Digger Indian Agency (California)

Guide to  ancestry, family history and genealogy: birth records, marriage records, death records, census records, parish registers, and military records.

Indian Tribes Associated With This Agency
Digger

History
A farmer-in-charge was assigned to the Digger Reservation near Jackson, California as early as 1899. From 1915-1920, this farmer-in-charge also had responsibilities for the Indians of the Tuolumne Reservation. The agency was discontinued and transferred to Reno Agency, 30 July 1921.

Records
Agencies and subagencies were created as administrative offices of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and its predecessors. Their purpose was (and is) to manage Indian affairs with the tribes, to enforce policies, and to assist in maintaining the peace. The names and location of these agencies may have changed, but their purpose remained basically the same. Many of the records of genealogical value (for the tribe and tribal members) were created by and maintained by the agencies.

A few records of the Digger Agency are in the Pacific Regional Archives of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in San Francisco, including the following:


 * Tribal census records, 1911-1920
 * School census records from both the Digger and Tuolumne Reservations, 1915-1917
 * Other administrative records, 1915-1920

Annual Indian Census Rolls were taken at this agency for 1899-1904 and 1915 thru 1920. These rolls have been microfilmed by the National Archives as part of their Microcopy Number M595, roll 27. Copies of these records are also available at the National Archives, their Regional Archives, and at the FamilySearch Library and its family history centers (their ). These census rolls are also available online at Ancestry.com's subscription web site.

Microfilm copies of ...Narrative and Statistical Reports... for the Digger Agency, 1907-1921, are included in National Archives Microcopy M1011, Roll 21, available in the National Archives system and in the collections of the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City, beginning with their.