The 1922 Surveys
In 1922, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs Charles Burke sent a memo to all Indian agencies charging the superintendents to survey the housing and industry of tribal citizens. After decades of intentional, intensive, and invasive assimilation policies, the Office of Indian Affairs (OIA) wanted a mechanism for measuring the "progress" of individuals toward "civilization," or proof of their success.
The responses to memo, known as Circular 1774, varied. After several prodding inquiries from Burke’s office, Calvin Asbury, the superintendent of the Crow Reservation, conducted 244 surveys. Asbury's survey forms included data on the age of head of household, their allotment number, degree of Indian blood, whether their land was held in trust or fee simple, how much debt they accrued, the size of their family, education and access to school facilities, health, location, and general productivity of the land including the number of farm implements and status of water. Wherever possible the surveys contained an accompanying photograph.
Asbury also included a supplemental "remarks" section in which he judged the character of the individual. He was often cold and cruel in his assessments.
These forms are an imperfect historical document. They tell us a lot more about the agent who filled them out than they do about the Crows. But they certainly tell us something about the Crows, often filtered through the frustrations of the agent who couldn't convince people to move out of their tipis and into frame houses, or stop elders from adopting their grandchildren, or get wives to start putting away jams and preserves instead of making pemmican. Their frustrations are the Crows’ resistance and resilience.
This archive is a prototype that seeks to reunite the Apsáalooke with these images of their ancestors and return control over their own narrative. These documents were created as instruments of classification and surveillance. Is it possible to reframe them as something else?
Further Reading
- Cody White, "Homes on the Range: The Bureau of Indian Affairs Industrial Surveys of the 1920s," Prologue Magazine 49, no. 3 (Fall 2017).
- Angela Parker, "Photographing the Places of Citizenship: The 1922 Crow Industrial Survey," Native American and Indigenous Studies 2, no. 2 (2015): 57-86.