Dawes Act

The Dawes General Allotment (Severalty) Act, February 8, 1887, converted all Indian tribal lands to individual ownership in an attempt to facilitate the assimilation of Indians into the white culture. Pressure for a reform in Indian policy was triggered by Helen Hunt Jackson's book, A Century of Dishonor (1881), which chronicled the unjust treatment American Indians had received at the hands of the federal government. Indian Rights associations sprang up across the country, and consensus grew that Indians must be helped to become full members of American society. The reformers saw the traditional patterns of Indian culture as the principal obstacle to meaningful citizenship; their first task, they believed, was to end the nomadism and isolation of reservation life. The new law was thus tailored to attack a central institution of Indian culture, common ownership of tribal lands.

Under the Dawes Act, Indian tribes lost legal standing, and tribal lands were divided among the individual members. In exchange for renouncing their tribal holdings, Indians would become American citizens and would receive individual land grants--160 acres to family heads, 80 acres to single adults. Even these grants were qualified, however; full ownership would come only after the expiration of a twenty-five-year federal trust. (In 1906, the Burke Act waived the remaining trust for all Indians judged competent to handle their property independently.)

The Dawes Act significantly undermined Indian tribal life, but did little to further their acceptance into the broader society. In addition, the law severely reduced Indian holdings; after all individual allocations had been made, the extensive lands remaining were declared surplus and opened for sale to non-Indians. In 1887, the tribes had owned about 138 million acres; by 1900 the total acreage in Indian hands had fallen to 78 million. This policy was not reversed until 1934, when the Indian Reorganization Act asserted the importance of perpetuating Indian cultural institutions and permitted surplus lands to be returned to tribal ownership.

See also Indians.

Excerpt from the Indian General Allotment Act

In all cases where any tribe or band of Indians has been or shall be located upon any reservation ... the President shall be authorized to cause the same or any part thereof to be surveyed ... whenever in his opinion such reservation or any part may be advantageously utilized for agricultural or grazing purposes by such Indians, and to cause allotment to each Indian located thereon to be made in such areas as in his opinion may be for their best interest not to exceed eighty acres of agricultural or one hundred and sixty acres of grazing land to any one Indian.

The Indian General Allotment Act of 1887 (24 Stat. 388), also known as the Dawes Act after its leading sponsor, Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts, authorized the president to divide Indian reservations into separate tracts of land for individual tribal members. These tracts were to be used for farming and cattle grazing. The act was implemented without the consent or consultation of the tribes. Native-American heads of household received allotments of 160 acres, while single adults received 80 acres and minors 40 acres. Double those amounts were provided if the land was suitable only for grazing. Married Native women were ineligible to receive land. The act was amended in 1891 to treat all Native-American adults equally, regardless of their sex or familial status. However, the size of the allotments was cut in half.

The act also authorized the government to negotiate with Indian tribes for the sale of all tribal lands remaining after allotments were made to individual members. The government often paid less than $1.00 per acre for these so-called "surplus" lands, which it then sold to non-Native homesteaders and corporations.

The Dawes Act applied to most, but not all, tribes. Many tribes not covered by the act were subjected to allotment by later acts of Congress, such as the Curtis Act of 1898, which authorized the allotment of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Creek reservations in Oklahoma.

Purposes of the Act

The Dawes Act had two primary purposes. The first was to "civilize" the Native peoples. Those sympathetic to the Indians, mainly philanthropists from the East, believed that the reservation system, in which most tribes held their lands communally, was preventing the economic and cultural development of the Native peoples. By the late nineteenth century most tribal economies were in dire straits, with indigenous people living in abject poverty. The Friends of the Indians, an influential group of philanthropists and reformers in the Northeast, believed that if individual Indians were given plots of land to farm, they would flourish and become integrated into the American economy and culture as middle-class farmers. In the Report of the Secretary of the Interior of 1886, Senator Dawes said he wanted the government to:

put [the Indian] on his own land, furnish him with a little habitation, with a plow, and a rake, and show him how to go to work to use them .... The only way [to civilize the Indian] is to lead him out into the sunshine, and tell him what the sunshine is for, and what the rain comes for, and when to put his seed in the ground.

The forced allotment of tribal lands was consistent with other government policies to assimilate the Native peoples into American society, including the forced education of Indian children in off-reservation boarding schools and the suppression of Native religions, languages, and cultural practices.

The second major purpose of the Dawes Act was to gain use of Native-American lands for non-Natives. The act called for breaking up large tribal landholdings to enable settlement of the West by non-Natives. The act secured only a part of the tribes' lands to the Indians, opening the remainder to settlers.

Implementation of the Act

Approximately 41 million acres of tribal reservation land were allotted under the Dawes Act. The act established a period of twenty-five years during which the U.S. held title to the allotted lands in "trust" for the individual Indian owners. The government legally owned the lands, but it allowed the Native peoples to use them. The government's intention was to protect new Native landowners. During the trust period, states could not tax the Natives' lands, nor could the Indians sell them. The latter restriction protected Indians from exploitation by land-hungry settlers. Once the trust period expired, the government delivered title to the lands to the Native peoples. With a free and clear title, the Native peoples became citizens of the U.S. and of the states in which they resided. They were then subject to state law, and their lands were subject to state taxation.

Some of these provisions were later amended. For example, in 1906 Congress authorized the president immediately to give land titles to individual Indians who were deemed competent to manage their own lands. Further, in 1924 Congress enacted a law making all Native peoples U.S. citizens, regardless of whether or not they had been given title to their lands.

History of the Act

The Dawes Act was one of the first acts of Congress to deal with nearly all tribes at once, and to alter their rights without their consent. Previously, the U.S. government dealt with tribes individually through treaties. In most treaties the tribes agreed to relinquish large sections of their territory while reserving portions of their lands for themselves. In exchange, the U.S. government promised to protect the tribes and to allow them to live permanently on their remaining lands, or reservations. (The term "reservation" comes from the treaty-based process in which Native-American tribes reserved a part of their land to themselves.) However, in 1871, Congress terminated this treaty-making process. In the 1880s it began enacting comprehensive legislation that applied to all tribes without their consent.

The Supreme Court explained the basis for this new approach to Indian policy when it ruled in the case of Kagama v. U.S. (1886) that Congress has complete power to regulate Native-American affairs. The Court stated that Indian tribes, "once powerful," were now "weak and diminished in numbers," economically and politically dependent on the United States. As a result, the Court said, the government had a duty to protect them, and with that duty came the power to regulate all aspects of their affairs. Historians have argued that most Native peoples opposed breaking up the tribal system but that the U.S. government was indifferent to the Natives' own wishes.

Other clauses in the U.S. Constitution have been used to justify the government's power over Indian tribes: Article 1, section 8, clause 3, giving Congress the power "to regulate commerce with ... the Indian tribes," and Article 2, section 2, clause 2, giving the president the power to make treaties.

Results of Allotment

Historians and other observers agree that the Dawes Act was disastrous for the Indians. Most allotted lands were not suitable for agriculture. The government made only minimal efforts to provide farming equipment to the indigenous peoples. Its annual appropriations for that purpose were often no more than $10.00 per Native. Many Indians with lands suitable for farming or grazing lacked the resources or training to succeed at those pursuits and so leased their land to non-Natives. The government often forced Indians to lease their lands, whenever in its judgment the Natives were not using lands productively. These leases were seldom lucrative for the Indians and thus did not help Natives to become self-sufficient.

The primary effect of the Dawes Act was a severe reduction in the quantity of Indian landholdings, from 138 million acres in 1887 to 48 million acres in 1934, the year Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act, which ended allotment. Most lands were lost through the sale of "surplus" lands by the government to non-Native homesteaders. In addition, many Indians who had received title to their lands sold their allotments to non-Natives, often for less than market value. Others were unable to pay state property taxes and lost their allotments in tax foreclosures. In all, the Indians lost 90 million acres. Of the lands that remained, 20 million acres were desert or semidesert lands unfit for most profitable uses.

The Indian Reorganization Act sought to restore and protect the diminished land bases of Native-American tribes. The act extended indefinitely the trust period for existing Indian allotments. The government restored "surplus" lands that had not already been sold to homesteaders. The act also authorized the government to acquire other lands for the tribes. Today, tribal landholdings in the continental U.S. total over 54 million acres, the vast majority of which is communally owned by tribes, not individual Natives.

Although ownership of most Indian lands is now consolidated in tribal governments, allotment has had a lasting impact. Many reservations are checkerboards of Indian and non-Native lands. John Collier, former commissioner of Indian affairs, testified before Congress in 1934 that "on many reservations the Indian-owned parcels are mere islands within a sea of white-owned property" (73d Cong., 2d Sess., 16–18, 1934). This remains true today. Another legacy of allotment is the division of allotments among the many heirs of original allottees. Inherited shares are often less than one-hundredth of a single allotment, making it difficult for heirs to agree how to use allotments.

The lasting effects of the Dawes Act contribute to the difficulties many modern tribes face in managing their tribal lands, developing their economies, and maintaining their communities and cultures.

Bibliography

Carlson, Leonard A. Indians, Bureaucrats, and Land: The Dawes Act and the Decline of Indian Farming. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981.

Deloria, Vine, Jr., and Clifford M. Lytle. American Indians, American Justice. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983.

Hoxie, Frederick E. A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians,1880–1920. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984.

Otis, Delos Sacket. The Dawes Act and the Allotment of Indian Lands. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973.

Prucha, Francis Paul, ed. Americanizing the American Indian: Writings by the "Friends of the Indian" 1880–1900. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973.

Washburn, Wilcomb E. The Assault on Indian Tribalism: The General Allotment Law(Dawes Act) of 1887. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1975.

Reclamation of Tribal Lands

During the 1960s and 1970s, Native American activists began making efforts to reclaim native lands ceded as the result of the Dawes Act and individual treaties. The Cayuga Indians, for example, had ceded 64,000 acres of land to the State of New York in 1795 under the Cayuga Ferry Treaty. Because the treaty was not ratified by Congress, it was illegal, and in 1980 the tribe sued the State of New York for the return of the property. After a court battle that lasted a full twenty years, New York was finally ordered to pay the Cayuga tribe $248 million, which is the largest award ever in a case involving tribal land claims.

The Dawes Act was enacted on February 8, 1887 regarding the distribution of land to Native Americans in Oklahoma. Named after its sponsor, U.S. Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts, the act was amended in 1891 and again in 1906 by the Burke Act. The act remained in effect until 1934.

• Section One authorizes the President to survey Native American tribal areas and divide the arable land into sections for the individual. It says that the head of each Native American family may receive 160 acres (0.65 km²) if the land is "advantageous for agricultural and grazing purposes", and an ADDITIONAL 160 acres (650,000 m²) allottment if the land is "only valuable for grazing purposes" (that is, 320 acres of land "only valuable for grazing purposes" instead of 160 of land that was usable for BOTH farming and/or grazing). Single individuals and orphans were allotted 80 acres (320,000 m²) each, and all "other single individuals" (this implicitly includes minors) were allotted 40 acres (160,000 m²) each.

• Section Two states that each (adult) Native American will select his or her own allotment, and the "heads-of-families" will select for their minor children. The Native American agent will select for orphan children.

• Section Three requires the U.S. American agent to certify each allotment and provide two copies of the certification to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs one to be kept in the Indian Office and the other to be transmitted to the United States Department of the Interior (Secretary of the Interior) for his action, and to be sent to the General Land Office.

• Section Four provides that Native Americans not residing on their reservation and Native Americans without reservations will receive the equal allotment. It also specifies that the fees for the officers of the land-office will be paid out of the [United States] Treasury (rather than by the Native American individuals).

• Section Five provides that a Secretary of the Interior will hold the allotments "in trust" for 25 years (during which time the land may not be sold or transferred to any other individual), or longer if the President should choose at any time to extend the period. 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." This section also provides that any land left unallotted after the land-allocation has been completed, may, with the consent of the tribe to which they belong, and ratification of the sale by Congress, be sold to the Secretary of the Interior, for an agreed-upon price. All such lands "adapted to agriculture" must then be sold to settlers to raise homesteads, and all proceeds from these sales held (with interest) and used for the "education and civilization" of the tribe from which the land was purchased. There is also a provision for the granting of 160 acres (650,000 m²) tracts to religious and educational institutions already located on Native American land, for continued religious or educational use. Finally, there is a provision stating that "those Indians who have availed themselves of the provisions of this act and become citizens of the United States shall be preferred" for "public service" jobs (such as "Indian police") among their tribes or bands.

• 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 Native Americans that they could move from their present reservation in Southwestern Colorado to a new reservation if a majority of the adult male members wanted so.

Contents 1 Effects 2 Contemporary Interpretations 3 See also 4 References 5 Further reading 6 External links

Effects

The land granted to most allottees was not sufficient for economic viability, and division of land between heirs upon the allottees' deaths resulted in land fractionalization. Most allotment land, which could be sold after a statutory period of 25 years, was eventually sold to non-Native buyers at bargain prices. Additionally, land deemed to be "surplus" beyond what was needed for allotment was opened to white settlers, though the profits from the sales of these lands were often invested in programs meant to aid the American Indians. Native Americans lost, over the 47 years of the Act's life, about 90 million acres (360,000 km²) of treaty land, or about two-thirds of the 1887 land base. About 90,000 Indians were made landless.^[1]

The Dawes Act, with its emphasis on individual land ownership, also had a negative impact on the unity, self-government, and culture of Indian tribes.^[1]

By dividing reservation lands into privately-owned parcels, legislators hoped to complete the assimilation process by forcing the deterioration of the communal life-style of the Native societies and imposing Western-oriented values of strengthening the nuclear family and values of economic dependency strictly within this small household unit (Gibson, 1988).

In 1906 the Burke Act (also known as the forced patenting act) further amended the GAA to give the Secretary of the Interior the power to issue allotees a patent in fee simple to people classified ‘competent and capable.’ The criteria for this determination is unclear but meant that allotees deemed ‘competent’ by the Secretary of the Interior would have their land taken out of trust status, subject to taxation, and could be sold by the allottee. The allotted lands of Indians determined to be incompetent by the Secretary of the Interior were automatically leased out by the Federal Government.^[2] The act reads:

...the Secretary of the Interior may, in his discretion, and he is hereby authorized, whenever he shall be satisfied that any Indian allottee is competent and capable of managing his or her affairs at any time to cause to be issued to such allottee a patent in fee simple, and thereafter all restrictions as to sale, encumbrance, or taxation of said land shall be removed.

The use of competence opens up the categorization, making it much more subjective and thus increasing the exclusionary power of the Secretary of Interior. Although this act gives power to the allottee decide whether to keep or sell the land, provided the harsh economic reality of the time, lack of access to credit and markets, liquidation of Indian lands was almost inevitable. It was known by the department of interior that virtually 95% of fee patented land would eventually be sold to whites (Robertson, 2002).

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. With this act, women were sold as prostitutes for land. To receive the full 160 acres (0.65 km²), women had to be married.

In 1926, Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work commissioned a study of federal administration of Indian policy and the condition of Indian people. Completed in 1936, The Problem of Indian Administration – commonly known as the Meriam Report after the study's director, Lewis Meriam – documented fraud and misappropriation by government agents. In particular, the Meriam Report found that the General Allotment Act had been used to illegally deprive Native Americans of their land rights. After considerable debate, Congress terminated the allotment process under the Dawes Act by enacting the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 ("Wheeler-Howard Act"). (However, the allotment process in Alaska under the separate Alaska Native Allotment Act continued until its revocation in 1993 by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.)

Despite termination of the allotment process in 1934, effects of the General Allotment Act continue into the present. For example, one provision of the Act was the establishment of a trust fund, administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, to collect and distribute revenues from oil, mineral, timber, and grazing leases on Native American lands. The BIA's alleged improper management of the trust fund resulted in litigation, in particular the ongoing case Cobell v. Kempthorne, to force a proper accounting of revenues.

Contemporary Interpretations

Angie Debo's landmark work, And Still the Waters Run: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes (completed 1936, published 1940), detailed how the allotment policy of the Dawes Act (as later extended to apply to the Five Civilized Tribes through such devices as the Dawes Commission and the Curtis Act of 1898) was systematically manipulated to deprive the Native Americans of their lands and resources.^[3] In the words of historian Ellen Fitzpatrick, Debo's book "advanced a crushing analysis of the corruption, moral depravity, and criminal activity that underlay white administration and execution of the allotment policy."^[4]

John LaVelle of the University of New Mexico contends that Ward Churchill's interpretation of a "blood quantum" dimension in the Dawes Act is "sorely lacking in historical/factual veracity and scholarly integrity." LaVelle contends that the Act contains no blood quantum requirement, and that such requirements were adopted voluntarily by tribes, and not imposed by the US government. LaVelle asserts that the "main flaw of this federal/tribal conspiracy theory is that it rests on and propagates demonstrably false information concerning the contents and impact of the General Allotment Act." Addressing the larger issues of "assimilation" under the Dawes Act, Robert Trennert of Arizona State University has described it as an "alternative to extinction."

See also

• Indian Reorganization Act
• Cobell v. Kempthorne
• Americanization (of Native Americans)

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Case DS, Voluck DA (2002). Alaska Natives and American Laws (2nd ed. ed.). Fairbanks, AK: University of Alaska Press. pp. 104–5. ISBN 9781889963082. 
2. ^ Bartecchi D (2007-02-19). "The History of "Competency" as a Tool to Control Native American Lands". Pine Ridge Project. http://villageearth.org/pages/Projects/Pine_Ridge/pineridgeblog/2007/02/history-of-competency-as-tool-to.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-06. 
3. ^ Listing for And Still the Waters Run at Princeton University Press website (retrieved January 9, 2009).
4. ^ Ellen Fitzpatrick, History's Memory: Writing America's Past, 1880-1980 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), ISBN 067401605X, p. 133, excerpt available online at Google Books.

Further reading

• Debo, Angie. And Still the Waters Run: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1940; new edition, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984), ISBN 0691046158.
• Olund, Eric N. (2002). “Public Domesticity during the Indian Reform Era; or, Mrs. Jackson is induced to go to Washington.” Gender, Place, and Culture 9: 153-166.
• Stremlau, Rose. (2005). “To Domesticate and Civilize Wild Indians”: Allotment and the Campaign to Reform Indian Families, 1875-1887. Journal of Family History 30: 265-286.

External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Dawes Act

• Dawes Act of 1887: full text from the Native American Documents Project
• Wheeler-Howard Act (Indian Reorganization Act) 1934

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