allotment

What happened

The General Allotment Act of 1887, known as the Dawes Act, authorized the President to survey a reservation and "allot the lands in said reservation in severalty to any Indian located thereon." Each head of a family was to receive "one-quarter of a section," and single adults and orphans smaller shares. Patents were to declare that the United States "will hold the land thus allotted, for the period of twenty-five years, in trust for the sole use and benefit of the Indian."

The Act also opened a second path. Once allotments were made, or sooner if the President thought best, the Secretary of the Interior could negotiate to buy "such portions of its reservation not allotted as such tribe shall, from time to time, consent to sell." Land that was not allotted could thus pass to non-Indian settlers.

The Supreme Court described the purpose in Hodel v. Irving (1987). The allotment legislation "seems to have been in part animated by a desire to force Indians to abandon their nomadic ways in order to speed the Indians' assimilation into American society," and in part by pressure to free new lands for settlement.

Congress ended the policy in 1934. The Indian Reorganization Act said that no land of any Indian reservation "shall be allotted in severalty to any Indian." Allotment's lasting effect is fractionation, described in a separate record.

Summarized with AI assistance from 4 sources and checked against their words; not yet reviewed by historians or by the nations. Report an error