The Dawes Act
The General Allotment Act of 1887 ((Dawes Act or Dawes Severalty Act), Ch. 119, Laws 1887, 24 Stat. 388, 25 U.S.C. (2000)) authorized the President of the United States to survey Native American tribal land and divide the area into allotments for the individual Native American. It was enacted February 8, 1887, and named for its sponsor, U.S. Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts. The Act was amended in 1891 and again in 1906, by the Burke Act. (Pub. L. 106–462, title I,(a), Nov. 7, 2000, 114 Stat. 2007) The act remained in effect until 1934.
Encompassing sweeping changes, the Act is now generally viewed as having had
disastrous effects for the tribes it aimed to help. The Dawes Commission,
set up under a Native American Office appropriation bill in 1893, was created,
not to administer the Dawes Act, but to attempt to persuade the tribes not
covered by the Act to agree to the allotment plan established under the Dawes
Act. It was this commission that registered the members of the Five Civilized
Tribes and many Native American names appear on the rolls.
The General Allotment Act did not apply to Alaska Natives; however, the Alaska
Native Allotment Act of 1906 included provisions under which individual Alaska
Natives could acquire title to land in a similar manner.
Background
Supporting the dissolution of the Native American reservations were various
humanitarian organizations (Indian Rights Association, Indian Protection Committee,
Friends of the Indians, etc.) and several well-known Native American speakers,
Sarah Winnemucca and Zitkala Sa among them. They believed that the reservation
system was wrong and that Native Americans interred under it would never be
self-sufficient. Against the Act were the meat-packing industry, the huge
ranching associations leasing the Native American land and the Five Civilized
Tribes — all well-funded and having great influence in Washington.
American policy toward Native Americans has always had tension between attempts
to assimilate and attempts to remove. The Dawes Act, in some ways, represents
both desires.
Summary of sections
• Section One authorizes the President to survey Native American tribal
land and divide the arable area into allotments for the individual Native
American. It says that the head of any household will receive 160 acres and
each single individual above the age of 18 and each orphan will receive 80
acres and each minor will receive 40 acres.
• Section Two states that each Native American will choose his or her
own allotment and the family will choose for each minor child. The Native
American agent will choose for orphan children.
• Section Three requires the Native 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.
• Section Five provides that the Secretary of the Interior will hold
the allotments "in trust" for 25 years. 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."
• 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 (Eminent domain/Power of Eminent Domain) of
the Congress over the allotments.
• Section Eleven contains a provision for the Southern Ute Native Americans.
Effects
The practical results of the Act were disastrous for Native Americans. The
acreage granted to most allottees was not sufficient for economic viability,
and division of land between heirs upon 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. Over the 47 years of the Act's
life, about 90 million acres of treaty land — about two-thirds of the
1887 land base — was lost to Native Americans, and about 90,000 Indians
were made landless.
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.
By breaking up 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.[citation needed] Legislators' opinions
of communal living saw the extended family as "needy" since indigenous
ideas of wealth contrasted and disagreed with Western ideas of wealth.[citation
needed]
The kin-network, which was the base of economic and social reproduction in
Indigenous societies, split and the reservation became a checkerboard pattern.
Each "head of the family," which, in contrast to most indigenous
traditional structures, became the male, received a 160-acre allotment and
each single person over 18 and every orphan received an 80-acre allotment.
The United States government opened the surplus land to non-Native American
settlement, creating the checkerboard pattern.The allotment policy abolished
Native society leaving Native people as simply Americans, and impoverished
Americans at that.
The Act forced Native people onto small tracts of land distant from their
kin relations. Traditionally, in most indigenous societies, women were the
agriculturists while the men were the hunters and warriors. 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 deprived
title to land and the distribution of allotments proved this point. To receive
the full 160 acres, women had to be married and even then, her husband received
title to the land.
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 1928, 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 1971 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 of the Dawes Act.
Ward Churchill has argued that the Act "imposed a formal eugenics code,"
by setting a "blood quantum" requirement for tribal citizenship.
John LaVelle of the University of New Mexico contends that Churchill's interpretation
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 "[t]he 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." Other scholars have relied in their work on Churchill's assertion
that the General Allotment Act contained a blood quantum requirement.
Dawes Rolls
The Dawes Rolls (or Final Rolls of Citizens and Freedmen of the Five Civilized
Tribes, or Dawes Commission of Final Rolls) were created by the Dawes Commission.
The Commission, authorized by United States Congress in 1893, was required
to negotiate with the Five Civilized Tribes to convince them to agree to an
allotment plan and dissolution of the reservation system. One of the consequences
was the creation of rolls of the members of the five tribes (Cherokee, Choctaw,
Creek, Chickasaw, and Seminole). The rolls were needed to assign the allotments
and to provide an equitable division of all monies obtained. These rolls became
known as the Dawes Rolls. The Dawes Commission was quickly flooded by applicants
from all over the country trying to get on the rolls.
The Commission went to the individual tribes to obtain the membership lists
but the first attempts were inadequate. Finally Congress passed the Curtis
Act in 1898 which had a provision that a new roll would be taken and supersede
all previous rolls.
Tribal citizens were enrolled under several categories:
• Citizen by Blood
. New Born Citizen by Blood
. Minor Citizens by Blood
• Citizen by Marriage
• Freedmen (former black slaves of Indians)
. New Born Freedmen
. Minor Freedmen
• Delaware Indians (those adopted by the Cherokee tribe were enrolled as a separate group within the Cherokee)
More that 250,000 people applied for membership, and the Dawes Commission
enrolled just over 100,000. An act of Congress on April 26, 1906, closed the
rolls on March 5, 1907. An additional 312 persons were enrolled under an act
approved August 1, 1914.
The rolls are, for the most part, considered complete. Some Indians did not
apply because of their displeasure with the allotment process and others applied
but were rejected because of the residency requirements. Generally, though,
to prove membership in any of the Five Civilized Tribes you must prove descent
from a person listed as a citizen on the final rolls.
Courts have upheld this rule even when it has been proven that a brother or sister of an ancestor was listed on the rolls but not the direct ancestor himself/herself.
The Rolls remain important today as several tribes use descent from Dawes
Roll members as a requirement for tribal membership and the federal government
uses them in determining status for Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood.