LAD #25: The Dawes Act

The Dawes Act clearly requests the provision of land to Native Americans on various reservations. Too, it calls for the extension of the "protection of laws of the United States and the Territories over the Indians." The Act states that the president has the power to call the assessment and land for any grazing and agricultural purpose. The entire purpose of this is to remove the concept of a communal tribal land holding and replace it with individually maintained and owned properties. Although many did not wish to allow Native Americans to gain citizenship, this was all done in attempts to assimilate many of these Native individuals into American society. For example, if "his residence (is) seperate and apart from any tribe of Indians therin, and has adopted the habits of civilized life, (he) is herby declared to be a citizen of the United States, and he is entitled to all rights, privleges, and immunities of such citizens." Under the act, the Secretary of the Interior was also deemed the power to issue any restrictions or laws he saw fit in order to secure the equal distributions of lands to Native American inhabitants on a reservation. These rights, however, were not to be extended 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 any of the reservations of the Senecac Nation of the 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." Conclusively, the act did not encompass too many Native American groups and did very little as a result.