The Indian frontier, determined upon in 1825, had by 1840 been carried into fact, and existed unbroken from the Red River and Texas to the Lakes. The exodus from the old homes to the new had in many instances been nearly completed. The tribes were more easily persuaded to promise than to act, and the wrench was often hard enough to produce sullenness or even war when the moment of departure arrived. A few isolated bands had not even agreed to go. But the figures of the migrations, published from year to year during the thirties, show that all of the more important nations east of the new frontier had ceded their lands, and that by 1840 the migration was substantially over. [Illustration: CHIEF KEOKUK From a photograph of a contemporary oil painting owned by Judge C. F. Davis. Reproduced by permission of the Historical Department of Iowa.] President Monroe had urged as an essential part of the removal policy that when the Indians had been transferred and colonized they should be carefully educated into civilization, and guarded from contamination by the whites. Congress, in various laws, tried to do these things. The policy of removal, which had been only administrative at the start, was confirmed by law in 1830. A formal Bureau of Indian Affairs was created in 1832, under the supervision of a commissioner. In 1834 was passed the Indian Intercourse Act, which remained the fundamental law for half a century. The various treaties of migration had contained the pledge that never again should the Indians be removed without their consent, that whites should be excluded from the Indian Country, and that their lands should never be included within the limits of any organized territory or state. To these guarantees the Intercourse Act attempted to give force. The Indian Country was divided into superintendencies, agencies, and sub-agencies, into which white entry, without license, was prohibited by law. As the tribes were colonized, agents and schools and blacksmiths were furnished to them in what was a real attempt to fulfil the terms of the pledge. The tribes had gone beyond the limits of probable extension of the United States, and there they were to settle down and stay. By 1835 it was possible for President Jackson to announce to Congress that the plan approached its consummation: "All preceding experiments for the improvement of the Indians" had failed; but now "no one can doubt the moral duty of the Government of the United States to protect and if possible to preserve and perpetuate the scattered remnants of this race which are left within our borders.... The pledge of the United States," he continued, "has been given by Congress that the country destined for the residence of this people shall be forever 'secured and guaranteed to them.' ... No political communities can be formed in that extensive region.... A barrier has thus been raised for their protection against the encroachment of