Another name for Dawes Act is General Allotment Act, and it was a centralized law that derived its name from its author, Senator Henry Dawes who was from Massachusetts. The law got passed by the legislative body on 8th February 1887 (Holmes, Dailey & Walter, 2008). The Act made it possible for the president to split up the reserved land that was tribally owned by Indians into small segments for allocation to Indian families and individuals. Selected tribes were allowed to have their members to select sections of land for them and their children. Normally, they were allowed between 40 to 160 acres. While women received no land, men with families received up to160 acres and single men were given 80 acres, while boys were given 40 acres. The excess land was sold to non-Indians. The result was 86 million acres being sold to Americans. In other cases, the land was assigned by the area superintendents. The reason for allotment was to change the Indians from their “backward” communistic lifestyle to civilization in the hope that they would forget about the organizations of their tribes.
Source: Nps.gov, 2016
As seen from the picture, massive land was sold to non-Indians. The picture is a reminder of how Native Americans lost huge chunks of land through the Dawes Act. Initially, the government wanted the Indians to open up more of their massive lands for forestry, mining, railways and other industries. The Native Americans were offered citizenship as a result. In the end, relations that existed between the US government and ethnic ruling bodies were severed. This policy was later overturned in 1934 by Wheeler-Howard Act, which put to an end the sale of excessive land to US buyers; the new law endeavored to hand over control and sovereignty to the ethnic rulers.
That Act looked like it would have been beneficial to the American Indians but it did not succeed because they did not embrace civilization due to their lack of interest in individual land and resources ownership (Holmes, Dailey & Walter, 2008). They only resulted to loosing massive lands to the policy that had been enacted of selling excessive land to the non-Indian individuals.
References
Holmes, K., Dailey, S. & Walter, D. (2008). Montana : stories of the land. Helena, Mont: Montana Historical Society Press.
Nps.gov. (2016). Retrieved 19 February 2016, from http://www.nps.gov/common/uploads/teachers/assets/images/mwr/park/home/F60C63EF -B270-5C9E-451F5C3DA0F6CFE2/F60C63EF-B270-5C9E-451F5C3DA0F6CFE2.jpg
