How to get an Indian Wars pension file

Index first, then the right building

• Find the card in the Indian Wars pension indexThe National Archives' index to Indian Wars pension files, 1892 to 1926 (microfilm T318), is online at FamilySearch for free and at Fold3. Search the soldier's name; the card gives the war or campaign, the unit and captain, the application and certificate numbers, and sometimes the widow's name. Save an image of it. Spellings wander in these indexes, so try the variants a clerk might have heard.
• Read the number on the cardA card with an ordinary application and certificate number points to the National Archives in Washington. A card carrying a number that begins with C or XC belongs to a pensioner, or a widow, still on the rolls after the early 1930s, and that file is held by the National Archives at St. Louis instead. Most Indian Wars survivors died before then, but many widows did not; check before you order, and give the C or XC number on the request if you have one.
• Order the pension file from NARAOrder through eservices.archives.gov as a pension file, giving the soldier's name, the war or campaign, the unit, and the numbers from the card. Ask for the complete file. For the wars before 1858, a bounty-land warrant application under the act of 1855 is often interfiled with the pension papers, and one order returns both.
• If you also want the service recordFor the volunteer wars of 1817 to 1858 there is a compiled service record, indexed on microfilm M629 and partly digitized on Fold3 (the Florida wars in particular). For the Regular Army campaigns after 1865 no compiled service record was ever made; the man appears in the Registers of Enlistments (M233, online) and, if he was an officer, in his commission file. The pension file is usually the fuller story.

Then the reading starts

The declaration names the campaign; the government's searches say what the record could prove; the certificate or the rejection letter says how it ended. Here is what our report does with these files, and the waitlist below holds today's price for you.

What the trip costs, start to finish

The index is free and takes an evening. The file is one National Archives order with NARA's copy fee and mail weeks, and for the early wars it often brings the bounty-land papers with it. Then $99 for the report, days later. If the card sends you to St. Louis, expect the same order, just a different building answering it.