Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstey, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren
Speaker 1: vogelbam here in the long dark history of the United
Speaker 1: States government's mistreatment of Native Americans, most people are familiar
Speaker 1: with the Trail of Tears, in which approximately fifteen thousand
Speaker 1: Native American men, women, and children died during forced relocation
Speaker 1: from their tribal homelands in the American Southeast to territories
Speaker 1: west of the Mississippi. But the theft of Native American
Speaker 1: traditional lands didn't stop with the Removal Act of eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty that authorized the Trail of Tears. Over the next century,
Speaker 1: Congress passed a series of laws that systematically stripped Native
Speaker 1: peoples of their lands, selling them to white settlers and corporations.
Speaker 1: The DAWs Act, while not a household name, was perhaps
Speaker 1: the single most devastating government policy of them all. Also
Speaker 1: known as the General Allotment Act of eighteen teen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: the Dots Act resulted in the loss of ninety million
Speaker 1: acres or thirty six million hectors of native lands between
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty seven and nineteen thirty four, the equivalent of
Speaker 1: two thirds of all tribal landholdings at the time. Nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: wide Americans, driven by manifest destiny and rapid industrialization, were
Speaker 1: hungry for more and more land upon which to farm, ranch,
Speaker 1: harvest timber, mine minerals, and build railroads. Because of earlier
Speaker 1: relocation policies that resettled Native Americans and Western reservations, many
Speaker 1: large tracts of attractive Western land were in the hands
Speaker 1: of Native peoples By the eighteen eighties. Politicians and businessmen
Speaker 1: who saw tribal land ownership as an obstacle to American
Speaker 1: progress were constantly searching for a solution to the so
Speaker 1: called Indian problem, and they found it in an unlikely source,
Speaker 1: progressive social reformers. For the art Cold this episode is
Speaker 1: based on How Stuff Works, spoke with Mark Hirsh, a
Speaker 1: historian at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American
Speaker 1: Indian in Washington, d C. He explained that many well
Speaker 1: intentioned Americans were appalled at the desperate conditions on Western reservations,
Speaker 1: where hunting was forbidden and starvation was rampant. Backed by
Speaker 1: early anthropologists, these social reformers believed that private land ownership
Speaker 1: and cultural assimilation as farmers and ranchers were key to
Speaker 1: saving Native peoples from themselves. Hirsch said, these people really
Speaker 1: believed that they were doing a good thing for Native Americans,
Speaker 1: that they were true friends of the Indian. As a result,
Speaker 1: two very different groups of land hungry capitalists and social
Speaker 1: progressives threw their support behind the General Allotment Act of
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty seven, called the Dawes Act for Senator Henry
Speaker 1: Dawes of Massachusetts, the bill's lead proponent in Congress. This
Speaker 1: law gave the US les president unprecedented power to break
Speaker 1: up tribal lands into small parcels or allotments, some of
Speaker 1: which would be offered to Native American families as private farmland,
Speaker 1: and the rest sold to colonists and businesses. The idea
Speaker 1: was that the native landowners would emulate their new white
Speaker 1: neighbors and leave behind their traditional ways to become profitable
Speaker 1: farmers and ranchers themselves. How Stuff Works also spoke with
Speaker 1: Stephen Pavar, then a senior staff attorney with the American
Speaker 1: Civil Liberty Union's Racial Justice Program who has since retired.
Speaker 1: He said Congress thought that the best way of curing
Speaker 1: the Indian problem forever would be for Indian people to
Speaker 1: assimilate into white culture and Society. Congress came up with
Speaker 1: the General Allotment Act as the vehicle to accomplish that.
Speaker 1: Before the DAWs Act, Native American land, including reservations, was
Speaker 1: communally owned by a tribe, and the fruits of their
Speaker 1: labor were shared collectively by all tribal members. This is
Speaker 1: part of a larger Native or Indian American concept of
Speaker 1: not owning natural resources, but sharing collective responsibility for them.
Speaker 1: For most other Americans, that traditional way of life was
Speaker 1: antithetical to nineteenth century ideals of personal independence and capitalist gain.
Speaker 1: Teddy Roosevelt favorably described the DAWs Act as quote a
Speaker 1: mighty pulverizing engine to break up the tribal mass, adding
Speaker 1: that the effort should be to steadily make the Indian
Speaker 1: work like any other man on his own ground. Under
Speaker 1: the DAWs Act, native lands were divided into allotments between
Speaker 1: forty and one hundred and sixty acres in size that's
Speaker 1: sixteen to sixty five hectors, and legally changed them from
Speaker 1: community property to privately owned parcels of land. In some cases,
Speaker 1: Native American families were given the option of choosing their allotment,
Speaker 1: but in most cases it was assigned to them. By
Speaker 1: officers of the USA Apartment of the Interior. Once all
Speaker 1: Native American families had received their allotments, there was plenty
Speaker 1: of land left over. This surplus land, the DAWs Act said,
Speaker 1: could be sold to non native settlers and corporations, with
Speaker 1: the proceeds held in a government account to be used
Speaker 1: exclusively a quote for the education and civilization of the Indians.
Speaker 1: That surplus land amounted to sixty million acres or twenty
Speaker 1: four million hectors, nearly half of all existing Native territory
Speaker 1: that was immediately ceded to the US government. The framers
Speaker 1: of the Dawes Act added a stipulation that Native Americans
Speaker 1: weren't competent to own their allotments outright. Instead, the deeds
Speaker 1: to the land would be held in a government trust
Speaker 1: for twenty five years, after which they would be transferred
Speaker 1: to the native individual. No such waiting period existed for
Speaker 1: white settlers or corporations. Hirsch explained the US politicians largely
Speaker 1: saw the DAWs Act as a win win situation in
Speaker 1: which Native Americans assimilated into the broader culture and economy. Quote. Plus,
Speaker 1: if you had enough white people moving into Indian territory,
Speaker 1: that area could become an American territory. If the population
Speaker 1: kept growing, you could apply for statehood, which is exactly
Speaker 1: what happened. But while the DAWs Act was a clear
Speaker 1: win for colonizing America, it was absolutely devastating for Native peoples. First,
Speaker 1: Pavar said, the majority of Indians didn't want to become
Speaker 1: farmers and ranchers. Plus, you needed money to buy equipment, cattle,
Speaker 1: and seeds, money that they didn't have. Here they were
Speaker 1: with hundreds of acres of land that they couldn't even use.
Speaker 1: In most cases, the parcels that were allotted to Native
Speaker 1: families sat vacant until the twenty five year trust period
Speaker 1: was over and the land could be sold. But here
Speaker 1: again was another stipulation. After the twenty five five year
Speaker 1: trust period expired, the land was subject to state and
Speaker 1: local property taxes, which most Native landowners couldn't pay, so
Speaker 1: the land would be seized by the tax court and
Speaker 1: sold at auction. Pavar said there were white people literally
Speaker 1: waiting in line for the land to go into forfeiture
Speaker 1: for failure to pay taxes. They would bid on it
Speaker 1: and purchase it. Later, laws passed by Congress made it
Speaker 1: even easier to sell off Native American owned allotments before
Speaker 1: the twenty five year waiting period. The Burke Act of
Speaker 1: nineteen oh six authorized the Secretary of the Interior to
Speaker 1: deem a Native landowner competent to receive the deed to
Speaker 1: his own land, at which point taxes became due. This
Speaker 1: often happened without the native landowner's knowledge or consent, and
Speaker 1: before he knew it, his land was in forfeiture and
Speaker 1: sold to the highest bidder. Other problems arose too. For example,
Speaker 1: there were the infamous Osage murders. After the Osage people
Speaker 1: were forcibly relocated twice in the eighteen hundreds, they landed
Speaker 1: in parts of modern day Oklahoma and struck it rich
Speaker 1: when oil was discovered there in eighteen ninety seven. They
Speaker 1: had more bargaining power than a lot of other native groups,
Speaker 1: but the government still forced allotment on them when capitalists
Speaker 1: couldn't buy them out. There was a string of mysterious
Speaker 1: disappearances and murders in the nineteen twenties that ended with
Speaker 1: white Americans holding land rights. It was the start of
Speaker 1: the FBI's Murder Investigation Department, though few cases were ever solved.
Speaker 1: An additional twenty seven million acres of Native land were
Speaker 1: lost through these stipulations in an amendment to the DAWs Act.
Speaker 1: So much land was lost that even the federal government
Speaker 1: was concerned. In nineteen twenty eight, a damning report was
Speaker 1: written by the Department of the Interior describing the state
Speaker 1: of abject poverty and disease in which most Native Americans
Speaker 1: were living. The authors of the report criticized the faulty
Speaker 1: logic that handing private land to Native families would automatically
Speaker 1: turn them into successful farmers. They also noted that many
Speaker 1: of the families were living on lands from which quote
Speaker 1: a trained and experienced white man could scarcely rest a
Speaker 1: reasonable living. Congress repealed the DAWs Act in nineteen thirty four,
Speaker 1: but the systematic theft of that ninety million acres of
Speaker 1: Native lands had already happened. One small positive point, the
Speaker 1: lists of Native Americans who were given allotments from the
Speaker 1: DAWs Act, called the DAWs Roles, have become a valuable
Speaker 1: genealogical tool for tracing Native ancestry. Beyond that, court cases
Speaker 1: related to allotment and Native American land tenure are still
Speaker 1: going on today. Today's episode is based on the article
Speaker 1: how the DAWs Act stole ninety million acres of Native
Speaker 1: American land on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Dave Ruse.
Speaker 1: Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks
Speaker 1: dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Klang. Four more
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