The Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions: The View from Philadelphia, 1874–1924

By statute, three members of the Catholic hierarchy constituted the executive committee of the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions (BCIM), a project that emerged first in 1874. By the Third Provincial Council of Baltimore in 1884, the American bishops established a definite program to ensure the sustainable continuation of Indian missions. The nation’s wealthiest dioceses were placed in charge—Baltimore, New York, and Philadelphia.

This paper surveys the role of the BCIM’s episcopal committee and specifically how data was collected and appropriations of the Church’s patrimony were delivered. Using documentation of Philadelphia’s bishops, together with the Walter George Smith collections and the open papers of St. Katharine Drexel found at the Philadelphia Archdiocesan Historical Research Center, I suggest that one of the missing elements in our current narrative regarding Native American Boarding Schools is the matter of oversight. How did church officials treat the constituencies that strove to evangelize Native people? How were the Natives themselves seen by elite East Coast prelates? How did they defend what they saw as the Catholic Church’s interests before the United States government? In addition to answering these questions, the goal of the paper is to shed further light on the whereabouts of source material, how it can be utilized, and to what extent questions remain. It deals less with the situation on the ground and more with the levers of power and decision makers on forming policy affecting Native communities.