Unearthing Indian Land

Unearthing Indian Land PDF Author: Kristin T. Ruppel
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816527113
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Unearthing Indian Land offers a comprehensive examination of the consequencesof more than a century of questionable public policies. In this book,Kristin Ruppel considers the complicated issues surrounding American Indianland ownership in the United States. Under the General Allotment Act of 1887, also known as the Dawes Act,individual Indians were issued title to land allotments while so-called ÒsurplusÓIndian lands were opened to non-Indian settlement. During the forty-seven yearsthat the act remained in effect, American Indians lost an estimated 90 millionacres of landÑabout two-thirds of the land they had held in 1887. Worse, theloss of control over the land left to them has remained an ongoing and insidiousresult. Unearthing Indian Land traces the complex legacies of allotment, includingnumerous instructive examples of a policy gone wrong. Aside from the initialcatastrophic land loss, the fractionated land ownership that resulted from theactÕs provisions has disrupted native families and their descendants for morethan a century. With each new generation, the owners of tribal lands grow innumber and therefore own ever smaller interests in parcels of land. It is not uncommonnow to find reservation allotments co-owned by hundreds of individuals.Coupled with the federal governmentÕs troubled trusteeship of Indian assets,this means that Indian landowners have very little control over their own lands. Illuminated by interviews with Native American landholders, this book isessential reading for anyone who is interested in what happened as a result of thefederal governmentÕs quasi-privatization of native lands.

The Dawes Act and the Allotment of Indian Lands

The Dawes Act and the Allotment of Indian Lands PDF Author: D. S. Otis
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806146362
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
The many congressional acts and plans for the administration of Indian affairs in the West often resulted in confusion and misapplication. Only rarely were the ideals of those who sincerely wished to help American Indians realized. This book, first printed as a part of the hearings before the House of Representatives Committee on Indian Affairs in 1934, is a detailed and fully documented account of the Dawes Act of 1887 and its consequences up to 1900. D. S. Otis's investigation of the motives of the reformers who supported the Dawes Act indicates that it failed to fulfill many of the hopes of its sponsors. The reasons for the act's failure were complex but predictable. Many Indians were not culturally prepared for severalty. Provisions in the act for leasing or selling their land enabled many to circumvent the responsibilities of private ownership, which reformers and bureaucrats alike had thought would provide a “civilizing” influence. The Dawes Act and the Allotment of Indian Land is the only full-scale study of the Dawes Act and its impact upon American Indian society and culture. With the addition of an introduction, revised footnotes, and an index by Francis Paul Prucha, S. J., it is essential to any understanding of the present circumstances and problems of American Indians today.

Unearthing Indian Land

Unearthing Indian Land PDF Author: Kristin T. Ruppel
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816527113
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Get Book

Book Description
Unearthing Indian Land offers a comprehensive examination of the consequencesof more than a century of questionable public policies. In this book,Kristin Ruppel considers the complicated issues surrounding American Indianland ownership in the United States. Under the General Allotment Act of 1887, also known as the Dawes Act,individual Indians were issued title to land allotments while so-called ÒsurplusÓIndian lands were opened to non-Indian settlement. During the forty-seven yearsthat the act remained in effect, American Indians lost an estimated 90 millionacres of landÑabout two-thirds of the land they had held in 1887. Worse, theloss of control over the land left to them has remained an ongoing and insidiousresult. Unearthing Indian Land traces the complex legacies of allotment, includingnumerous instructive examples of a policy gone wrong. Aside from the initialcatastrophic land loss, the fractionated land ownership that resulted from theactÕs provisions has disrupted native families and their descendants for morethan a century. With each new generation, the owners of tribal lands grow innumber and therefore own ever smaller interests in parcels of land. It is not uncommonnow to find reservation allotments co-owned by hundreds of individuals.Coupled with the federal governmentÕs troubled trusteeship of Indian assets,this means that Indian landowners have very little control over their own lands. Illuminated by interviews with Native American landholders, this book isessential reading for anyone who is interested in what happened as a result of thefederal governmentÕs quasi-privatization of native lands.

The Dawes Commission and the Allotment of the Five Civilized Tribes, 1893-1914

The Dawes Commission and the Allotment of the Five Civilized Tribes, 1893-1914 PDF Author: Kent Carter
Publisher: Ancestry Publishing
ISBN: 9780916489854
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Given by Eugene Edge III.

The Dawes Act and the Allotment of Indian Lands

The Dawes Act and the Allotment of Indian Lands PDF Author: Delos Sacket Otis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Indians of North America
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description


The Assault on Indian Tribalism

The Assault on Indian Tribalism PDF Author: Wilcomb E. Washburn
Publisher: Krieger Publishing Company
ISBN: 9780898748772
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 79

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Book Description


A Century of Dishonor

A Century of Dishonor PDF Author: Helen Hunt Jackson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Indians of North America
Languages : en
Pages : 540

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Book Description


Reconfiguring the Reservation

Reconfiguring the Reservation PDF Author: Emily Greenwald
Publisher: UNM Press
ISBN: 9780826324085
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Once Indians had private property, reformers reasoned, they would practice agriculture and eventually adopt "American" economic and natural rules."--BOOK JACKET.

Indians, Bureaucrats, and Land

Indians, Bureaucrats, and Land PDF Author: Leonard A. Carlson
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description


Crooked Paths to Allotment

Crooked Paths to Allotment PDF Author: C. Joseph Genetin-Pilawa
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807835765
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Standard narratives of Native American history view the nineteenth century in terms of steadily declining Indigenous sovereignty, from removal of southeastern tribes to the 1887 General Allotment Act. In Crooked Paths to Allotment, C. Joseph Geneti

Dividing the Reservation

Dividing the Reservation PDF Author: Nicole Tonkovich
Publisher: Washington State University Press
ISBN: 1636820484
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 592

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Book Description
Alice Cunningham Fletcher was both formidable and remarkable. A pioneering ethnologist who penetrated occupations dominated by men, she was the first woman to hold an endowed chair at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology--during a time the institution did not admit female students. She helped write the Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887 that reshaped American Indian policy, and became one of the first women to serve as a federal Indian agent, working with the Omahas, the Winnebagos, and finally the Nez Perces. Charged with supervising the daunting task of resurveying, verifying, and assigning nearly 757,000 acres of the Nez Perce Reservation, Fletcher also had to preserve land for transportation routes and restrain white farmers and stockmen who were claiming prime properties. She sought to “give the best lands to the best Indians,” but was challenged by the Idaho terrain, the complex ancestries of the Nez Perces, and her own misperceptions about Native life. A commanding presence, Fletcher worked from a specialized tent that served as home and office, traveling with copies of laws, rolls of maps, and blank plats. She spent four summers on the project, completing close to 2,000 allotments. This book is a collection of letters and diaries Fletcher wrote during this work. Her writing illuminates her relations with the key players in the allotment, as well as her internal conflicts over dividing the reservation. Taken together, these documents offer insight into how federal policy was applied, resisted, and amended in this early application of the Dawes General Allotment Act.