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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Eves and welcome to this Day in History Class,

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Speaker 1: a show that on covers history one day at a time.

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Speaker 1: Today is February eighteen. The day was February seven. U S.

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Speaker 1: President Grover Cleveland signed into law the DAWs General Allotment Act.

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Speaker 1: Before the DAWs Act was passed, Native American tribes controlled

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Speaker 1: their reservation lands, but with this new policy, lands that

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Speaker 1: were held in common by tribe members would now be

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Speaker 1: divided among individual Native Americans. The intent behind the DAWs

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Speaker 1: Act was for Natives to be responsible for their own

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Speaker 1: farms and become what the U. S. Government considered upstanding

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Speaker 1: members of American society. Because of the law, Native Americans

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Speaker 1: would become US citizens who were subject to US laws,

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Speaker 1: and the government would no longer have to tend to

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Speaker 1: his tribal relations so carefully. Another major goal of the

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Speaker 1: act was to transfer tribal lands to white Americans. The

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Speaker 1: act called for any lands not allotted to Natives to

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Speaker 1: be put up for public sale, with the money made

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Speaker 1: from the sale going towards tribal education. Many non natives

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Speaker 1: thought that the assimilation of Native Americans into white society

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Speaker 1: would be a benefit for Natives if they abandoned their

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Speaker 1: tribal ways of life. Then natives would be civilized and

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Speaker 1: saved from their own barbarity, but Native Americans didn't really

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Speaker 1: read many benefits from this process of assimilation. The DAWs

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Speaker 1: Act is named after his chief author, Senator Henry DAWs

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Speaker 1: from Massachusetts. DAWs believed that when people owned property, it

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Speaker 1: could help civilize them and convinced them to accept the

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Speaker 1: laws of the government, so the senator spots the DAWs Act.

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Speaker 1: The Act said that heads of household would get a

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Speaker 1: hundred and sixty acres or sixty five hectares, Single adults

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Speaker 1: and orphans would get eighty acres, and children would get

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Speaker 1: forty acres. At first, married women weren't given any land,

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Speaker 1: though the law was later changed to assign equal allotments

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Speaker 1: to all people. Tribe members were given four years to

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Speaker 1: select the land they wanted, and if they didn't do

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Speaker 1: so within the specified time, the government would make the

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Speaker 1: selection for them. The Dows Act also said that the

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Speaker 1: US would hold the allotted land and trust for twenty

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Speaker 1: five years, and only then with the full title to

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Speaker 1: the land and US citizenship be granted to the Native American.

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Speaker 1: The idea was that during this twenty five years, the

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Speaker 1: tribe member in charge of the allotment would get accustomed

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Speaker 1: to owning and farming the land and stray further from

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Speaker 1: their traditional communal way of life. In Section eight of

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Speaker 1: the Act specified territories and tribes that would not be

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Speaker 1: affected by the law, which included tribes in Indian Territory,

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Speaker 1: which is generally the area of the central United States,

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Speaker 1: the Oklahoma Territory, reservations of the Seneca Nation of New York,

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Speaker 1: and a strip of territory in Nebraska. But the US

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Speaker 1: created the DAWs Commission in eightee to convince the so

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Speaker 1: called Five Civilized Tribes or the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws,

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Speaker 1: and Seminoles, to give up their land and partition it

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Speaker 1: into individual allotments, and in eight the was past the

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Speaker 1: Curtis Act, which allotted land to tribal members in exchange

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Speaker 1: for abolishing their tribal governments. The Act required natives to

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Speaker 1: claim membership in one tribe and register on the DAWs

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Speaker 1: rolls to receive their land allotment. Today, many people insist

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Speaker 1: that proponents of the DAWs Act truly thought the law

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Speaker 1: would be good for the welfare of Native American people.

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Speaker 1: Critics say the Act was mainly a greedy land grab.

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Speaker 1: Either way, the DAWs Act did more harm to Native

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Speaker 1: Americans than it did good. The DAWs Act and later

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Speaker 1: extensions of the Act broke up communities and separated Natives

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Speaker 1: from many of their cultural practices. Many tribe members were

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Speaker 1: not interested in agriculture and living a sedentary life, and

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Speaker 1: weren't equipped with the knowledge, money, or supplies to do so.

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Speaker 1: Much of the land Native Americans have been allotted was

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Speaker 1: arid and semi arid desert that was not suitable for farming.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes children inherited land that they couldn't farm because they

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Speaker 1: were away at boarding school. Many of the allotments lost

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Speaker 1: value because of bad least arrangements and tax foreclosures. In

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Speaker 1: the nineteen oh six Burke Act gave the Secretary of

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Speaker 1: the Interior the authority to deem Native Americans competent or

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Speaker 1: incompetent of handling affairs for their allotment, so the government

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Speaker 1: had the power to sell a loted lands. As a result,

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Speaker 1: many Natives had their land taken or sold their land

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Speaker 1: to white buyers. The DAWs Act remained effective until nineteen

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Speaker 1: thirty four, when the U s Indian Reorganization Act, or

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Speaker 1: the Wheeler Howard Act, ended the land allotment policy and

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Speaker 1: allowed tribes to organize their self governments again. But by

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Speaker 1: then Native American tribes had already lost a ton of

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Speaker 1: their land and natural resources. They went from owning a

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Speaker 1: hundred and fifty five million acres in eight one to

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Speaker 1: forty eight million acres in nineteen thirty four. And even

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Speaker 1: though the allotment process ended nearly a century ago, Native

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Speaker 1: Americans in the US today still feel its effects. I'm

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Speaker 1: Eve Steathcote and hopefully you know a little bit more

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Speaker 1: about history today than you did yesterday. You can subscribe

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Speaker 1: to This Day in History class on Apple Podcasts, the

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Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 1: We'll see you here in the same place tomorrow