Dawes Act

The General Allotment Act of 1887 (Dawes Act, ch. 119, 24 Stat. 388, ) authorized the President of the United States to survey Indian tribal land and divide the area into allotments for the individual Indian. It was enacted February 8, 1887 and named for its sponsor, Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts. The Act was amended in 1891 and again in 1906, by the Burke Act.

The Dawes Commission, set up under an Indian Office appropriation bill in 1893, was created, not to administer the Act, but to attempt to get the tribes excluded under the Act to agree to the allotment plan. It was this commission that registered the members of the Five Civilized Tribes and many Indian names appear on the rolls.

The Curtis Act of 1908 abolished tribal jurisdiction of Indian land.

Background

From the Civil War until 1885, the population of the United States nearly doubled; from thirty million people to nearly sixty million. In an agrarian economy, that, along with four million slaves freed by the war, created a tremendous need for more land. The only large areas of arable land still unsettled were the government lands in Indian Territory and the sparsely populated Indian reservations. These forces, funded by railroad money, continually pressured the government for action, particularly on opening the government land.

Allied with them, and, in particular, supporting the dissolution of the Indian reservations, were the various humanitarian organizations (Indian Rights Association, Indian Protection Committee, Friends of the Indians, etc.) and several well-known Indian speakers; Sarah Winnemucca and Zitkala Sa among them. They felt the reservation system was wrong and that Indians interred under it would never be self-sufficient.

Against the Act were the meat-packing industry, the huge ranching associations leasing the Indian land, and the Five Civilized Tribes —all well-funded and having great influence in Washington.

Finally, U.S. Congress, after years of trying to satisfy pro-settlement forces and protect Indian interests, wrote and passed the Dawes Act in 1887.

Summary of the Sections

A brief summary of the Act mentioning the most pertinent portions.

Section One authorizes the President to survey Indian tribal land and divide the arable area into allotments for the individual Indian. It says that the head of any household will receive 160 acres (647,000 m²), and each single individual above the age of eighteen and each orphan will receive 80 acres (324,000 m²), and each minor will receive 40 acres (162,000 m²).

Section Two states that each Indian will choose his or her own allotment and the family will choose for each minor child. The Indian agent will choose for orphan children.

Section Three requires the Indian agent to certify each allotment and provide two copies to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs; one to be kept in the Indian Office and the other to be transmitted to the Secretary of the Interior for his action, and to be sent to the General Land Office.

Section Four provides that Indians not residing on their reservation and Indians without reservations will receive the equal allotment.

Section Five provides that the Secretary of the Interior will hold the allotments in trust for twenty-five years. At that time the title will belong to the allotment holder or heirs. It also allows the Secretary to negotiate under existing treaties for the land not allotted to be purchased on "terms and conditions as shall be considered just and equitable between the United States and said tribe of Indians."

Section Six states that upon completion of the Land Patent process, the allotment holder will become a United States citizen and "be entitled to all the rights, privileges, and immunities of such citizens".

Section Seven addresses water rights on irrigated land.

Section Eight exempts the Five Civilized Tribes and several others from the act.

Section Nine appropriates the funds to carry out the act.

Section Ten asserts the Power of Eminent Domain of the Congress over the allotments.

Section Eleven contains a provision for the Southern Ute Indians.

Results

The practical results of the Act were that some sixty million acres (240,000 km²) of treaty land (almost half) were opened to settlement by non-Indians. The plan proved disastrous for the Indians, however. Few attained the self-sufficiency envisioned by the humanitarian groups.

The congressionally commissioned Meriam Report of 1928 documented fraud and misappropriation by government agents. In particular, the act was used to illegally deprive Indians of their land rights. After considerable debate, the congress terminated the allotment process by enacting the Wheeler-Howard Act (Indian Reorganization Act) of 1934.

The Act had one of the most substantial impacts on Natives, most significantly affecting Native gender roles. This Act broke up the reservation lands into privately owned parcels of property. In this way, the legislators hoped to complete the assimilation process by deteriorating the communal life-style of the Native societies and impose values of strengthening the nuclear family and values of economic dependency strictly within this small household. Legislators' opinions of communal living saw the extended family as “needy” since the Indigenous ideas of wealth contrasted and disagreed with Western ideas of wealth (Stremlau 277). Indigenous people valued generosity and received status by being generous. Western values form around individual wealth and surplus and status is gained from these same values.

The kin-network, which was the base of economic and social reproduction in Indigenous societies, split and the reservation became a checkerboard pattern. Each “head of the family,” which, in contrast most Indigenous traditional structures, became the male, received a 160-acre allotment and each single person over eighteen years of age or orphan received an 80-acre allotment. The United States government opened the surplus land to non-Indian settlement, creating the checkerboard pattern (Stremlau 276). The allotment policy abolished Native society leaving Native people as simply Americans, and impoverished Americans at that.

The Act forced Native people onto small tracts of land distant from their kin relations. Traditionally, in most Indigenous societies, women were the agriculturists while the men were the hunters and warriors. The Allotment policy depleted the land base, ending hunting as a means of subsistence. According to Victorian ideals, the men were forced into the fields to take on the woman's role and the women were domesticated. This Act imposed a patrilineal nuclear household onto many traditional matrilineal Native societies. Native gender roles and relations quickly changed with this policy since communal living shaped the social order of Native communities. Women were no longer the caretakers of the land and they were no longer valued in the public political sphere. Even in the home, the Native woman was dependent on her husband. Before Allotment, women divorced easily and had important political and social status for they were usually the center of their kin network (Olund 157). With this Act, women were deprived title to land and the distribution of allotments proves this point. To receive the full 160 acres, women had to be married and even then, her husband received title to the land.

Polemics

"...the real aim of Act is to get at the Indians land and open it up for resettlement." — Senator Henry M. Teller, 1881.

"We must throw some protection" [over the Indian]. "We must hold up his hand." — Senator Henry L. Dawes, 1887.

We must fight until every Indian "shall stand...panopolied in the armor of a self-supporting citizen of the United States"- Senator Henry L. Dawes ^*

Sources Cited

Olund, Eric N. “Public Domesticity during the Indian Reform Era; or, Mrs. Jackson is induced to go to Washington.” Gender, Place, and Culture 9 (2002): 153-166.
Stremlau, Rose. “To Domesticate and Civilize Wild Indians”: Allotment and the Campaign to Reform Indian Families, 1875-1887. Journal of Family History 30 (2005): 265-286.

External references

Dawes Act of 1887 fulltext from the Native American Documents Project
Wheeler-Howard Act (Indian Reorganization Act) 1934

Native American law | Legal history of the United States | 1887 in law