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The Dawes Act. Transfer of Reservation Lands to Whites Through the Political Process. The Dawes Act. One of the most important actions taken by Congress was the 1887 General Allotment Act or the Dawes Act one of the first laws that specified how reservation land had to be allocated
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The Dawes Act Transfer of Reservation Lands to Whites Through the Political Process
The Dawes Act • One of the most important actions taken by Congress was the 1887 General Allotment Act or the Dawes Act • one of the first laws that specified how reservation land had to be allocated • reservation land was to be allotted to Indians in essentially the same way that the federal domain was being privatized under the Homestead Act • authorized the division of the reservations into 160 acre allotments, and the assignment of one allotment to each Indian family
Dawes Act, Continued • Alloted 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 • Would individualize Indians & create all of the good incentives that come with private property rights (see WSJ on Argentina families) • Would facilitate assimilation of the Indians into American culture
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
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
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
Land Rush • Arriving for the Land Rush: Yellowstone Valley, Montana
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
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)
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.
Evidence of Political Influence • study by Carlson examines the timing of allotment and provides statistical 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 alloted before those with the least rainfall • 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
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
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." • 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 • BIA also supported the act • 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
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 probably would have opposed the process if they had any political influence, but they did not.
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
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 • 1909 (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
Effects of the Dawes Act • if the objective of the allotment act was to privatize land (or take it), 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.
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 stabilized and even increased some • some new reservations have been created
Wealth Transfer through The Political Process • The Dawes Act and its amendments, and the bureaucratic application of the acts 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.
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).
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.
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 • bureaus' budget increased dramatically as did employment by the bureau.
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
BIA, Continued • bureau 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 determinant the procedures for such transfers as well as the terms of leases, and so on. • not until 1909 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.
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)
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
Indian Reorganization Act, Continued • froze most 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
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".
Other Transfers • 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)
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”
