The Dawes Act, while not a household name, was perhaps the single most devastating government policy of them all. Also known as the General Allotment Act of 1887, the Dawes Act resulted in the loss of 90 million acres (36 million hectares) of Native lands from 1887 to 1934 — the equivalent of two-thirds of all tribal landholdings at the time.
Mark Hirsch is a historian at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. He explains that many well-intentioned Americans were appalled at the desperate conditions on Western reservations, where hunting was forbidden and starvation was rampant. Backed by early anthropologists, these social reformers believed that private land ownership and cultural assimilation as farmers and ranchers were key to saving the Indians from their own "savage" status.
Before the Dawes Act, Native American land (including reservations) was communally owned by the tribe and the fruits of labor were shared collectively by all tribal members. For most 19th-century Americans, that traditional Native way of life was antithetical to American ideals of personal responsibility and capitalism.
In an insidious twist, the framers of the Dawes Act added a stipulation that Native Americans weren't "competent" to own their allotments outright. Instead, the deeds to the land would be held in a government trust for 25 years, after which they would be transferred to the Native individual. No such waiting period existed for white settlers and corporations.
Congress repealed the Dawes Act in 1934 as part of the larger Indian Reorganization Act, but the systematic theft of 90 million acres (36 million hectares) of Native lands was already accomplished.
"The Dawes Act is one of the most fundamental and important pieces of legislation that affected Native American people," says Hirsch. "Tragically, it was fundamental in mostly very negative ways."
The Dawes Rolls, lists of Native Americans given allotments among the "Five Civilized Tribes," has become a valuable genealogical tool for tracing Native ancestry.
To read more of Dave Roos' article, visit, https://history.howstuffworks....istory/dawes-act.htm
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