The Dawes Act and Assimilation

The Dawes Act and Assimilation

Henry Knox, the secretary of war during the American Revolution, was part of a group of individuals who were concerned about the welfare of Native Americans. However, he did not believe that the natives’ traditional way of life was sustainable and seldom considered native perspectives. These self-appointed reformers believed Native Americans could become “civilized” through assimilationThe process of making different items similar to one another. In human terms, this refers to the process of members of minority cultures becoming more like the members of the dominant culture.—the process of a group adopting the cultural beliefs and norms of the dominant group. While these reformers may have been ethnocentric by modern standards, it is important to remember that most Americans at this time believed natives would simply decline in numbers until they disappeared. At the very least, most believed that efforts to assimilate indigenous people into the dominant culture of Anglo America was an act of kindness based on a naively optimistic view about the capacities and character of natives. Some even subscribed to “scientific” theories about evolution that sanitized the decline of native populations as some sort of “natural” selection. As a result, even though the majority of Americans distanced themselves from rhetoric calling for immediate annihilation of indigenous people, they viewed their extinction as inevitable.

Secretary Knox criticized this view as “more convenient than just” given the desire of Anglos to occupy the lands these tribes occupied. After the Civil War, a small contingent of Anglo reformers such as Helen Hunt JacksonA leading advocate of reforming the federal government’s orientation toward Native Americans, Helen Hunt Jackson detailed the long history of broken treaties and fraud perpetrated against native tribes in her 1881 book A Century of Dishonor. She also wrote a novel that was directed toward popular audiences and told the story of the mistreatment of Native Americans in California. agreed. Jackson documented the ways that the federal government had chosen convenience over justice. Jackson’s 1881 book A Century of Dishonor detailed the long history of the federal government’s forcible seizure of native lands. Using archival research, Jackson exposed the government’s failure to abide by its own treaties, which it had forced natives to sign when those treaties became inconvenient.

Jackson explained how the reservation system disrupted traditional ways of life for various tribes. However, she was a product of her time and did not support the preservation of native cultures and way of life. Accepting the dominant view of most Anglo reformers, Jackson favored assimilation rather than a return to a lifestyle she equated with barbarism. In fact, Jackson’s book criticized the reservation system not only because of the history of injustice surrounding its inception but also because she believed the reservation system perpetuated “uncivilized” traditions and delayed assimilation. In short, Jackson and other like-minded reformers believed the only hope for Native America was to adopt Anglo culture and economic practices such as farming and semiskilled labor. Jackson’s book became a national bestseller and more non-Indians began to share her perspective. Eventually, reformers found a way to combine their goals for assimilation with the land hunger of the dominant Anglo majority.

The resulting convergence of interests led to a policy of accelerating assimilation and opening more land for “American” settlement. The Dawes ActA law passed in 1887 for the stated purpose of encouraging assimilation among Native Americans. The Dawes Act authorized the government to divide a large number of existing reservations into individual family plots, with the remaining lands being transferred to the federal government. of 1877 placed Native Americans on small farming plots taken from existing reservations. The law mandated an end to communal property, dividing reservation lands into individual plots that were “given” to each head of household or individual. From the white perspective, the Dawes Act was incredibly generous. Native Americans were being granted free land just as the homesteaders were. Natives would also be given assistance in learning how to adopt “American” methods of farming.

From the native perspective, however, the Dawes Act was the final assault on their way of life. Natives pointed out that dividing the land in this method prevented them from hunting. It also ended their communal lifestyle that was the basis of their social, economic, and religious ways of life. They also demonstrated that the law’s methods of distributing land (averaging 160 acres per family) conveniently resulted in millions of acres of “surplus” land. Once the family plots were assigned, the rest of the former reservation would become property of the federal government who would then redistribute the land to Anglo settlers. Within only two years of applying the Dawes Act to a handful of reservations, the government controlled 12 million acres of former Indian lands. The congressmen who approved the law understood the potential benefit of using its terms to acquire more land, but few were as forthright about the Dawes Act as Colorado senator Henry Teller. “The real aim of this bill is to get at the Indian lands,” Teller exclaimed. “If this were being done in the name of Greed it would be bad enough; but to do it in the name of humanity is the worst inhumanity.”

Figure 2.6

A poster advertising “Indian Land” for sale. This circular requests that interested parties contact the supervisor of the nearest school operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs for more information. In this and many other ways, schools operated on behalf of Native Americans facilitated Anglo settlement.

Natives utilized a variety of strategies to resist allotment. For example, the Prairie Potawatomi of Kansas simply ignored the boundaries of individual plots and continued to live communally on what remained of their former reservation. Various tribes also sought to work collectively to preserve their lands. In 1888, over twenty Indian nations met in a grand council and agreed to form a national tribal government that would represent their interests. The structure of this government permitted collective action in terms of diplomacy and defense of vital interests. It also maintained the independence of each tribe—a political structure not unlike the representation of states within the original federal government. However, the federal government saw such a confederation as a threat and federal agents prevented natives from leaving their reservations to attend future intertribal meetings. The government also responded with a forced sale of the lands belonging to some of the leading tribes of the proposed confederation. Some of these lands were reorganized into the new Territory of Oklahoma. Tribes that resisted allotment found that the federal aid they had been promised in exchange for their acquiescence to previous treaties and forced land sales was also withheld.

The application of the Dawes Act occurred irregularly, and many tribes were not forced to accept allotments for a number of years until their lands were desired by outside interests. This was the situation for the Ute Indians of northeastern Utah. Oil, gas, and other valuable natural resources were discovered on their lands near the turn of the century. As mining companies moved into the area, the Utes were suddenly forced to accept allotment onto the least desirable lands within their reservation. After their protests were ignored, hundreds of Utes simply left the reservation altogether in 1906. They had hoped to find new homes in South Dakota among allied Sioux. However, they found that the Sioux had also been forced to accept allotment, and their lands were disappearing. Now homeless, the federal government responded by negotiating jobs for the displaced Utes. The men were put to work building the railroads that brought settlers to claim the lands they once controlled.

During the debate over the Dawes Act, Senator Teller cited examples through history where natives had been forced to abandon reservations that had been guaranteed to them in favor of small plots of land. He showed that in the majority of these cases, the policy failed and the individuals were forced to sell their nearly worthless land. “When thirty or forty years shall have passed and these Indians shall have parted with their title,” Teller predicted, “they will curse the hand that was raised professedly in their defense.” Teller’s warning seemed clairvoyant in the decades that followed. An estimated 60 percent of natives who were forced to accept allotment lost control of their land within two generations. Tribes in Oklahoma that had been originally exempted from the terms of the Dawes Act soon saw their lands divided and redistributed under its terms.