The instrument was not an Act of Congress and was never voted on. In 1883 the Secretary of the Interior, Henry M. Teller, directed the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to establish courts on the reservations and to draw up rules for them, and the resulting code was issued as departmental regulation. Its authority rested on the agency's control of the reservations and of the rations, annuities and supplies on which the people there had been made to depend after the destruction of the buffalo herds.
The offences it created were of two kinds. Some were ordinary: theft, drunkenness, destruction of property. The rest were ceremonial and social. The sun dance, the scalp dance, the war dance and other similar feasts or dances were prohibited, and participation was punishable by withholding rations for a period or by imprisonment. The practices of medicine men were prohibited, on the stated ground that they hindered the adoption of civilised habits and discouraged families from sending children to school. The destruction or giving away of property at a death, which is the mourning practice of many nations, was prohibited. Plural marriage was prohibited.
The judges of these courts were themselves Indians, appointed by the agent and removable by him, which is a feature of the design worth noting: the enforcement was placed inside the community it acted on.