Dawes Act

In 1887, Native Americans who were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands were about to receive an opportunity to reclaim some small portion of the United States and receive US citizenship. Originally intended to provide the indigenous population with a secure future through farmland, the Act only continued to erode the well-being of native tribes. How was the intent lost in misunderstanding the people the Act was supposed to help and compromises to less benevolent interests made along the way?

Fig.1 Tribal Land Allotment Map

Dawes Act Summary

The Dawes Act occurred during a shift in the federal government's attitude toward indigenous populations. The inherent view that Native Americans were lesser than White Americans continued, but what that meant for the relationship between the two changed in the eyes of the federal government. The government was long engaged in relocations, wars, and other acts of hostility and violence with the indigenous populations.

Still, new thinking was that assimilating Natives would erase what differences existed. The Dawes Act was an attempt by some Congress members who felt they would help the Native Americans. Their ignorance of Native Americans and White land speculators who took advantage of the situation derailed their intentions.

Dawes General Allotment Act

Authored by Massachusetts Senator Henry Dawes, the Dawes General Allotment Act, or Dawes Severalty Act, was passed on February 8, 1887. Many indigenous people lived on tribal reservations, holding the land in common and under tribal governments. The Dawes Act cut up the tribal land and redistributed it to individual members of the tribe, who must agree to farm it for 25 years. Non-native investors could purchase any leftover land. With the parceling off of the reservation land, the Native Americans on that land now became US citizens, subject to US law instead of their tribal government.

Fig. 2- Henry Dawes

Henry Dawes

Serving in the Senate from 1875 to 1893, Dawes was chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs. As settlers reached the end of westward expansion, Dawes feared that the Natives tribes who had lived in that area or resettled there would also have their land taken from them. He felt that the best recourse to prevent this was to dissolve the tribal governments, turning the indigenous population into US citizens, with their land protected as individual private property. He attempted to do this by turning the Natives into White European-style farmers.

Land Speculators

To gain support for the Act, Congress amended the act. The new amendment allowed for the selling of some of the tribal land to, drawing the support of land speculators. Beyond the land sold off directly, land speculators took advantage of the situation to cheat indigenous landowners with low offers for their land parcels. By the end of the practice in 1934, tribes only retained 48 million acres of the 138 million they held in 1887.

Even the land that native owners received often returned to the federal government. The government then auctioned off the land they seized due to failure to pay property taxes. Often, the owners were unaware of these taxes and could not pay them.

Fig.3 - Dawes Act Being Implemented

Dawes Act Reservations

The Dawes Act divided the land into many tribal reservations, with some exclusions. Under the Act, tribe members registered under their tribe to receive an allotment of 160 acres per family or 80 acres for a single adult who must occupy the land for 25 years. The government assigned some of the lands to institutions like schools and churches but auctioned off the "surplus" land after the allotment to land speculators. Through this process, tribes lost many land holdings and what remained was often of poor use to people.

Suitability of the Dawes Act

For various reasons, forcing the indigenous populations onto small pieces of private land led to poor outcomes. The first was that the native people were often interested in hunting and not farming. The more significant reservations had worked as hunting grounds, but the smaller parcels were only sized for farming, which many were not interested in. Those who did wish to farm encountered other problems: the land was often in unsuitable desert areas, or the person did not have the money to buy the necessary supplies and equipment to cultivate the ground they had received.

Dawes Commission

Although section 8 of the Dawes Act excluded The Five Tribes of the Northeast, the Dawes Commission was created in 1893 and first led by Henry Dawes himself to convince the excluded tribes to turn their territory over to United States government and become US citizens. The tribes were initially resistant, but increased powers granted to the commission forced compliance. The commission oversaw the registration of tribal members, allotment of land, and the auction of the remaining tribal land.

The Five Tribes

• Cherokee
• Choctaw
• Chickasaw
• Creek
• Seminole

Impact of the Dawes Act

In 1934, the Wheeler-Howard Act ended the Dawes Act, with the 48 million acres of tribal land remaining in trust for the tribe. To this day, the complicated legal ownership rights on tribal lands are a problem. Many descendants claim a single piece of land, making ownership difficult to sort. Checkerboarding is another issue where certain parts of land within a broader tribal holding may have outside owners, limiting what the tribe can do with the administration and use of their property.