All right, all right, all right, no more singing. If you're familiar with the regular CCC, you might have come across happy days. The official CCC newspaper, which did highlight some CCCID projects. In addition to the newspaper, they would hawk like all the souvenir junk for the regular CCC. So in our holdings, we have a catalog from them of these quasi army patches with CCC job and camp numbers or watch fobs, for example. They also reached out to the CCCID. Now I see letters starting in 1935 and they would send reservations free copies. And as this picture from the Standing Rock Reservation shows, some of the native enrollees got to read them. Then they started designing things to sell to CCCID enrollees. This drawing of a proposed patch was found in our record group 75 material of something they sent in to see if they wanted to create it. And then the end, in 1942 projects limped on, but with the war there was just no more money. And not only that lack of funding, which had been steadily decreasing since the late 1930s, there was a lack of bodies, even with no age restrictions, the war gutted the available help. The various superintendents spent much of the year winding down the nearly 10 years of operation, transferring or selling equipment, and as our correspondence shows, trying to hire who they could into the regular BIA service. This order actually coming from DC to the superintendents. So in many series, there is a whole subset of records just related to this winding down, much like the regular CCC. So here are two shots from a 1941 report. And even then I imagine with the ever declining budget, they realized they couldn't go on forever. This report is heavy on the successes of the program, showcasing those who went on the great careers in success after their CCC ID work. And it reads a bit like a victory lap, which they had every right of taking. The CCC ID was a success. Well, I've told enough stories, so let's talk quickly about the records. Where are they? They're everywhere. Reservations are across the country. So the local records are across the country at different national archived facilities. And as I said, what is there is varied. The Wind River Agency in Wyoming, not a whole lot. Sac and Fox Agency records in Chicago, quite a few dedicated CCC ID series. Our San Bruno facility has great enrollee records from the Hoopa Valley, the Carson Agencies, our Fort Worth facility has a dedicated decimal series for the Pawnee CCC ID activities. I've never seen much for the Alaska villages. Mostly that record group 75 material talks about the regular CCC doing things, which makes sense given the small land areas. At our Washington DC flagship location, within the main BIA headquarters collection, there is a whole subset purely about the CCC ID. Now I've only mentioned the dedicated series to the topic, but sometimes you have to dig into larger general administrative series. So by the 1930s, a decimal filing system had been fully standardized in the field. Which means that you can look in the 160 code for employees, stuff on CCC ID personnel. The 200s are the finance section. You'll find CCC financial records, a lot in the 900 section on industries and employment. But then around that time, some agencies got away from death profile series and started what's called program mission files. And the CCC ID work topics can be found within those as well. Long story short, if the records aren't apparent, a researcher will have to dig a bit. But that's where the gems are. And that's the rest of the story. Good day. Thank you again for watching. This ends the lecture portion of the broadcast. But we will continue to take your questions about today's topic in the chat. If we do not get to your question, please send us an email. 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