Today’s post is by Cody White, Archivist and Subject Matter Expert for Native American Related Records.
In 1913 Philip Longergan, superintendent of the Pueblo day schools, received a deal he couldn’t refuse. Even marked CONFIDENTIAL, adding validity to just how great a deal it was, Longergan was entitled…to purchase an A.G. Spalding and Brothers Incorporated All-Steel Apparatus for the Playground…for 20% off!
Today probably considered the same type of junk mail we regularly toss, or sales emails we just as quickly delete, this certificate was duly saved by Longergan’s office and today will help us highlight the detail at which the then-new decimal filing system within the Bureau of Indian Affairs field jurisdictions sorted records, helping us today easily find records and correspondence in Record Group 75: Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
For the entirety of the 19th century Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) jurisdictions across the country had typically filed their correspondence chronologically, either by incoming or outgoing, with some variances in indexing and sub-organizing. This all began to change when on August 20, 1907, the BIA central office ceased maintaining separate series of incoming and outgoing correspondence and began filing correspondence according to a decimal-subject classification system, called the Central Classified Files. At the same time, BIA jurisdictions across the country too began to abandon the old way and adopted a host of new filing codes, varying by reservation agency. This led to different systems even on reservations next to one another – for example within Montana alone at the very same time, the Crow Agency used code 129 for records about Indian fairs; the Flathead Agency used 129 for racial discrimination records, and the Blackfeet Agency used it for enrollment records. The Fort Peck Indian Agency might hold the record for most systems; after abandoning chronologically organized correspondence in 1906, they used a subject filing system from 1907-1911, an alphabetical system in 1911, an alphanumeric system from 1912-1915, and finally a homegrown numerical system until 1925, when on January 1, 1926, a standard decimal code system was put into place for all field jurisdictions. Today this means one can approach a massive correspondence collection and immediately zero in on a particular topic, and then go to another reservation agency and do the same.
To find an example in order to highlight how the system works, let us go back to September 1912 to a conference of BIA school superintendents held at the Haskell Institute in Kansas. It was there a set of resolutions was adopted to govern the management of BIA schools. Many of the resolutions are largely familiar to those who have researched boarding schools, such as the use of military-esque training and the focus on homemaking education, but they also decreed that all schools should have playgrounds installed.
Schools and agencies started building playgrounds and with the new filing system, where would the purchase and construction of them fit? We start with the hundreds, where each span is broken up into a large broad topic such as finance, lands, and education. We turn to 500, “Supplies and Farm Stock.” Under that, we turn to 510 for “Annual Estimate or Open Market Purchases.” At that point we break into the decimal points, to denote the type of purchase. 510.220 is for “Miscellaneous Articles” with each decimal having empty slots to build in topics at a later point. Under that, we then finally drill down to 510.223, “Playground Equipment.”
Here is what you can find, across reservation agency files nationwide.
(510.223 Miscellaneous Articles Playground Equipment 1924-1931)
