Fee Patenting refers to Native American land held in fee by the property owner with no restrictions on alienation (sale), as opposed to Native American land held in trust by the federal government, which is not freely alienable. The Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887 provided every Native American with a parcel of his or her reservation and restricted immediate sale by providing that the land would be held in trust for twenty-five years or longer. After twenty-five years, a fee patent would be issued to the Native American allottee who would then become a U.S. citizen. This opened the way to taxation of the property and resulted in the loss of much Native American land.
Bibliography
Otis, Delos Sacket. The Dawes Act and the Allotment of Indian Lands. Edited by Francis P. Prucha. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973.
Prucha, Francis Paul. The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.
—Michael Wala
