Fort Peck Indian Agency (Montana)

The Fort Peck Indian Agency is the administrative office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs on the Fort Peck Reservation in northeastern Montana. Its supervising office is the Billings Area Office.

History
The Fort Peck Agency was the successor to the Milk River Agency in Montana and since 1874 has been responsible for Assiniboin and Sioux (mostly Yanktonai) Indians.

Records
Many of the historical records of this agency are housed in the Rocky Mountain Regional Archives of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Denver, Colorado. Records in that collection which may be of assistance to the genealogist include:


 * Records of birth, death, marriages, adoption, and divorce, 1882-1920
 * Land patents, 1914-1918
 * List of Turtle Mountain halfbreeds, 1881
 * List of allottees, no date
 * List of Assiniboine school children, 1910
 * School census, 1916

Many more records of lesser genealogical value are also in this collection.

Reports of Inspection of the Field Jurisdictions of the Office of Indian Affairs, 1873-1900 have been microfilmed by the National Archives as part of Microcopy Number M1070. The reports for Fort Peck Agency, 1880-1900, are on rolls 14-15 of that Microcopy set. Copies are available at the National Archives, their Regional Archives, and at the Family History Library and its family history centers (their microfilm roll numbers 1617687-1617688).

Annual Indian Census Rolls were taken at this agency for 1891-1895, 1897-1908, and from 1912 thru 1940. These rolls have been microfilmed by the National Archives as part of their Microcopy Number M595, rolls 151 thru 160. 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 microfilm numbers 576840-576849). These census rolls are also available online at Ancestry.com's subscription web site.

The 1900 federal census included population schedules for the Fort Peck Reservation. The census includes the non-Indian employees of the Fort Peck Agency, as well as many pages of Indian Population Schedules for the native population of the Reservation. They are recorded as District 210, Fort Peck Agency, in Valley County, Montana.

Microfilm copies of ...Narrative and Statistical Reports... for the Fort Peck Agency, 1907-1935, are included in National Archives Microcopy M1011, Rolls 52-53, available in the National Archives system and in the collections of the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, beginning with their microfilm numbers 1724270-1724271.