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The Pros And Cons Of The Dawes Act

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Imagine someone being told that they could not live on the land that they have lived on all their life anymore. This native land was where that person’s family had been for generations. This was where that person’s culture and life was made. Taking this land is like ripping the home away from a human being. That was exactly what the Dawes Act did. The Dawes Act broke up Native American reservations and gave out insufficient portions of land to the Indians to on. Because of this I do not believe that the United States government had a good reason for breaking up the reservations in its attempt to assimilate the Native American population. Not only was the land that the Native Americans obtained insufficient, but also the Dawes Act caused …show more content…

However, like many plans there were drawbacks included. The land that was given to the Native Americans was often inadequate; this made farming for the Indians almost, if not impossible. The whites did not consider that farming would be a struggle for the Indians either. Critics argued, that the Act would also fail because the Indians were not ideal farmers, they said; for centuries the Indians had been nomadic hunters, not farmers tied to the land” (Kauffman). The whites could have given all the land they wanted to the Indians; however, if they did not know how to farm the land was not beneficial for the Indians. All Indians knew was how to hunt animals, they had not needed to learn how to farm for …show more content…

However, this ban did not prevent the whites from trying to obtain the portions of land that the Indians owned. The Dawes Act was “a land grab that forced the Indians to sell large portions of their land to the government for white settlement” (Kauffman). This Dawes Act also had the potential to deprive the Indians of their lands. The rule was, “if the Indians did not select their land within four years, then government agents would select it for them” (Kauffman). The government had agents sent out to select the land for the Indians. The agents gave the poor and infertile lands to the Indians while making sure that the finest lands were sold to the whites and railroad investors. These agents were who conned the Indians into giving up their lands before they fully owned them. By giving the Indians infertile land, it made farming very difficult. This caused the Indians to sell or even give the land to the whites. These agents also contributed to the idea that critics had about the Dawes Act being just another attempt by the whites to take the Indians

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