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Dawes Act Essay

459 Words2 Pages

The Allotment Act The Dawes Act and its supporters sang a very similar tune to southerners who justified slavery as their patriarchal and christian duty. The Dawes Act allowed the President of the United States to survey the reservations Indians lived on and allot its land to heads of households, single persons over eighteen, and to orphans. This meant that the President went into reservations and redistributed the land, upsetting the system Native Americans had previously. Slave owners of the Antebellum South believed that the Black men and women needed to be enslaved, for they could not function without a patriarchal master. Westerners too saw the Native Americans as inferior, and felt that they had to help the tribal people be free of …show more content…

By 1900, Native Americans had lost half of the land that had been originally given to them. Meanwhile, the farming and assimilating of Native Americans was not successful. By many accounts, Indians were not adjusting to neither their new family dynamic nor farming. The Cheyennes had to learn how to plough, plant, and harvest their new aired properties. One Sioux recalled the struggle men especially had of being stripped of his previous purpose, hunting buffalo, and his tribe, with whom he hunted with. The Sioux described how depressed the man came, and how many white men ridiculed him for it. Some Native Americans tried to escape allotment. One Cheyenne man and his family decide to leave the reservation and its new allotment for the mountains to stay away from white people, who could not be trusted. Most however were forced to allow their lands to be cut smaller and smaller, like the Northern Ute, until there was almost nothing left to live on. These particularly tragic tales continue into today, as Native Americans live in overcrowded reservations that have high rates of poverty, alcoholism and drug abuse, and even suicide, as tribes in Canada have recently

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In the 1800’s, America only favored the white man, and did not favor African-American, or Native Americans. America favored big business and the “Americanized” white man. The Dawes Act was made in hopes to Americanize the American-Indians, so they would fit in more with the white man. The idea of the Dawes Act had good intentions but ultimately it did not work out the way the government was hoping. The Dawes Act was to break up the Indian reservations and give them their own land, so the Indians could start farming, to civilize them.

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Dawes Severalty Act De Juan Evans-Taylor Humboldt State University Abstract The Dawes Act of 1887, some of the time alluded to as the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 or the General Allotment Act, was marked into law on January 8, 1887, by US President Grover Cleveland. This was approved by the president to appropriate and redistribute tribal grounds in the American West. It expressly tried to crush the social union of Indian tribes and to along these lines dispose of the rest of the remnants of Indian culture and society. Just by repudiating their own customs, it was accepted, could the Indians at any point turn out to be genuinely "American."

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More indians tribes were destroyed during war with the whites, and since the Native Americans did not have as much technology, food, and medicine as the whites, they lost a lot of warriors. Many Native Americans would leave their tribes in search for food only to be confronted and ambushed by white soldiers. Some Native Americans chose to surrender rather than to be moved to a different location. After the Indian and American War, the General Allotment Act was passed, also known as The Dawes Act of 1887. The Dawes Act granted Native Americans land allotments.

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The Dawes Act of 1887 was built to make changes in policies towards American Indians. Those who accepted allotments and lived separately from the tribe would be granted United States citizenship. A family would receive 160 acres and a single person would receive 80 acres, if you were under the age of 18 you would receive 40 acres. Anything else that was left was passed on to white settlers. A few things reformers wanted to achieve are the breaking up of tribes, assisting the advancement of native farmers, securing parts of the reservations as Indian

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Specifically, Cleveland argued that the act would give Indians the opportunity to adjust to American culture, by allowing them to begin farming their own land. Furthermore, privatization is a sure way to increase output and quality. We wholeheartedly agreed with Cleveland on this point, and felt that the Dawes Act was a solution to a myriad of problems plaguing the Wild West. Therefore, we voted in favor of Grover Cleveland on the subject of the Dawes Act during the third

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First of all, Native Americans were settled on a hotbed of natural resources which included oil and precious metals such as silver and gold. There was also much fertile land that would entice farmers and frontiersmen to move out west. On this land there was so much potential economic opportunity for farmers, cattle drivers, miners and many other occupations. The government developed the popular public misconception that the indians were misusing the land and that Americans had the right to take advantage of the opportunities that lie in the west. These ideas led to the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 which authorized encroachment of Indian lands by the US government in order to divide up reservations and control Indian activity.

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The Dawes Act tried to abolish the tribal and communal rights of American Indians force them to assimilate into American society.7 the American model of individual ownership of land and subsistence farming was viewed as a vital step to the “civilization” process. The act also stated that the government could classify the lands remaining after allotments as "excess", and sell those lands. Non-American Indians were able to purchase this “excess” land. The first major impact of the Dawes Act was the depletion of American Indian land. After only 3 years after the Dawes Act was put into place, American Indians lost almost half of their land to “excess”, which was then sold to settlers, railroad companies, and other large

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With the arrival of Anglo-Americans, Native Americans lost much more than just their land. Tribes were forced onto reservations, stripped of their culture, wealth and place in society, with no hope of regaining what they owned unless by complete assimilation. For the latter half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, many Anglo-Americans continually pushed for Native Americans to abandon their cultures and “savage” ways. However, despite the many attempts to force Natives into Anglo-American culture, many Native Americans found ways to negotiate with the demands of the Anglo-Americans through mainly social, economic and legal means.

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