LAD #21. dawes act

“An Act to Provide for the Allotment of Lands in Severalty to Indians on the Various Reservations, and to Extend the Protection of the Laws of the United States and the Territories over the Indians, and for Other Purposes”

While respecting the decisions made by the Senate and House of Representatives in Congress, the following eleven sections address the conditions of the Indian reservations in the United States of America. The land of these reservations will be distributed with the head of each family keeping one-quarter, orphaned children under the age of eighteen as well as other children over the age of eighteen keeping one-eighth, and other children under the age of eighteen keeping one-sixteenth of the said land. In the case of a lack of appropriate land, the provisions will continue to follow the ratio given. Section two states that each allotment of land shall be decided upon by the Indians themselves. The allotments provided for in this act, shall be made by special agents appointed by the President, and furthermore, that any Indian not residing upon an appointed reservation, shall be able to make settlement upon any surveyed or unserved lands of the United States. According to the President and the Secretary of the Interior, the reservation lands shall be used for whatever religious or social proceedings of the Indians and that each American State and territory shall make further regulations for themselves. Each respective tribe or band shall be at all times held responsible to any criminal or unlawful actions under the law of their particular State or territory. The Secretary of the Interior shall also be responsible for the decisions in regard to irrigation and agricultural changes made in the reservations. This act shall not extend to the territory occupied by the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles, and Osage, Miamies and Peorias, and Sacs and Foxes, nor to that strip of territory in the State of Nebraska adjoining the Sioux Nation, or the Seneca Nation. The sale of this worth of this land shall be one hundred thousand dollars. Nothing in this act shall interfere with the power of Congress to use highways or railroads through these lands, nor shall it prevent the removal of the Southern Ute Indians from their present reservation in Southwestern Colorado.