How Did the Dawes Act Steal 90 Million Acres of Land from Native Americans?

In the 1880s, an unlikely collaboration between land-hungry capitalists and social progressives ended in the sale of over 60 percent of Native American lands to non-Native people and corporations. Learn how it happened in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://history.howstuffworks.com/american-history/dawes-act.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstey, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren
vogelbam here in the long dark history of the United
States government's mistreatment of Native Americans, most people are familiar
with the Trail of Tears, in which approximately fifteen thousand
Native American men, women, and children died during forced relocation

(00:25):
from their tribal homelands in the American Southeast to territories
west of the Mississippi. But the theft of Native American
traditional lands didn't stop with the Removal Act of eighteen
thirty that authorized the Trail of Tears. Over the next century,
Congress passed a series of laws that systematically stripped Native
peoples of their lands, selling them to white settlers and corporations.

(00:50):
The DAWs Act, while not a household name, was perhaps
the single most devastating government policy of them all. Also
known as the General Allotment Act of eighteen teen eighty seven,
the Dots Act resulted in the loss of ninety million
acres or thirty six million hectors of native lands between
eighteen eighty seven and nineteen thirty four, the equivalent of

(01:11):
two thirds of all tribal landholdings at the time. Nineteenth century,
wide Americans, driven by manifest destiny and rapid industrialization, were
hungry for more and more land upon which to farm, ranch,
harvest timber, mine minerals, and build railroads. Because of earlier

(01:31):
relocation policies that resettled Native Americans and Western reservations, many
large tracts of attractive Western land were in the hands
of Native peoples By the eighteen eighties. Politicians and businessmen
who saw tribal land ownership as an obstacle to American
progress were constantly searching for a solution to the so
called Indian problem, and they found it in an unlikely source,

(01:55):
progressive social reformers. For the art Cold this episode is
based on How Stuff Works, spoke with Mark Hirsh, a
historian at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American
Indian in Washington, d C. He explained that many well
intentioned Americans were appalled at the desperate conditions on Western reservations,

(02:15):
where hunting was forbidden and starvation was rampant. Backed by
early anthropologists, these social reformers believed that private land ownership
and cultural assimilation as farmers and ranchers were key to
saving Native peoples from themselves. Hirsch said, these people really
believed that they were doing a good thing for Native Americans,

(02:38):
that they were true friends of the Indian. As a result,
two very different groups of land hungry capitalists and social
progressives threw their support behind the General Allotment Act of
eighteen eighty seven, called the Dawes Act for Senator Henry
Dawes of Massachusetts, the bill's lead proponent in Congress. This

(02:59):
law gave the US les president unprecedented power to break
up tribal lands into small parcels or allotments, some of
which would be offered to Native American families as private farmland,
and the rest sold to colonists and businesses. The idea
was that the native landowners would emulate their new white
neighbors and leave behind their traditional ways to become profitable

(03:22):
farmers and ranchers themselves. How Stuff Works also spoke with
Stephen Pavar, then a senior staff attorney with the American
Civil Liberty Union's Racial Justice Program who has since retired.
He said Congress thought that the best way of curing
the Indian problem forever would be for Indian people to

(03:42):
assimilate into white culture and Society. Congress came up with
the General Allotment Act as the vehicle to accomplish that.
Before the DAWs Act, Native American land, including reservations, was
communally owned by a tribe, and the fruits of their
labor were shared collectively by all tribal members. This is

(04:02):
part of a larger Native or Indian American concept of
not owning natural resources, but sharing collective responsibility for them.
For most other Americans, that traditional way of life was
antithetical to nineteenth century ideals of personal independence and capitalist gain.
Teddy Roosevelt favorably described the DAWs Act as quote a

(04:25):
mighty pulverizing engine to break up the tribal mass, adding
that the effort should be to steadily make the Indian
work like any other man on his own ground. Under
the DAWs Act, native lands were divided into allotments between
forty and one hundred and sixty acres in size that's
sixteen to sixty five hectors, and legally changed them from

(04:48):
community property to privately owned parcels of land. In some cases,
Native American families were given the option of choosing their allotment,
but in most cases it was assigned to them. By
officers of the USA Apartment of the Interior. Once all
Native American families had received their allotments, there was plenty
of land left over. This surplus land, the DAWs Act said,

(05:11):
could be sold to non native settlers and corporations, with
the proceeds held in a government account to be used
exclusively a quote for the education and civilization of the Indians.
That surplus land amounted to sixty million acres or twenty
four million hectors, nearly half of all existing Native territory

(05:32):
that was immediately ceded to the US government. The framers
of the Dawes Act added a stipulation that Native Americans
weren't competent to own their allotments outright. Instead, the deeds
to the land would be held in a government trust
for twenty five years, after which they would be transferred
to the native individual. No such waiting period existed for

(05:55):
white settlers or corporations. Hirsch explained the US politicians largely
saw the DAWs Act as a win win situation in
which Native Americans assimilated into the broader culture and economy. Quote. Plus,
if you had enough white people moving into Indian territory,
that area could become an American territory. If the population

(06:16):
kept growing, you could apply for statehood, which is exactly
what happened. But while the DAWs Act was a clear
win for colonizing America, it was absolutely devastating for Native peoples. First,
Pavar said, the majority of Indians didn't want to become
farmers and ranchers. Plus, you needed money to buy equipment, cattle,

(06:39):
and seeds, money that they didn't have. Here they were
with hundreds of acres of land that they couldn't even use.
In most cases, the parcels that were allotted to Native
families sat vacant until the twenty five year trust period
was over and the land could be sold. But here
again was another stipulation. After the twenty five five year

(07:00):
trust period expired, the land was subject to state and
local property taxes, which most Native landowners couldn't pay, so
the land would be seized by the tax court and
sold at auction. Pavar said there were white people literally
waiting in line for the land to go into forfeiture
for failure to pay taxes. They would bid on it

(07:21):
and purchase it. Later, laws passed by Congress made it
even easier to sell off Native American owned allotments before
the twenty five year waiting period. The Burke Act of
nineteen oh six authorized the Secretary of the Interior to
deem a Native landowner competent to receive the deed to
his own land, at which point taxes became due. This

(07:43):
often happened without the native landowner's knowledge or consent, and
before he knew it, his land was in forfeiture and
sold to the highest bidder. Other problems arose too. For example,
there were the infamous Osage murders. After the Osage people
were forcibly relocated twice in the eighteen hundreds, they landed

(08:05):
in parts of modern day Oklahoma and struck it rich
when oil was discovered there in eighteen ninety seven. They
had more bargaining power than a lot of other native groups,
but the government still forced allotment on them when capitalists
couldn't buy them out. There was a string of mysterious
disappearances and murders in the nineteen twenties that ended with

(08:25):
white Americans holding land rights. It was the start of
the FBI's Murder Investigation Department, though few cases were ever solved.
An additional twenty seven million acres of Native land were
lost through these stipulations in an amendment to the DAWs Act.
So much land was lost that even the federal government

(08:45):
was concerned. In nineteen twenty eight, a damning report was
written by the Department of the Interior describing the state
of abject poverty and disease in which most Native Americans
were living. The authors of the report criticized the faulty
logic that handing private land to Native families would automatically
turn them into successful farmers. They also noted that many

(09:07):
of the families were living on lands from which quote
a trained and experienced white man could scarcely rest a
reasonable living. Congress repealed the DAWs Act in nineteen thirty four,
but the systematic theft of that ninety million acres of
Native lands had already happened. One small positive point, the

(09:31):
lists of Native Americans who were given allotments from the
DAWs Act, called the DAWs Roles, have become a valuable
genealogical tool for tracing Native ancestry. Beyond that, court cases
related to allotment and Native American land tenure are still
going on today. Today's episode is based on the article

(09:55):
how the DAWs Act stole ninety million acres of Native
American land on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Dave Ruse.
Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks
dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Klang. Four more
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