What Is The Impact Of The Dawes Act On Native Americans

How do you evaluate the impact of the Dawes Act on Native Americans in the West? The Dawes Act had an enormous impact on Native Americans in the West. To keep their land, the Native Americans had to agree to become “civilized”. The government stole the land from the Native Americans and gave it to white families. This was just another example of the U.S. showing how equal rights, which were supposed to be for everyone, really only applied to certain people that were considered “civilized”. The federal government was using the Dawes Act to force western “civilized” culture on the Native Americans. According to our textbook, “The Act broke up the land of nearly all tribes into small parcels to be distributed to Indian families…” (Foner, 625). The government was taking the Natives’ land and telling them exactly how to distribute and use it. The Native Americans’ idea of freedom centered on “preserving autonomy and control of ancestral lands…” (Foner, 624). The white Americans didn’t like the Native American culture and religion, and the dances of Native American religion made them seem even more uncivilized in the eyes of the “civilized” Americans. To become American citizens,

The Act allowed the government to take land from the Natives and give it to white families. The textbook describes the magnitude of this theft, “In the half century after the passage of the Dawes Acts, Indians lost 86 million of the 138 million acres of land in their possession in 1887.” (Foner, 625). The Native Americans wouldn’t agree to become “civilized”, which meant losing their cultural identity, and so they were forced to lose their land. The Dawes Act was just one of the many laws, treaties, and court decisions that stole land from the Native Americans. According to our textbook “… between 1776 and today … the United States has acquired over 1.5 billion acres of land from Native Americans…” (Foner,