Dawes Act

The Dawes Act was an 1887 U.S. law that authorized dividing many Indigenous communal lands into individual allotments. It enabled the federal government to sell land left over after allotment to non-Indigenous buyers.

General Allotment Act: The federal statute commonly known as the Dawes Act, enacted in 1887 to allot Indigenous reservation lands. Its allotment and surplus-land provisions formed the law’s central mechanism.
Land loss among Indigenous peoples in the United States: The historical reduction of Indigenous peoples’ landholdings through treaties, dispossession, federal policy, and other forces. Allotment and the sale of surplus land accelerated this loss.
Henry L. Dawes: A U.S. senator from Massachusetts who sponsored the 1887 General Allotment Act. His name became attached to the law he introduced.
Indigenous land tenure in North America: The diverse systems through which Indigenous peoples in North America hold, use, and govern land. Many such systems differed from the individual parcel ownership imposed through allotment.
Surplus land: Land remaining after allotments were assigned to members of an Indigenous community. The act made much of this land available for non-Indigenous settlement and purchase.
Indian Territory: A U.S. territory in present-day Oklahoma designated for Indigenous nations before Oklahoma statehood in 1907. Allotment policies opened much of its land to non-Indigenous settlement.
American Indian policy: The laws and practices through which the U.S. government has dealt with Indigenous nations and peoples. The Dawes Act emerged from a wider federal effort to transform Indigenous landholding and governance.
Treaty: A formal agreement between political entities that establishes rights, obligations, or relations. Treaties recognized nation-to-nation relations, while allotment reorganized Indigenous lands through federal law.
Allotment in severalty: The assignment of individually held parcels to members of a community whose land was previously held collectively. This was the landholding system the Dawes Act imposed on many Indigenous communities.
Cherokee Nation: A sovereign Indigenous nation whose historic territory includes parts of present-day Oklahoma. The Dawes Commission’s enrollment and allotment process affected Cherokee citizens and lands.

Linked from 21 pages