In 1887 the Dawes Act legislated wide-scale private ownership of reservation lands in the United States for Native Americans.
Topic
The Dawes Act’s restrictions on Native American land ownership and the actual motivations behind those restrictions.
Framework
Challenge Position; also some elements of Answer/Explain
Main Point
The Dawes Act’s restriction on Native Americans selling their allotted lands wasn’t actually justified by the stated reasons; instead, it mostly served to benefit the Bureau of Indian Affairs bureaucracy and politicians who supported bureaucratic growth. *The “Most Valuable Sentence” appears in the last paragraph: *
P1: Overview of the Dawes Act’s Land Grants
The Dawes Act gave Native Americans plots of reservation land, but with a catch: the government (specifically, the Bureau of Indian Affairs) held the land “in trust” for 25 years, during which time Native Americans couldn’t sell it, only use it. After 25 years, they’d finally get full ownership.
P2: Stated Reasons for Restricting Land Sales
Lawmakers said that not letting Native Americans sell their land protected their culture—otherwise, the land might quickly end up in non-Native hands. They also claimed that Native Americans didn’t really want or understand private landownership, supposedly preferring communal land use.
P3: Critique of Those Stated Reasons
But those reasons don’t really hold up; they only make sense if the worry is about land going to non-Native Americans. There’s no good reason under those arguments to stop Native Americans from selling land to each other—or even selling it back to the tribe if communal living really was preferred.