Sub-sub-series consists of records from Manitoulin Island District Office area filed according to various filing systems. Vols. 12814-12858 are the records of the letter filing system introduced in September 1884, by Ottawa, in the Northern Superintendency, Division 1, and continued by its successor the Manitowaning Agency. The surviving files constitute the longest running and most complete record, held in the National Archives, of a field office for this period. The new system was intended to replace the older method of filing (which registered incoming letters chronologically, folded them into "dockets," and then indexed them by author's name), with a more subject-based approach. After 1884, incoming letters were entered in a letter register book and files were created by sequentially assigning each a file number which was also given to letters of a similar type. Subject indexes would later be created for the register books.
In the process of assignment, some numbers were left blank and there appears to have been an attempt to later fill in these blanks with related files creating a crude "subject-block" system based on townships. The actual letters were fixed in chronological order to a linen file jacket, and then listed in a like fashion on the back. The replies to these letters were also recorded on the jacket and linked to the agency letterbooks by a page number reference. Sometime around the end of the First World War, some of the copies of outgoing correspondence were also "spiked" on the linen jackets, thus creating a true file system. Vol. 12858 contains a few files from a similar system that was started in the Gore Bay Agency around 1903.
The files from the Manitowaning and Gore Bay Agencies are concerned mainly with land sales to settlers, specifically: assignments; affidavits of settlement duties; applications for letters patents; paying for lots; patented lots; and cancellation of sales. There are also files dealing with cutting timber, road allowances, water-fronts, band annuity and interest distribution, and arrears.
Volumes 12680-12687 continue the filing system of 1884 after the creation of the Manitoulin Island Agency, and contain files which illustrate the transition between it and a new recording system. In 1950, a "subject-block" system was introduced into Department of Indian Affairs field agencies. File codes now consisted of an agency classification number (which for these records was initially 19, but later changed to 488) followed by a hyphenated number indicating subject divisions. Older files, back to 1884, were renumbered to correspond to the new system, although the files were not always actively used in it, and the renumbering not always thorough or consistent. Thus, file jackets will bear multiple numbers, and in many other cases, the agency number code was not written on the file or the documents. For this series such information, along with part identification, has sometimes been added in the finding aid in square brackets [ ].
Volume 12684 contains files that were created in the 1884 system and continued with the new designations introduced in 1950. File subjects for Vols. 12680-12687 include: organization and administration; band management (general, membership, elections, minutes of council, enlistments); engineering services; arts and crafts; farming; law enforcement; natural resources (hunting, mining, timber); band membership returns; education; band loans; statistics; and sales of Indian land.
Also included in this sub-sub-series are two indexes of file subjects. Volume 12896 was produced by the Sault Ste. Marie Agency as a guide to the files now found in the Sault Ste. Marie Agency series, (RG10-C-VI), and the "Index to file backs" found in Volume 12925 relates in the same way to an unknown file system which included documentation on the Township of Gore Bay.
Volume 12868 includes miscellaneous correspondence (1940-1944) concerning the Whitefish River and Point Grondin Bands that was not filed by the agency codes.