Allotment refers to the process of dividing communal tribal land into smaller, individually-owned parcels. The Dawes Act aimed to assign specific plots of land to individual Native Americans, encouraging them to own property. Under the Dawes Act, each Indian family could receive a set amount of land to farm and live on. The law also sought to diminish tribal governments and promote assimilation into American society. Additionally, any land that was not allotted to individuals could be sold to non-Natives, further reducing the size of tribal landholdings.
Support grew for a proposal to take the reservation land and assign it to individual Indians as their private property. Breaking tribal land into individually-held parcels is called allotment. Eventually, this idea became the Dawes Act along with some other elements. These include dissolving the tribal governments, allowing most Indians US citizenship after a period of time, and selling the excess land. A requirement for Indian children to attend boarding schools, where the curriculum and living conditions modeled assimilation, was also a part of the Dawes Act. Authors and supporters of this law believed that by assigning individual Indians private property, pushing them to farm, and educating their children for non-Indian society would permanently solve the challenges facing Indians.
What does “allotment” mean? How did the Dawes Act work specifically regarding allotments?
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