The aim of the act was to encourage American Indians to take up agriculture and adopt 'the habits of civilized life' and ultimately for them to be fully assimilated into US society. With the grant of land they also received US citizenship. The law broke up reservations and encouraged private farms. Native Americans families received individual plots of land, carved from reservations, as well as farm equipment. These families were to give up their communal way of life on the reservations and become independent farmers. But few Native Americans profited from the Dawes Act; the greatest beneficiaries were land speculators, who under the law were able to buy the best pieces of reservation land.
The Dawes Severalty Act was an act to provide for the allotment of lands in severalty to Indians on the various reservations, and to extend the protection of the laws of the United States and the Territories over the Indians, and for other purposes.
The bitter irony of this new act was that those who developed it believed they were acting in the best interests of Native Americans. Many of America’s leading religious leaders and progressive reformers helped lead this assault to “kill the Indian, but save the man.” Senator Henry Dawes sincerely believed that he was helping Native Americans when he sponsored the Dawes Severalty Act. The act divided Native American reservations, which were owned communally, into separate plots of land owned by individual tribal members. Supporters thought the act would “civilize” Native Americans by making them ranchers and farmers and instill individualism.
But the results were disastrous. Allotting land to individuals who could sell it, the Dawes Act effectively continued the process of taking away Native American land by making remaining reservation lands available to white settlement and corporate development. Tens of millions of acres of reservation lands passed into the hands of non-Native Americans. Large reservations, such as the Ute and Blackfeet reservations that in 1880 were sizable portions of Colorado and Montana, became by 1900 shadows of their former selves. The act failed to achieve its goal. Instead, much of the land fell into the hands of whites, further impoverishing a decreasing Native American population.
After the allotments had been made in what had become the state of South Dakota, the hundreds of thousands of acres remaining were then sold to white immigrants, and before long native peoples began to sell their plots. For Native Americans in South Dakota the policy was a disaster. From the 1880s to 1950, Lakota and Yanktonai tribes alone relinquished 6,321,957 hectares (15,621,343 acres) of their remaining 8,796,497 hectares (21,735,846 acres).
The act stated it would allot the lands in said reservation in severalty to any Indian located thereon in quantities as follows:
To each head of a family, one-quarter of a section;
To each single person over eighteen years of age, one-eighth of a section;
To each orphan child under eighteen years of age, one-eighth of a section; and
To each other single person under eighteen years now living, or who may be born prior to the date of the order of the President directing an allotment of the lands embraced in any reservation, one-sixteenth of a section.
Section two of the Dawes Severalty Act states that all allotments set apart under the provisions of this act shall be selected by the Indians, heads of families selecting for their minor children, and the agents shall select for each orphan child, and in such manner as to embrace the improvements of the Indians making the selection. Where the improvements of two or more Indians have been made on the same legal subdivision of land, unless they shall otherwise agree, a provisional line may be run dividing said lands between them, and the amount to which each is entitled shall be equalized in the assignment of the remainder of the land to which they are entitled under this act.
The fourth section of the act states that where any Indian not residing upon a reservation, or for whose tribe no reservation has been provided by treaty, act of Congress, or executive order, shall make settlement upon any surveyed or unsurveyed lands of the United States not otherwise appropriated, he or she shall be entitled, upon application to the local land-office for the district in which the lands are located, to have the same allotted to him or her, and to his or her children, in quantities and manner as provided in this act for Indians residing upon reservations; and when such settlement is made upon unsurveyed lands, the grant to such Indians shall be adjusted upon the survey of the lands so as to conform thereto; and patents shall be issued to them for such lands in the manner and with the restrictions as herein provided.
Section eight of the act states that the provision of this act shall not extend to the territory occupied by the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles, and Osage, Miamies and Peorias, and Sacs and Foxes, in the Indian Territory, nor to any of the reservations of the Seneca Nation of New York Indians in the State of New York, nor to that strip of territory in the State of Nebraska adjoining the Sioux Nation on the south added by executive order.
The final section of the Dawes Act (section 11) states that nothing in this act shall be so construed as to prevent the removal of the Southern Ute Indians from their present reservation in Southwestern Colorado to a new reservation by and with the consent of a majority of the adult male members of said tribe.
The Dawes Severalty Act was approved on February 8, 1887. The long term effects of the act were not as helpful as many had planned it to be. The act fortunately failed to achieve its goal.
