8 February 1887
LegislationBook sources
Dawes / General Allotment Act
United States; reservation communities
The act authorized division of communally held land into individual allotments and opened routes for transfer of remaining land to non-Native owners. Assimilation through private property eroded collective land bases and sovereignty.
Dates preserve the source’s precision. This entry is part of a selected historical record; its qualifications and sources are retained below.
Context / qualification
Not all nations were initially covered; later laws extended related processes.
Sources
- Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (2014), chapter 8
- National Archives: Dawes Act and transcript ↗