Dawes Act

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Dawes Severalty Act (1887), an important law relating to Indian affairs.Sponsored by Senator Henry Dawes of Massachusetts, its central purposes included ending tribal title to land in favor of individual holdings, transforming Native Americans into farmers, and assimilating Indians into white society. The ideological roots of the legislation lay in the post–Civil War public faith in laissez‐faire, private property, citizenship, and the “Americanization” of immigrants and minorities. The Women's National Indian Association, the Indian Rights Association, and the Lake Mohonk Conferences, important eastern reform groups, were largely responsible for passage of the legislation. Western settlers and economic interests had little influence on passage, although they benefited greatly afterward.

The Dawes Severalty Act applied to all Indians except a few groups in New York, Nebraska, and Indian Territory. Major provisions included assignment of 160 acres to each family head, 80 acres to unmarried Indians over eighteen and to orphans, and 40 acres to those under eighteen. Title to allotments was held in trust by the government for twenty‐five years, during which time the land could not be sold or encumbered. Citizenship was granted to all allottees and to others who adopted the “habits of civilized life.” Unallotted land was declared surplus and could be purchased by the federal government for subsequent settlement by non‐Indians.

The act proved disastrous to Native Americans. Legislation approved in 1891 permitted the leasing of allotments, and by 1916 over one‐third of such land was rented to non‐Indians. Other measures, most notably the Burke Act of 1906, allowed Indians to sell their allotments. The checkerboarding that resulted when allotments became intermingled with non‐Indian holdings on reservations created major obstacles to proper land management and produced serious jurisdictional problems that persisted more than a century later. Many arid reservations were allotted that should have been left in common title to permit ranching. Allotments commonly became so fractionalized by heirship that they were virtually worthless except for leasing. Most importantly, the sale of surplus land and allotments reduced Indian land holdings from 156 million acres in 1881, when allotment of individual tribes started, to 53 million acres in 1933. The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 prohibited further allotment, but did little to restore Indian land holdings. Allotment and citizenship did not “free the Indian” as promised, but led to increased federal control, poverty, and reduced agricultural production. What started as well‐intended legislation produced a major disaster.
See also Americanization Movement; Homestead Act; Indian History and Culture: From 1800 to 1900; Indian History and Culture: From 1900 to 1950.

Bibliography

D.S. Otis , The Dawes Act and the Allotment of Indian Lands, ed. Francis Paul Prucha, 1973.
Michael R. McLaughlin , The Dawes Act, or Indian General Allotment Act of 1887: The Continuing Burden of Allotment. A Selective Bibliography, American Indian Culture and Research Journal 20, no. 2 (1996): 59–105.

Donald L. Parman

Dawes Act or General Allotment Act, 1887, passed by the U.S. Congress to provide for the granting of landholdings ( allotments, usually 160 acres/65 hectares) to individual Native Americans, replacing communal tribal holdings. Sponsored by U.S. Senator H. L. Dawes , the aim of the act was to absorb tribe members into the larger national society. Allotments could be sold after a statutory period (25 years), and "surplus" land not allotted was opened to settlers. Within decades following the passage of the act the vast majority of what had been tribal land in the West was in white hands.

The act also established a trust fund to collect and distribute proceeds from oil, mineral, timber, and grazing leases on Native American lands. The failure of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to manage this trust fund properly led to legislation and lawsuits in the 1990s and early 2000s to force the government to properly account for the revenues collected.