ipl-logo

Essay On The Dawes Act

599 Words3 Pages

The Dawes act was passed on December 16, 1887 and signed by President Cleveland on February 8, 1887. This allowed the government to give Native Americans ownership to a given piece of land. However, this did not apply to Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek or Seminole tribes who had become civilized on their own, without the help of the government. As a result, requirements to this new law was foreign to Native Americans, and they were unable decipher and do the things that were now required of them as quickly as the government was implementing the law. The government knew that the Native Americans were uneducated to the new forms that are being implemented on their tribes, and were able to take advantage of them. Resulting from the Dawes Act, The Native American’s are now required to choose their own land to live on and only have four years to do so. Most Indians will not do this in the time frame and the government choses their land for them. The Indians have only known hunting and their nomadic lifestyle following the buffalo with their tribes. Ownership to land was completely overwhelming and unheard of to them. The tribes …show more content…

Graciously but manipulatively, the Indians were ensured that they were given enough land to live on. The Allotment supporters believed that this was the only option to reduce violence and benefit both the Native Americans and white settlers. Although, the Native Americans were ensured that they were given enough land to live on, they did not know how to farm on a given piece of land that they were tied down to, they are nomadic people. This also meant that the government knew that there would be leftover land that they could sell to the white settlers which they believed would reduce the violence over settlers coming onto the Indian

Show More
Related
286 Words | 2 Pages

The Dawes Act, was introduced by Henry Dawes, a Senator from Massachusetts. Simply put, the Act broke up previous land settlements given to Native Americans in the form of reservations and separated them into smaller, separate parcels of land to live on. More importantly, the Act required Natives to live apart from their nations and assimilate into European culture. Dawes felt that the law, once fully realized, would save Native Americans from the alternative, which was their total slaughtering.

Read More
253 Words | 2 Pages

I do think this was their goal, but they lost sight of that and became very selfish with it. Also, the Indians didn't even agree to the act so I feel like the white Americans technically just stole away their land without asking so in turn, it wasn’t a compromise at all. After

Read More
483 Words | 2 Pages

Even though the act resulted to the destruction of Indian cultural traditions and the loss of some tribal land, it enormously benefited the whites. The Dawes Act purpose was to attack tribalism by encouraging

Read More
879 Words | 4 Pages

After the initial distribution of land, the remainder was considered surplus and was sold for as little as one dollar per acre. Many farmers could not afford to start a farm and keep it running. The Native Americans lost their land and the tribes of Oklahoma lost their sovereignty. Gender issues became a problem for the female Native Americans. Traditionally, the females were responsible for their land.

Read More
802 Words | 4 Pages

The Dawes Act of 1887 was the government’s goal towards assimilation. The key points of the Dawes Act were that each Native American heads of the household was to receive 160 acres of land to farm or 320 acres for grazing. Any additional family members received 40 acres. The land was held by the government in a trust for twenty-five years. Participation in this was mandatory.

Read More
1127 Words | 5 Pages

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."

Read More
199 Words | 1 Pages

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.

Read More
217 Words | 1 Pages

The Dawes Act had a negative effect on American Indians, as it ended their shared holding of property, which gave them a home and a spot in the tribe. The land granted to most of the Native Americans was not adequate for profitable capability. Most allotment land,

Read More
481 Words | 2 Pages

One of those treaties was The Homestead Act, which means the white settlers can claim 160 acres of land for free as long as they stay to live on the land for five years and set up some resources. Most of the land that the white settlers were claiming was the Plains Indians land which was thousands of acres. Dawes Act is another act the government sets up into place. It was never to help families, but to wipe out the Plains Indians culture for

Read More
914 Words | 4 Pages

This perspective was shaped by a prevailing narrative of the time, which portrayed Native Americans as a "vanishing race" that needed to be assimilated into mainstream American society. Unfortunately, the policies that were implemented with this belief led to significant harm to Native American communities. The Dawes Act, for example, was passed in 1887 with the aim of converting tribal land into individual parcels and forcing Native Americans to assimilate into American culture. This policy had disastrous consequences for Native American communities, leading to the loss of their

Read More
800 Words | 4 Pages

citizenship to individual American Indians when they received their allotment of land. The Dawes Act was to protect the property rights of American Indians, but provisions of the law were organized in a way so that tribe members would be assimilated and integrated into American society and culture before they were allowed their full allotment of land. The Dawes Act made it so that American Indians land was put into a private trust for twenty-five years preventing the new citizens from renting, leasing, or selling their lands. Because of this, many American Indians were upset and argued that if they weren’t considered competent to manage their own land, then how could they be considered competent enough to assume the responsibility of citizenship. “There was strong opposition to combining citizenship with the land trust, for it seemed a contradiction to grant citizenship to the Indians while at the same time denying them the rights to control their land.

Read More
1102 Words | 5 Pages

Indians were being surrounded a whole nation and not willing to give up their life style and costumes, relocation was best option in order to stay alive and take care of their culture. During the late 1820s a number of small “civilized tribes” had become a part of American society; some have moved into cabins, houses, and even mansions. After the Indian Removal Act of 1830, there was great unpleasant experience among the Indians who decided to remain on the natural land and way of life. Some of the Indians rejected the money given by Americans for their land. They stated that too much of their land had been taken already in the past 20 years and would defend and die for the land if it was necessary.

Read More
784 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More
1224 Words | 5 Pages

After the battles in 1887, the Dawes Act was passed which broke up the reservations and instead gave the each Native American their own plot of land and ended the recognition of Native American tribes. The plots of land were given to them because the United States congress wanted them to become farmers, and losing their recognition as a tribe eliminated

Read More
459 Words | 2 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

Read More

More about Essay On The Dawes Act

Related Topics

Open Document