Since its inception on March 11, 1824, the Bureau of Indian Affairs has been a witness to and the principle player in the history of federal-tribal relations. Once an instrument of federal policies to subjugate and assimilate American Indian tribes and their peoples, the BIA has changed dramatically as have those policies over the past 177 years.

In the early years of the United States, Indian affairs were governed by the Continental Congress, which in 1775 created a Committee on Indian Affairs headed by Benjamin Franklin. Fifty years later, the BIA was established under the War Department, and eventually moved to the Interior Department in 1949.