The Dawes Severalty Act and Native American Land Policy

A comprehensive vocabulary review of key legislation, figures, land allotment statistics, and impacts relating to the Dawes Severalty Act and the Wheeler-Howard Act.

Dawes Severalty Act

Legislation that ended tribes' communal use of reservations by granting the U.S. president authority to divide Native American lands into individual, privately owned plots.

Grover Cleveland

The U.S. President who signed the Dawes Severalty Act into law, seeking to assimilate Native Americans by dividing communal reservation land into individual holdings.

Henry Laurens Dawes

Senator from Massachusetts who served as the chief author and namesake of the Dawes Severalty Act.

160 acres

The amount of reservation land allotted to Native American men with families under the original terms of the Dawes Severalty Act.

80 acres

The initial land allotment granted to single adult Native American men under the Dawes Severalty Act, which was later granted to married Indian women under an 1891 amendment.

40 acres

The land allotment allocated to Native American boys under the Dawes Severalty Act.

1891 Amendment to the Dawes Act

Congressional amendment granting married Native American women 80 acres of land in severalty.

86 million acres (62 percent)

The total amount and proportion of pre-1887 holdings that Native Americans lost after remaining reservation lands were opened for sale to white settlers.

"Friends of the Indian"

Religious and humanitarian reformers who supported the Dawes Act, believing assimilation into American culture was necessary to bridge the chasm between "barbarism and civilization."

J.D.C. Atkins

Commissioner of Indian Affairs who claimed the Dawes Act was the first step toward transforming "Idleness, improvidence, ignorance, and superstition… into industry, thrift, intelligence, and Christianity."

Wheeler-Howard Act (1934)

Legislation passed in 1934 that repudiated the Dawes Act, halted land transfers to Anglos, and restored tribal control, cultural autonomy, and voluntary communal ownership.