Dawes Act

The General Allotment Act of 1887, also known as the Dawes Act was a federal law of the United States, which delimited the Indian reservation land.

Formation

Since 1871, the federal government had the tribes of the U.S. Native Americans ( Indians) reinforced by violence and fraud in those areas (" Reserves " ) forced, initially for the white settlers of little importance. After the last great victory of the natives in the Battle of the Little Bighorn River against a contingent of troops of the U.S. Army under General George A. Custer on June 25, 1876, the high point of resistance was exceeded. The Indians could not survive with their way of life imposed on them in the reserves and were dependent on food deliveries to the U.S. government. But most of the areas left to them should the lawless natives ( they received in 1924 the citizenship of the U.S. ) are taken.

On 8 February 1887, the U.S. Congress passed the " General Allotment Act" ( " General land allocation Law"). Later, he became widely known as the Dawes Act, after Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts, who had drafted him. The reserve land was divided into large areas and 160 acres allotted to each family head of the Indians for exclusive use. All the unmarried reserve residents over 18 years and minor orphans were invested with 80 Acres, children under 18 years received 40 acres and wives nothing. The plots were often unprofitable but only after 25 years of ownership of the Indians. The U.S. government acted as trustee. Many natives knew no private ownership of land and many sold out of ignorance or economic hardship their land to white settlers or speculators. The non-allocated areas and the plots which fell after the death of the owner to the state, were sold at bargain prices to white buyers.

Several groups of indigenous people were excluded from the provisions of the law. The area in the Indian Territory, which inhabited the Cherokee, Muskogee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Osage, Miami, Peoria, Sauk and Fox were excluded from the " General Allotment Act". The areas of Seneca in upstate New York and adjacent to the Sioux territory of land in Nebraska were excluded.

1983, negotiations with the Five Civilized tribes, the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muskogee and Seminole, to an expansion of the Dawes Act. The five Indian nations pledged to abolish their tribal government and to recognize state and federal laws. In return, the state allotted a portion of the common Indian Territory members of the five tribes.

Target

The law mainly pursued two objectives: Firstly, as the community structure of the Indians broke and the Indians should thus be integrated into American society. The Indians should become a farmer. As such, the official view, they would need much less land than they claimed for their traditional non- sedentary lifestyle as hunters and gatherers. The Indians themselves fought mostly against a life as a farmer, especially those of the northern Plains. This saw the farm work as unworthy and restrictive. A further advantage of the parcelling saw the government in the so- vacant surplus land that could sell them at a profit to whites. Overall, the Indians lost by 90 million acres of a total of 138 million acres in 1887, or about two-thirds.

The land should be parceled out as long managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA ) in trust until the Indians had learned to keep it as whites, that is, until the Indians from Farmer had become. To make matters worse for the Indians that the best land was sold to white and they had to make do with less, because the country. In addition to the land parcelling Further measures should allow the Indians to rise in the melting pot of the United States. The Indians should be expelled everything Wilde and they are thus made to whites.

Probably the most devastating measure together with the parcelling was the establishment of boarding schools. Indian children were very early snatched from her parents' home and thus the reserve life and put outside the reserves in boarding schools. There, they were forbidden to speak their traditional language or hold traditional ceremonies. Those in charge of boarding schools, often missionaries, insulted all the values ​​that were taught to the children in their traditional education. The Indian children came in as a cultural depression that should determine their entire future life. The ban on the traditional language and the exercise of their religion and tribal ceremonies was true not only for the pupils of the boarding schools, but for all living in the U.S. Indians.

Follow

As a result of the Dawes Act, the area of the Reserves 1887-1932 reduced from 138 to 48 million acres. This led to an indescribable misery of the Indians. Later a part of the lost land the Indians were back. A total of 1.26 million acres to 1920 were overwritten to Indians who had not lived at the time of subdivision in the reserves.

The General Allotment Act was due to the massive reduction of reserve land partly splits the reserves result. For example, the great Lakota reservation was divided into six smaller ones. Not all tribes were affected by the subdivision. Those in Oklahoma and Nebraska were also spared as a few others, such as Seneca and Menominee.

The General Allotment Act is attributed mainly that this law had not taken into account the knock-on effect of heredity. 1906 should the Burke Act, enjoin the mercy of the states, which are often considered only the interests of the whites stop. As a result, the parcelling were made by the Federal Government and not by the individual states.

Recent impact

Land leases by Indians at White led in the present on controversial sequelae. The BIA manages the rental income in trust for the Indians. 1996 ranged 500,000 Indians a class action lawsuit against the U.S. government because they were usually only a few cents lease income from the BIA. As a result, the interior as well as the Ministry of Finance admitted that they have done for decades no accounting of the country and accounts of the Indians. The legal battle ended on 8 December 2009 with a comparison over a total of $ 3.4 billion. $ 1.4 billion were thereby directly awarded the plaintiffs up to 2 billion dollars are provided for the re- purchase of the distributed under the Dawes Act land. A law that allows the financing of the total by the government, was signed by President Barack Obama in December 2010.