Pipestone Indian Agency (Minnesota)

Indian Tribes Associated With This Agency
Mostly Mdewakanton Sioux in southern Minnesota

History
The Pipestone Indian Boarding School in Pipestone, Minnesota was established in 1892 as a nonreservation boarding school. This school was assigned agency duties and operated as the Pipestone Agency, beginning in 1914. When the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians closed in 1934, Pipestone Agency acquired their records. The agency and its associated school closed in 1953.

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.

Some records of the Pipestone Agency are in the Central Plains Regional Archives of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Kansas City, including some records of the Birch Cooley Day School, Pipestone Boarding School, and the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians.

Annual Indian Census Rolls were taken at this agency for 1914, 1918-1919, and 1914-1939. These rolls have been microfilmed by the National Archives as part of their Microcopy Number M595, roll 385. Copies of these records are also available at the National Archives, their Regional Archives, and at the Family History 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 Pipestone Agency, 1910-1937, are included in National Archives Microcopy M1011, rolls 107-108, available in the National Archives system and in the collections of the Family History Library in Salt Lake City (their ).