Welcome to Brainstey, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren vogelbam here in the long dark history of the United States government's mistreatment of Native Americans, most people are familiar with the Trail of Tears, in which approximately fifteen thousand Native American men, women, and children died during forced relocation from their tribal homelands in the American Southeast to territories
west of the Mississippi. But the theft of Native American traditional lands didn't stop with the Removal Act of eighteen thirty that authorized the Trail of Tears. Over the next century, Congress passed a series of laws that systematically stripped Native peoples of their lands, selling them to white settlers and corporations. The DAWs Act, while not a household name, was perhaps
the single most devastating government policy of them all. Also known as the General Allotment Act of eighteen teen eighty seven, the Dots Act resulted in the loss of ninety million acres or thirty six million hectors of native lands between eighteen eighty seven and nineteen thirty four, the equivalent of
two thirds of all tribal landholdings at the time. Nineteenth century, wide Americans, driven by manifest destiny and rapid industrialization, were hungry for more and more land upon which to farm, ranch, harvest timber, mine minerals, and build railroads. Because of earlier relocation policies that resettled Native Americans and Western reservations, many large tracts of attractive Western land were in the hands
of Native peoples By the eighteen eighties. Politicians and businessmen who saw tribal land ownership as an obstacle to American progress were constantly searching for a solution to the so called Indian problem, and they found it in an unlikely source,
progressive social reformers. For the art Cold this episode is based on How Stuff Works, spoke with Mark Hirsh, a historian at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, d C. He explained that many well intentioned Americans were appalled at the desperate conditions on Western reservations,
where hunting was forbidden and starvation was rampant. Backed by early anthropologists, these social reformers believed that private land ownership and cultural assimilation as farmers and ranchers were key to saving Native peoples from themselves. Hirsch said, these people really believed that they were doing a good thing for Native Americans,
that they were true friends of the Indian. As a result, two very different groups of land hungry capitalists and social progressives threw their support behind the General Allotment Act of eighteen eighty seven, called the Dawes Act for Senator Henry
Dawes of Massachusetts, the bill's lead proponent in Congress. This law gave the US les president unprecedented power to break up tribal lands into small parcels or allotments, some of which would be offered to Native American families as private farmland, and the rest sold to colonists and businesses. The idea was that the native landowners would emulate their new white neighbors and leave behind their traditional ways to become profitable
farmers and ranchers themselves. How Stuff Works also spoke with Stephen Pavar, then a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberty Union's Racial Justice Program who has since retired. He said Congress thought that the best way of curing the Indian problem forever would be for Indian people to assimilate into white culture and Society. Congress came up with the General Allotment Act as the vehicle to accomplish that.
Before the DAWs Act, Native American land, including reservations, was communally owned by a tribe, and the fruits of their labor were shared collectively by all tribal members. This is part of a larger Native or Indian American concept of not owning natural resources, but sharing collective responsibility for them. For most other Americans, that traditional way of life was antithetical to nineteenth century ideals of personal independence and capitalist gain.
Teddy Roosevelt favorably described the DAWs Act as quote a mighty pulverizing engine to break up the tribal mass, adding that the effort should be to steadily make the Indian work like any other man on his own ground. Under the DAWs Act, native lands were divided into allotments between forty and one hundred and sixty acres in size that's sixteen to sixty five hectors, and legally changed them from
community property to privately owned parcels of land. In some cases, Native American families were given the option of choosing their allotment, but in most cases it was assigned to them. By officers of the USA Apartment of the Interior. Once all Native American families had received their allotments, there was plenty
of land left over. This surplus land, the DAWs Act said, could be sold to non native settlers and corporations, with the proceeds held in a government account to be used exclusively a quote for the education and civilization of the Indians. That surplus land amounted to sixty million acres or twenty four million hectors, nearly half of all existing Native territory that was immediately ceded to the US government. The framers of the Dawes Act added a stipulation that Native Americans
weren't competent to own their allotments outright. Instead, the deeds to the land would be held in a government trust for twenty five years, after which they would be transferred to the native individual. No such waiting period existed for white settlers or corporations. Hirsch explained the US politicians largely saw the DAWs Act as a win win situation in
which Native Americans assimilated into the broader culture and economy. Quote. Plus, if you had enough white people moving into Indian territory, that area could become an American territory. If the population kept growing, you could apply for statehood, which is exactly what happened. But while the DAWs Act was a clear win for colonizing America, it was absolutely devastating for Native peoples. First, Pavar said, the majority of Indians didn't want to become
farmers and ranchers. Plus, you needed money to buy equipment, cattle, and seeds, money that they didn't have. Here they were with hundreds of acres of land that they couldn't even use. In most cases, the parcels that were allotted to Native families sat vacant until the twenty five year trust period was over and the land could be sold. But here
again was another stipulation. After the twenty five five year trust period expired, the land was subject to state and local property taxes, which most Native landowners couldn't pay, so the land would be seized by the tax court and sold at auction. Pavar said there were white people literally waiting in line for the land to go into forfeiture for failure to pay taxes. They would bid on it
and purchase it. Later, laws passed by Congress made it even easier to sell off Native American owned allotments before the twenty five year waiting period. The Burke Act of nineteen oh six authorized the Secretary of the Interior to deem a Native landowner competent to receive the deed to his own land, at which point taxes became due. This often happened without the native landowner's knowledge or consent, and before he knew it, his land was in forfeiture and
sold to the highest bidder. Other problems arose too. For example, there were the infamous Osage murders. After the Osage people were forcibly relocated twice in the eighteen hundreds, they landed in parts of modern day Oklahoma and struck it rich when oil was discovered there in eighteen ninety seven. They had more bargaining power than a lot of other native groups, but the government still forced allotment on them when capitalists
couldn't buy them out. There was a string of mysterious disappearances and murders in the nineteen twenties that ended with white Americans holding land rights. It was the start of the FBI's Murder Investigation Department, though few cases were ever solved. An additional twenty seven million acres of Native land were lost through these stipulations in an amendment to the DAWs Act. So much land was lost that even the federal government
was concerned. In nineteen twenty eight, a damning report was written by the Department of the Interior describing the state of abject poverty and disease in which most Native Americans were living. The authors of the report criticized the faulty logic that handing private land to Native families would automatically turn them into successful farmers. They also noted that many of the families were living on lands from which quote a trained and experienced white man could scarcely rest a
reasonable living. Congress repealed the DAWs Act in nineteen thirty four, but the systematic theft of that ninety million acres of Native lands had already happened. One small positive point, the lists of Native Americans who were given allotments from the DAWs Act, called the DAWs Roles, have become a valuable genealogical tool for tracing Native ancestry. Beyond that, court cases related to allotment and Native American land tenure are still
going on today. Today's episode is based on the article how the DAWs Act stole ninety million acres of Native American land on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Dave Ruse. Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.