Dawes Act

February 8, 1887

The Dawes Severalty Act broke up tribally held American Indian lands and allotted them to individuals, with the 'surplus' sold to white settlers. Over the next forty years it cost the tribes two-thirds of their remaining land. Its authors considered it reform. Its victims remember it, rightly, as theft. The act was not repealed until the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 reversed course under Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.