The 1887 law intended to assimilate Native Americans led to the loss of millions of acres of land.
Overview
The Dawes Act of 1887 authorized the federal government to break up tribal lands by partitioning them into individual plots. Only those Native Americans who accepted the individual allotments were allowed to become US citizens.
The objective of the Dawes Act was to assimilate Native Americans into mainstream US society by annihilating their cultural and social traditions.
As a result of the Dawes Act, over ninety million acres of tribal land were stripped from Native Americans and sold to non-natives.