Episode 2 of 2

Creation of the Bureau

Name: Creation of the Bureau
Start: 1824-03-11
Location: War Department

When: 11 March 1824
Where: War Department
Part of: US War Department creates the Bureau of Indian Affairs

Secretary of War John C. Calhoun established the Bureau of Indian Affairs as a division within the War Department on March 11, 1824, without congressional authorization.

Calhoun created the agency as a division within his department, bypassing the United States Congress. This action formalized the administrative structure for Indian affairs, transitioning from the previous Office of Indian Trade framework. The bureau was initially organized by region, with commissions for Superintendents of Indian Affairs granted to prominent citizens in each region of the southern, midwestern and western United States.

Sources

Bureau of Indian Affairs Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-17

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.