Dawes Act

Dawes Act

Other short titles	Dawes Severalty Act of 1887
Long title	An Act to provide for the allotment of lands in severalty to Indians on the various reservations, and to extend the protection of the laws of the United States and the Territories over the Indians, and for other purposes.
Nicknames	General Allotment Act of 1887
Enacted by	the 49th United States Congress
Effective	February 8, 1887
Citations
Public law	49-119
Statutes at Large	24 Stat. 387 a.k.a. 24 Stat. 388
Codification
Titles amended	25 U.S.C.: Indians
U.S.C. sections created	25 U.S.C. ch. 9 § 331 et seq.
Legislative history
Introduced in the Senate by Henry L. Dawes (R–MA) Signed into law by President Grover Cleveland on February 8, 1887

The Dawes Act of 1887 (also known as the General Allotment Act or the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887), adopted by Congress in 1887, authorized the President of the United States to survey American Indian tribal land and divide it into allotments for individual Indians. Those who accepted allotments and lived separately from the tribe would be granted United States citizenship. The Dawes Act was amended in 1891, in 1898 by the Curtis Act, and again in 1906 by the Burke Act.

The Act was named for its creator, Senator Henry Laurens Dawes of Massachusetts. The objectives of the Dawes Act were to lift the Native Americans out of poverty and to stimulate assimilation of them into mainstream American society. Individual household ownership of land and subsistence farming on the European-American model was seen as an essential step. The act also provided that the government would classify as "excess" those Indian reservation lands remaining after allotments, and sell those lands on the open market, allowing purchase and settlement by non-Native Americans.

The Dawes Commission, set up under an Indian Office appropriation bill in 1893, was created to try to persuade the Five Civilized Tribes to agree to allotment plans. (They had been excluded from the Dawes Act by their treaties.) This commission registered the members of the Five Civilized Tribes on what became known as the Dawes Rolls.

The Curtis Act of 1898 amended the Dawes Act to extend its provisions to the Five Civilized Tribes; it required abolition of their governments, allotment of communal lands to people registered as tribal members, and sale of lands declared surplus, as well as dissolving tribal courts. This completed the extinguishment of tribal land titles in Indian Territory, preparing it to be admitted to the Union as the state of Oklahoma.

During the ensuing decades, the Five Civilized Tribes lost 90 million acres of former communal lands, which were sold to non-Natives. In addition, many individuals, unfamiliar with land ownership, became the target of speculators and criminals, were stuck with allotments that were too small for profitable farming, and lost their household lands. Tribe members also suffered from the breakdown of the social structure of the tribes.

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