The Dawes Act
Transfer of Reservation Lands to
Whites Through the Political Process
AI_13_13
Demand for Indian Land

In 1890 the total Indian population was less than
250,000, and the total area of reservations in 1887 was
roughly 138 million acres (about two-and-one-half times
the size of the state of Georgia).


Although much Indian land was relatively arid, it seemed to
land-hungry westerners that Indians had more land than
they could ever use.
At the same time, an active reform movement in the East
sought to assimilate Indians into mainstream society by
promoting agriculture.

This influential group was made up of Protestant religious
reformers, educators, and government officials.
2
Dawes Act (1887)

Congress tried to satisfy both westerners and reformers
by passing the General Allotment Act, or Dawes Act, of
1887.

The humanitarian reformers who pushed for the passage of
the Dawes Act believed that dividing reservations into privately
owned farms would break the hold of the chiefs over individual
Indians, encourage Indians to become farmers, and hasten
the assimilation of Indians into white culture.


The Lake Mohonk Friends of the Indian led late 19th-century Indian
reform on the ground that allotment would promote the Jeffersonian
ideal among landed Indians,
This belief was based largely on an inaccurate model of Indian
societies—communal—that was popular among social
scientists in the 1880s.
3
Dawes Act


Backers of the Allotment Act touted it as a
necessary step for improving the welfare of
Indians.
As Senator Dawes himself stated, "Till this
people will consent to give up their lands, and
divide them among their citizens so that each
can own the land he cultivates, they will not
make much progress."
4
Allotments & “Surplus” Lands




The Dawes Act gave the president the authority to
survey reservations when he thought it was
appropriate.
Individuals who refused allotments could have one
assigned to them.
Before 1903 a tribe had to consent to have surplus
lands opened for settlement.
After that date, the courts ruled that the federal
government could sell surplus lands without a tribe's
consent and hold the receipts in trust for members
of the tribe.
5
Dawes Act & Good Incentives?

Allotted land was to be held in trust for the Indians for
25 years, after which it would convert to fee simple
(homesteads became fee simple in 5 years)
Allotments could be smaller if a reservation did not
have enough land to give each family 160 acres, and
in some cases families actually got as little as 10
acres.
Backers claimed that allotment would benefit Indians by
dividing up the reservation lands into private ownership
plots
 create all of the good incentives that private property
rights generally create (see WSJ on Argentina families)
 facilitate assimilation of the Indians into American culture


7
Allotment 1887-1934

After 1887 most Indian reservations were
allotted under terms of the Dawes Act, but some
tribes, especially in Oklahoma, received land
allotted under special legislation.



Reservations in desirable farming areas were allotted
first, whereas reservations in remote or arid locations
were sometimes never allotted.
Thus a number of tribes in the Southwest and
elsewhere were never allotted.
Most reservations were allotted between 1887 and
1910, but allotment work continued until 1934.
8
Shrinking Indian Lands

Congress saw allotment as the key to all other programs,
and it remained at the center of federal Indian policy until
1934.
 In all, over 41 million acres were allotted to Indians under a



variety of laws and treaties.
One consequence was that that the land base of Indian
tribes declined from 138 million acres in 1887 to
34,287,336 acres in 1934, including additions to some
reservations in the Southwest.
Moreover, another 17.8 million acres of land allotted to
individuals was still under federal supervision.
Allotments no longer supervised by the federal government
had either been sold or the owners no longer had
restrictions on their land.
9
Shrinking Indian Lands

The results of this policy were far-reaching and
catastrophic for affected tribes.


A large number of the individual allotments—though meant
to establish Indian family farms or ranches—devolved to
non-Indian individuals and off-reservation governments
through encumbrances, tax liens, bankruptcy, and outright
swindles.
While the consequences of the allotment period vary from
reservation to reservation, in aggregate the result was the
passing of nearly two-thirds of Indian lands—90 million of
138 million acres
Special Interest Groups



Given the importance that private ownership holds in
theories of economic development, one might think that
economists would cheer the goals of the Allotment Act.
But doing so would ignore the lessons from public choice
economics which call for closer scrutiny of the interest
groups backing the legislation.
At least two important interest groups involved in the
allotment process must be mentioned:
 Non-Indian settlers
 Office of Indian Affairs (BIA)
12
Interest Group Politics and The
Allotment of Indian Lands

Settlers and the bureaucracy (discussed below)
clearly benefited from the Allotment Act and the
resulting developments.

like the bootleggers and Baptists example
 settlers and bureaucrats were like the bootleggers.
 many people felt that "Americanization" was the best way
to help Indians
 religious groups wanted to convert Indians to Christianity
 ”Friends of the Indians" (missionaries, clergy, east coast
and especially New York journalists and educators, and
government officials) was organized to pursue full
citizenship rights for Indians
13
Friends of the Indians, and other
Political Supporters of the Act

also advocated breaking up the reservations by dividing
them into homesteads for the Indians, and a government
run education system for all Indians in order to turn them
into "good Americans."



BIA also supported the act


felt that the Indians had to give up their strong
communities, seeing them as communistic, and that
private property rights was the way to do this
strongly supported the Dawes act even though it did not
go as far as they wanted in some areas
contended that it was the means by which they would
ultimately allow the Indians to stand on their own
 Apparently wanted to put themselves out of work!
no strong opposition to the Allotment Act
14
Bootleggers & Baptists

The law passed with little opposition, since it also
allowed white farmers to purchase unallotted lands
(called surplus land).



Under the Dawes Act, reservations were to be divided
into 160-acre farms called allotments.
Each family's land was placed in trust for a 25-year
period to prevent Indians from being defrauded of
their land.
But this also meant that the land could not be sold or
mortgaged without government permission.
15
Policy Driven by BIA

If land-hungry settlers were the main beneficiaries of
federal allotment policy, a question immediately arises:
why didn't the federal government either declare all
reservation land surplus and open it to homesteading, or
grant the Indians full land title without trusteeship so that
whites could simply buy the Indian land and gain control
more rapidly?


Had the lands been given directly to Indians or whites, what
role would have remained for the BIA beyond supplying
Indians with agricultural technology and advice?
The allotment system allowed the bureaucarcy to increase
its administrative costs by supervising each allotted parcel.
16
Actual Outcome of the Dawes Act

A very complicated and heavily supervised
property rights allocation emerged from the
allotment process that



proved to be inefficient
created a situation ripe for corruption.
Inefficient because for most of the Indian
Reservations, 160 acres was not enough for a
subsistence farm

Homesteading was used to break up federal land in
the Midwest first, where the soil is rich and there is
substantial precipitation, so 160 acres was a pretty
efficient size
17
Inefficient Sizes of Allotments

160 acres was much too small in the more arid
plains of the west, and the even more arid lands
of the southwest and inter-mountain area.
 homesteaders found this out when they moved
into the plains only to discover that they could
not survive on the farms they got

same was clearly true for most of the reservations.

In many cases, reservations were large enough so
that the Indians could have been given larger tracts
(they actually were in the extremely arid areas
where some Indian families got as much as 400
acres
18
The Real Reason for Inefficiently
Small Allotments


Under the Dawes Act, “Surplus” reservation land not
allotted, was opened to white settlers
 The Homestead Act was ultimately changed when it
became apparent that 160 acres was too small, but
where the reservation land was attractive to whites,
the Indian allotments were not changed
A primary purpose of the Allotment Act was to make it
possible for white settlers to obtain reservation lands
 not interested in Indian lands in extremely arid areas,
so those Indians were given more than 160 acres, but
this did not happen with land attractive to whites
19
Land Rush

Arriving for the
Land Rush:
Yellowstone
Valley, Montana
20
1891 Amendment to the Dawes Act

Allowed lease of allotted lands

Much of the allotted land was not being shifted
into production, probably because the parcels
were too small to work efficiently


Parcels of land had to be combined somehow to achieve
the scale that was necessary.
By leasing allotted land, a farmer could expand the size
of an operating farm to achieve the efficient scale of
operation.
21
1891 Amendment

By amending the Allotment Act in 1891 to allow for
the leasing of allotments that had not been released
from trusteeship, Congress allowed whites access to
the lands while preserving an important role for the
bureaucracy.

This gave BIA Indian agents even more power
because it was up to them to determine and enforce
the terms of leases.
22
Whites Gain Control of Reservation
Lands too

Lease could be to other Indians or to whites


Whites probably had comparative advantages in
agriculture over many Indians, at least outside the 5
civilized tribes and a few others that had substantial
experience in agriculture before they were put on
reservations
Whites could pay more for use of the allotted land than it
was worth to the Indians (e.g., whites had access to
credit markets and often owned other land to use as
collateral)
23
Special Interest Theory: The IRA (1934)



From the special-interest theory of allotment, two
important hypotheses follow:
1. Allotment would occur first in those areas where
whites placed a higher value on the land held by
Indians.
2. As the allotment process transferred millions of
acres out of the control of the BIA, the bureaucracy
would have lost nearly all of its power had it not
halted the process by retaining trust authority under
the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.
24
Hypothesis 1


The model predicts that a reservation in a state like
Arizona (less than 20 inches of rainfall) would be
allotted 10.2 years later than a reservation in a state
like Nebraska (more than 20 inches of rainfall).
The model predicts that a reservation in Michigan
(population density more than 16) would be allotted
14.0 years earlier than a reservation in Wyoming
(population density less than 16)
 These results support the theory that Indian policy
was heavily dominated by non-Indian interest
groups.
25
Timing of Allotments

Allotment did not occur immediately

required substantial bureaucratic undertaking to
survey and allot the Indian lands


many reservations operated under their customary
systems of property rights well into the 1900s
 Allotment was still going on into the 1930s, and some
reservations were never allotted at all because the
allotment process was finally ended.
timing of allotment was also politically driven
 reservations containing surplus lands that were most
desirable to white settlers were allotted first, and
those that were the least desirable waited.
26
Evidence of Political Influence

Study by Carlson examines the timing of allotment
and provides evidence that the earliest allotments
were those in the most populated states where
the most land had been improved for ag
within those states, the reservations that got the most
rainfall were allotted first.
allotment was ended in 1934
 by that time the average quality of Indian land had
clearly fallen as parts of the best land had been
transferred to whites while the worst land remained in
reservations
this process also meant that the size, power and
influence of the BIA increased dramatically since it was
in charge of the allotment process



27
Indian Views Regarding the Dawes
Act

probably mixed



Some were clearly going to be worse off, since, within
many of the agricultural areas the size of the average farm
under the Indian systems of customary use rights was
actually larger than 160 acres
there were also many Indians with smaller holdings
Supporters were probably rare on reservations where
cultivation agriculture was not feasible
 Indians who were on reservations that engaged in open
range ranching (e.g., Blackfeet) probably would have
opposed the process if they had any political influence,
but they did not.
28
The Allotment Process

Once allotment began on a reservation each adult
male was given four years to choose his land
parcel and if he failed or refused to do so, the
Interior Department (BIA) was to assign an
allotment to him.

After all eligible members of the tribe received their allotments,
the Act stated that any remaining land was surplus, and
therefore was to be opened to "secure homes for actual
settlers”

government was suppose to pay the tribe for this surplus land and
the settlers were allowed to take the land as homesteads
29
Changes in the Process

Under a 1900 Amendment to the Act, Whites were
allowed to buy the surplus and the federal government
acted as the agent for the Indians in the sale

1906 amendment authorized granting fee simple title to any
Indian immediately if the Indian was deemed to be
"competent and capable of managing his or her own
affairs."
 BIA was under considerable pressure to issue such
titles, so the amount of fee simple land created on
reservations increased dramatically
 One reason for this was that once land was fee simple, it
was no longer considered to be "Indian Land", so whites
could gain title without dealing with the BIA, by buying it
from the Indian with fee simple rights
30
Allotment
Surplus
1911
31
32
Effects of the Dawes Act


If the objective of the allotment act was to
privatize land, then it was clearly a success.
If the objective was to increase land ownership by
individual Indians in order to encourage them to
engage in ag, it was a disaster.

as the 25 years for land being held in trust ended, the
land became fee simple, and the Indians could sell it to
whites, often those who had been leasing it.

estimated 60 percent of the allotted lands ended up being
transferred to whites.
33
Decline in Indian Farming

The Dawes Act had a negative effect on Indian
farming, as it ended their communal holding of
property (with crop land often being privately
owned by families or clans) by which they had
ensured that everyone had a home and a place
in the tribe.
34
Transfer of Indian Lands

In 1881 there were 155,632,312 acres
allocated to tribes and to individual Indians on
reservations



1890 the total was down to 104,314,349
by 1933 it reached 69,588,421
in 1962 there were 50,557,234, less than a third
of what it had been 80 years earlier

Since then Indian lands have stabilized and even
increased through purchases.

some new reservations have been created
35
Indian Reservations, 1875
36
Indian Reservations, 1890
37
Indian Reservations, 1930
38
Wealth Transfer through The Political
Process

The Dawes Act and its amendments, let non-Indian
interests capture wealth originally allocated to the Indians
as reservation lands
 result reflects special interest politics
 reservations were established at precisely the same
time that western land values for white settlers were
rising
 Whites were excluded from access, and they had
incentives to find a way to obtain access
 Dawes Act and its amendments did that, and the
result was one of the largest real estate transfers
through the political process in American history.
39
Political Constituencies

Alston and Spiller found that the senators and
congressmen on the influential committees responsible
for these acts were self-selected

did not represent the interest of Indians.
 Indians had no political clout
 could not vote, and they had no money to offer
 already defeated so threats of fighting and other sorts
of disruption were not really credible (there were
occasional small scale revolts, such as Wounded
Knee, but the Indians simply had no way of
influencing policy).
40
Constituencies, Continued

The most powerful constituencies for the
congressmen in control of Indian policy were
those who wanted access to Indian lands.

Even those whites who believed that they were
advocates for the Indians, such as the Friends of the
Indian, mistakenly believed that the allotment process
was going to be good for Indians
 those who wanted to capture Indian lands through the
political process managed to get the act structured in
such a way that they would be able to do so, perhaps
to the surprise of those who considered themselves to
be advocates for Indians.
41
BIA Interests

Unlike regulatory bureaucracies that tend to get captured
by the Industry they regulate, the BIA was not captured
by the Indians.

Suppose to serve the Indians' interests, but in reality they
permitted almost no opportunities for the Indians to
influence bureau policy, and did not systematically pursue
the interests of the Indians.
 might ask why the bureaucracy would not have resisted the
transfer of Indian lands to whites, since it meant that the
bureaucracy’s domain was being reduced, but in fact, the
impact of allotment on the BIA was quite positive

BIA‘s budget increased dramatically as did employment by
the bureau.
42
BIA Interests, Continued

If the lands had simply been given directly to the Indians
or to the whites the role of the bureau would have been
somewhat limited, although the actually allocation
process would have had to have been supervised to
make sure that it complied with Congressional mandates


bureau was given the task of surveying the reservations,
assigning parcels to individual Indians, and then teaching
the Indians how to become independent farmers
Many in the bureau and in Congress contended that the
bureau would ultimately disappear because of the allotment
process and the resulting self sufficiency of the Indians, but
the opposite actually occurred
43
BIA, Continued

BIA continued to grow because allotment created a lot of
work for the bureau and justified its growth



initial act required that allotted lands be held in trust for 25
years, so the bureau had a major administrative job to do.
1891 amendment allowed the lease of allotted lands, and
as trustees the bureaus employees were responsible for
determining the procedures for such transfers as well as
the terms of leases, and so on.
Not until 1906 that actual fee simple rights could be
granted, but then the bureau had to determine if the Indian
was "competent and capable of managing his or her own
affairs.”
 Each amendment meant more duties for the bureau.
44
BIA Continued

Other duties increased too


as the Indians' incentives and abilities to pursue
economic activities such as ag declined with the
transfer of land to whites, Indians actually became
more and more dependent on the Federal
government for food, clothing, housing, and so on
Between the allotment process and the other
policies of the bureau a very large population of
dependents was created that they had to care for
and supervise (an issue to be considered later)
45
Hypothesis 2

Passage of the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) in
1934 provided the life-sustaining rationale for the
BIA.


The act set up a process for establishing tribal
governments and gave the BIA authority over this
process.
It also ended the allotment process and froze most
allotments for which fee patents had not been issued
into perpetual trusteeship.
46
Indian Reorganization Act of 1934
and the End of Allotment

If allotment had continued, the reservations and BIA
would have ultimately become irrelevant as land
was transferred to whites

Allotment was ended by Congress in 1934,

preserved what was still a large system of reservations
and a large number of dependents


One reason: the best of the Indian lands had already been
allotted
Another: the value of land had fallen substantially (Great
Depression), and ag prices had dropped dramatically,
unemployment was very high, and few whites were
interested in gaining access to more Indian land
47
Indian Reorganization Act, Continued

Froze allotments for which fee simple had not been
granted into perpetual trusteeship.
 BIA administers these trusts (discussed in detail
later)

Mandated that tribal governments be established on
the reservations.


would administer the tribal lands that remained
unalloted, but the bureau was to be responsible for
setting up and advising these governments.
The major lobbying effort to end allotment came
from the BIA which also sought a larger budget in
order for it to accomplish its new duties, duties that
it lobbied to get
48
Why Didn’t Whites Oppose IRA?

If, as argued above, the Allotment Act gave nonIndians access to Indian lands, then why did nonIndian citizens and their representatives not oppose
the IRA?


After all, the act halted the issuance of fee-simple title
making it impossible for settlers to purchase land
directly from Indians.
McChesney explains that white opposition to the IRA
did not materialize because "the value of Western land
fell with the steep decline in livestock and agricultural
prices [in the 1920s]"
49
Was Allotment a Success?



Measured from the Indians' perspective regarding the
millions of acres transferred to non-Indians, the allotment
most certainly was a disaster.
Viewed from the perspective of non-Indian settlers and
Washington bureaucrats, allotment was a resounding
success.
Non-Indians ended up owning or leasing substantial
amounts of many reservations, and the BIA flourished,
by operating first as a real estate agent for Indian lands
and then as the trustee overseeing Indian land management.
50
Allotment’s Legacy

As Carlson suggests, "the general program of
allotting land in severality was bent, pulled, and
shaped by non-Indian economic interests,"and
as McChesney explains, "Every change in the
sequence of allotment events from 1887 to 1934
led to an increase in the involvement of the
federal government in Indian affairs and each
change can be explained by its ability to
generate more work for the Indian bureaucracy".
51
Other Transfers: Cherokee Outlet

Indian land did not necessarily have to be allotted to
be transferred.

Anderson describes the political process leading to
the opening of the Cherokee Outlet for instance.

Provides another indication that the special interest
theory of government explains Indian policy pretty well,
and that for much of its history, the Indians themselves
had virtually no influence over that policy

Under allotment those who did obtain fee simple land were
able to sell it and get something for it
 Indians got very little from surplus lands homesteaded
or sold by the government for the tribes (BIA trust
management is discussed later), or for land that was
simply taken (e.g., Cherokee Outlet)
52
Cherokee Outlet

It was a 60 mile wide strip of land south of the
Oklahoma-Kansas border between the 96th and
100th meridians.


It was about 225 miles long and in 1891 contained
8,144,682.91 acres (1836).
The US negotiated a new treaty (due to Cherokee
Nation’s alliance with the Confederacy) in 1866.

Allowed the government to dispose of the land in the
Cherokee Outlet: “The United States may settle friendly
Indians in any part of the Cherokee country west of 96°…
[sale proceeds] to be paid for to the Cherokee Nation.”
53
Cherokee Strip Livestock Association


The CSLA offered $30 million for the outright
purchase of the outlet, but the Cherokees
refused (1889).
Later the government
paid $8.6 million for
the Outlet (1991).
54
Reductions in the Hidatsa Lands
55
Hidatsa Reservation Today
56
Ute Territory Before Reservations Were
Created
57
Ute Reservation, 1868
58
Ute Reservation, 1873
59
Current Ute Reservations
60
Indians Subject to Congressional and
BIA Supervision

The result of Indian policy as it developed through
the last couple of decades of the 19th century and
the first 3 or 4 decades of the 20th century, was not
the establishment of self-reliant and self-determined
Indians, as so many advocates claimed it would be.
 Instead, reservation Indians found themselves
becoming increasingly dependent wards of the
state entangled in what Anderson describes as a
“bureaucratic quagmire”
61
Apache Receiving Cloth Commodities
62
Apache Women Receiving
Commodities
63
Geronimo and Family, Fort Sill, OK,
Pumpkin Patch
64
Indian Claims Commission

In 1946, the federal government established the
Indian Claims Commission as an official venue for
certain tribes to seek monetary settlements for land
loss and other wrongs dating back to original treaty
violations.


Over 370 claims were filed by eligible tribes over the 32
years of the commission's existence, mostly concerning
land.
By accepting the government's monetary offer, the
aggrieved tribe abdicated any right to raise their claim
again in the future, and on occasion gave up their federal
status as a tribe after accepting compensation.
Awards

Awarding money based upon a net acreage figure of
lost lands times the monetary market value of an
acre at the time of taking.


In a few instances, by way of settlement acts, tribes
gained some monetary funds to buy acreage (as with
the Penobscot and Passamoddy of Maine and the
Catawba of the Carolinas).
Special acts on occasion did restore some acreage as
with the Havasupai at the Grand Canyon.

Some significant monetary awards were made, but Native
nations soon learned that filing a claim did not guarantee
compensation and that the federal policy did not actually
support the reinstatement of lost land to Native title.
Termination

In the 1950s, the federal policy of tribal termination
presented a further threat to the lands of Native nations
as the federal government attempted to eliminate its
trustee role.





House Concurrent Resolution 108 of 1953 identified tribes
deemed immediately capable of doing without federal services.
These included the Klamath, Menominee, and those within
certain states such as California, Texas, Florida, and New York.
Legislation over the next two decades terminated many of these
tribes as federally recognized sovereigns, removing tribal land
protections and dividing parcels among tribal members.
Much of such land ended up in non-Indian possession.
Over 1 million acres of tribal land were lost due to termination.
Passamaquoddy Tribe

During the civil rights era, the drive for self-determination
renewed Native efforts to regain control of historic tribal
lands.

In 1972, the Passamaquoddy Tribe and the Penobscot
Indian Nation sued for $25 billion and 12.5 million acres in
Maine and won a landmark ruling from the U.S. District
Court.
 An ensuing monetary settlement was reached in 1980
with the U.S. government. The settlement resulted in no
direct return of land but provided monetary
compensation of $81.5 million. More than $54 million of
this was set aside as a fund for land acquisition.
Indian Lands Today

The long, chaotic history of settlement, federal
policy, court cases, and legislation relating to Indian
lands has created an exceptionally complicated
property rights legacy.

Each Native nation has a unique land situation based on
the particular circumstances of its past.


Some reservations were heavily allotted, others not at all.
Some tribal governments have jurisdiction over large and
contiguous tracts of land, others contend with reservations
heavily divided between Indian and non-Indian interests,
and still others have no specific land base.