When Europeans first made contact with this continent, they encountered hundreds of indigenous, sovereign nations representing enormous diversity in terms of language, culture, religion, and governance. For those indigenous groups as is a common attribute of indigeneity of similarly situated groups around the world this land was and is holy land (Riley, 2013). Accordingly (Bayor, 2003), describes the social and political map of Native American societies as no more static or stable than the map of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the Northeast, two massive alliances had, for centuries, shaped the realities of political and cultural life among local communities, pitting the Hurons, Algonquins, Abenakis, Micmacs, Ottawas, …show more content…
The act states that it is intended to provide allotments of lands on severalty to Native Americans on various reservations, and to extend the protection of U.S. laws over the Native Americans. As enacted by the United States Congress, the act gives the President of the United States the right to survey Native American reservations and allot the land to individual Native Americans. The act specifies how much land will be given to heads of families, single persons over eighteen, orphans under eighteen, and all other single people under age 18. Section two of the act states that Native Americans will select their own land (Dawes Act, …show more content…
It was designed to encourage the breakup of the tribes and promote the assimilation of Indians into American society. It would be the major Indian policy until the 1930s. Dawes’ goal was to create independent farmers out of Indians give them land and the tools for citizenship. The act, though well intentioned, before the passing of the act Native Americans owned about 138 million acres. By 1900, however, the amount of land had dropped to 78 million acres (Bickford-Duane, 2015). Under the act each head of an Indian family to be given 160 acres of farmland or 320 acres of grazing land. The remaining tribal lands were to be declared "surplus" and opened up for whites. The lands given to the Indians however were fallow, dry and unfit for production which placed them at a severe disadvantage. The boarding schools which were a part of the act were a concern. Many Native American children died after they were exposed to diseases for which they had no immunity (Bickford-Duane, 2015. School administrators assigned new names to the students. They effectively westernized students as means of killing the Indian within
Congress passed the Dawes Allotment Act in 1887, its purpose was to teach the Natives the farming methods and the American values of individualism as well as private property rather than collectively owned land in order to assimilate the Natives. This act is seen as the most assimilative and ruined tribal functions culturally and economically with the entire allotment process (O’Brien 77). The act divided reservation lands amongst individual people and families in order for them to farm and raise livestock. Each head of a household would obtain about 160 acres and individuals who were over the age of eighteen would get 80 acres, while all others would receive 40 acres of land, but any surplus land would go to settlers.
For this essay, the question under investigation is: “To what extent did the Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887 impact Native American Tribes and their culture?” The number of tribes impacted by this act is too vast for us to investigate them all, so the focus of this research question will be on the Five Civilized Tribes to make the subject less broad. Lifestyles of the Native Americans in the Five Civilized Tribes before and after the Dawes Act will be investigated to get a better understanding of the life and cultural changes these people endured. The impacts include the splitting up of land and the redistribution of the land to individual tribe members, and the introduction of "white culture," such as farming, to the Native Americans.
The government had the power over reservations of Nations, and could divide them up amongst individual Native Americans. The Dawes Allotment Act, affected Native sovereignty because the Native Government had no say in what their land would be used for. The text stated, "Indian
However, this did not mean they were able to keep their land the way you might expect, and, is in fact, perhaps, one of the monstrous legislatives we have ever given to Natives. This act demolished, already identified boundaries, broke tribes apart as communal units, and threatened the cultural aspects of each tribe. This act applied to all Native American tribes, except: the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Osage, Miami, Sac, Fox, Peoria, and Seneca nations. This act, was actually named for Massachusetts Congressman Henry Dawes, who claimed that private property had the power to civilize, even the most basic brutes, and according to Dawes, the very act of being civilized, was to “wear civilized clothes, cultivate the ground, live in houses, ride in Studebaker wagons, send children to school, drink whiskey (and) own property.” Under the Dawes Act, the allotted persons would hold the land for 25 years; consequently, the land would then go to the individuals who had held that chunk of land or to their heirs, in which they would gain the title of American Citizen.
The Act led to an array of legal and moral arguments for and against the need to relocate the Indians westward from the agriculturally productive lands of the Mississippi in Georgia and parts of Alabama. This paper compares and contrasts the major arguments for and against the
Throughout the seventeenth century, conflict between Europeans and Native Americans was rampant and constant. As more and more Europeans migrated to America, violence became increasingly consistent. This seemingly institutionalized pattern of conflict begs a question: Was conflict between Europeans and Native Americans inevitable? Kevin Kenny and Cynthia J. Van Zandt take opposing sides on the issue. Kevin Kenny asserts that William Penn’s vision for cordial relations with local Native Americans was destined for failure due to European colonists’ demands for privately owned land.
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."
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.
The changes that were seen after the act was put into law included the end of the communal holding of property by the Native Americans. They would fractionated into individual plots of property, which caused more than half of their lands to be sold off. Women were not given any land under this act, and had to be married to receive the full 160 acres offered. While the Act was supposed to help the Indians, many resisted the changes that came with individual property ownership. They thought that becoming ranchers and farmers was distasteful.
The dispersing of the Indians, particularly the five civilized tribes of the southwest: Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole fairly began before the approval of the Indian Removal Act. As the European-Americans were progressing the procedure of passing the Act was bound to happen. They were once a secluded society and now forced to a loss of war. The Indian Removal Act was signed on 1830 by President Andrew Jackson. The act allowed President Andrew Jackson to provide the states with federal funds to remove the civilized tribes and reject the Indians from letting them to be part of the European-American society.
The treaty stated that the indians had to allow travelers into the lands, allow government to establish roads, pay for wrongdoings of their people, and avoid conflict with other tribes, while the US government offered protection from US citizens and annuities if treaty of followed. However, issues with the treaty arose as Indians didn’t have full translation of the terms, an example of the government’s sovereignty ruling over ethics. In 1868, the treaty commision met again to improve the terms of the treaty. The US government established the Great Sioux Reservation where the indians could preside.
Losing one’s cultural knowledge, and therefore the reality of their culture, allows others to have control over their collective and individual consciousness as well as their destiny. In this case, it is clear that the United States government has had the dominant relationship over the Native
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.
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.
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