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The Dawes Act and the Decline of Indian Farming

The General Allotment or Dawes Act of 1887, which mandated a fundamental change in federal policies towards American Indians, empowered the president of the United States to divide Indian reservations into 160-acre allotments, assign one to each family, and open remaining lands to white settlers. Originally the lands were placed in 25-year trust, but after its passage the law was amended to allow Indians to lease or sell their allotments to non-Indians after receiving the permission of the Office of Indian Affairs. Reformers in the 1880s were convinced that allotting land to Indians would encourage each family to farm its own land and, in so doing, acquire the habits of thrift, industry and individualism needed for assimilation into white culture. The Dawes Act, and related policies, remained in effect until the law was repealed in 1934. While historians have concluded that the Dawes Act was a failure, the origins of that failure are not clearly understood. On the one hand, the Dawes Act was a law that played a key role in opening vast amounts of Indian land to white settlers. On the other, it was a sincere if unsuccessful attempt to reform Indian property rights. This study examines the Dawes Act from both of these perspectives. The first topic considered is the way in which the Act was carried into effect. Allotment began on an experimental basis in the 1860s and continued until 1934. Two alternative hypotheses are developed to explore how reservations were chosen for allotment. The first, the guardianship model, formalizes the official position that the Office of Indian Affairs acted as a guardian and chose reservations for allotment as the Indians were ready to benefit from it. The second, the demand for allotment model, concludes that the Office of Indian Affairs chose reservations for allotment as a direct response to pressures from white settlers and merchants who stood to benefit from the opening of reservation lands. An examination of the allotment process reveals that while Indians were denied a voice in the decision making, Congressmen and others with an interest in opening Indian lands influenced the date of a reservation's allotment. The guardianship and demand for allotment models are both tested using data for the entire U.S. The demand for allotment model is shown to be a good predictor of the date when reservations were allotted. A regression of the date of a reservation's allotment on five independent variables reflecting the attractiveness of a reservation to settlers explains 64 percent of the variation in the dependent variable. A variety of non-parametric statistical tests also support the demand for allotment model. The guardianship model proves to be far less satisfactory. The two models are also tested against case histories of the allotment of reservations in three Northern Plains states. As predicted by the demand for allotment model, the first reservations allotted were in the most fertile and populated areas in these states. The conclusion of this section is that the