It's a sad story of betrayal and broken promises, defamation and revenge, and at times, all-out war.

If you think that sounds like the most awful relationship ever, you're right. But it's worse than you think.

Much worse.

Because this relationship played out over hundreds of years and affected countless thousands of people, people who just wanted to live the life they'd been living for centuries—make that millennia— and be left in peace to do it. It's the history of the American Indian, the original inhabitants of North America, who over the course of 200 years lost most of their land, their sovereignty, and their culture to the European colonists who eventually settled the continent and founded the United States.

The Dawes Act was one of the nails in the coffin of Native American self-determination. It aimed to break up the reservation land held by the tribes (already vastly diminished by encroaching white settlement) while encouraging the people to abandon their identity in favor of assimilating into American culture. It's not a pretty story.

Trouble in Paradise

When the first English colonists appeared on our beautiful shores, they found populous tribes of original inhabitants already happily, and inconveniently, living in organized groups on the land the newcomers hoped to settle. This set up an inherently antagonistic relationship, natch, and the early history of the U.S. is a history of how the expanding colonies, and, later, nation, tried to solve this "Indian Problem."

The problem being, of course, they had the land, we wanted it, and they weren't cooperating with handing it over.

Throughout the first hundred years of the republic, the government tried lots of strategies to solve the problem. It started with land swaps and treaty purchases in exchange for promises that Native Americans could retain their sovereignty. Military campaigns and imported illnesses decimated the powerful tribes of the east, easing the way for settlers into Pennsylvania, Ohio, the Great Lakes, and points west. Next up: forcible removal of the tribes to land "reserved" just for them west of the Mississippi.

Still, nothing worked. Most of the tribes that still existed after war, removal to reservations, smallpox, and alcoholism (the latter two being "gifts" from the settlers), insisted on trying to keep their land and their way of life. They had this crazy idea that having lived here for thousands of years gave them some rights to sovereignty and land, and they thought that their languages, cultures, and tribal laws weren't primitive, savage, or inferior to "American" Christian culture at all.

What's a rapidly expanding, land-hungry nation to do?

And Now for Something Completely Different

Believing that our manifest destiny was to have dominion over the continent, Congress came up with a new approach: turn the Native Americans into "real" Americans. Assimilate them into our more advanced culture by giving them private property and teaching them how to farm for profit. In exchange, we'd give them American citizenship, and hopefully they'd all convert to Christianity, learn English, and wear waistcoats.

To help the process along, the U.S. passed a law in 1871 terminating recognition of any tribes at all. Every Native American was to be considered an individual person, dependent on the federal government as their guardian. No more Cherokee, Chippewa, Iroquois, Mohican, Cheyenne, Apache, Seminole…you get the idea. Just one big happy family of wards of the state.

All that, in a nutshell, was what led to the Dawes Act of 1887, a new approach to the "Indian Problem." Here's what it did:

• American Indians on reservations were now to be allotted a certain amount of land each. So no more communal farming, guys. From now on, it's every man for himself. Oh, and "your" land will be held in trust by the government for 25 years so they can make sure you're following the rules. Just in case.
• Those American Indians have to adhere to an American way of life. If they're gonna live in the United States, they will abide by U.S. laws, and will be able to become U.S. citizens.
• Oh, and by the way, if the amount of land that gets allotted coincidentally is less than "excess" lands on reservations, then the U.S. government can negotiate to purchase that land back. For a fair price, of course (nudge, nudge, wink, wink). And, if necessary for progress, railroads can be run through allotted lands.

At the time, this piece of legislation caused some debate among the white citizens, but for the most part, it seemed pretty prudent. It's in the tribes' best interests, right? They'd be given the golden ticket to U.S. citizenship and a less primitive way of life. What could go wrong?

Plenty, it turned out. The Dawes Act paved the way for more transgressions that resulted in the loss of life and property for Native American tribes, as well as the erosion of their culture and sovereignty. All in the name of progress and civilization.

That's a history lesson worth learning from.

P.S.

A note on usage: As most people over the age of eight know, Columbus thought in 1492 that he'd landed in what were called "the Indies"—south and east Asia. He called the people he found in the Caribbean islands "Indians." The misnomer stuck, and eventually came to be applied to all of the original inhabitants of North America.

In the 1960s, the U.S. government suggested the name "Native American," to acknowledge that these peoples were here long before us immigrants. Currently, some tribes prefer that term, others prefer "American Indian." We've used both interchangeably throughout this guide. We know that most people would prefer to be recognized by their tribes' names, and we'll honor that when we can.

Before we go any further, we have to say that Shmoop recognizes the irony of referring to white colonists and citizens as "American," as in "assimilating into the American way of life," throughout this learning guide.

In fact, if we were Tohono O'odham or Pequot or Pawnee or Navajo, we'd probably choke on the word.

Because obvs, the original native-born Americans were, well, the Native Americans. As humorist Will Rogers, who was part Cherokee, often said, "Of course, my people didn't come over on the Mayflower, but we were there to meet the folks when they landed" (source).

That was Then, This is Now

You might be thinking, "Yeah, I know we treated the Indians like they were America's red-headed stepchild, but that was back in the day. We're cool now." And umm, yeah, you'd be pretty wrong. We are most certainly not cool now. Far from it. We're going to need a lot more than casinos and cultural woke-ness to fight the effects of legislation like the Dawes Act, which had far-reaching ramifications and established precedents for Native Americans to be treated unjustly up to the present day.

Remember that Dawes permitted allotted lands to be used for railroads or telegraph lines, and to be condemned for other projects considered for the common good. Well, even as recently as 2016 the United States government is still appropriating lands that originally belonged to Native American tribes in order to expand and perpetuate their own interests, like they did during the battle of Standing Rock.

Long story very short: the government had signed off on a private contract to run an oil pipeline through sacred burial ground belonging to the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, which not only violated their beliefs but seriously threatened to contaminate their water supply. When thousands of Native Americans and their allies gathered to peacefully protest, the National Guard and local police used unnecessarily rough treatment on the protestors, like pepper spray, rubber bullets, police dogs, and fire hoses (which is just inhumane, considering the fact that it was freaking winter in Dakota. That's cold, man.)

If you just replaced rubber bullets with rifles, wouldn't it be easy to imagine that this all happened one hundred years ago? How are we still allowing injustices like these to occur?

Well, aside from ignorance and the profit motive, our biggest problem is a nation that still hasn't learned from its own history. It's not that we don't think about Native Americans; in fact, as a trip to the National Museum of the American Indian will show you, American Indian culture permeates our own. We've got Thanksgiving, western movies, and states with names like Connecticut and Massachusetts, and rivers called the Housatonic and Monongahela. We've got Tomahawk missiles and Apache helicopters, Cleveland Indians and Atlanta Braves. We drive Jeep Comanches, Pontiac Chieftains, and Winnebagos; we wear moccasins, buckskin, and gorgeous Navajo jewelry; our political parties caucus and our Boy Scouts powwow. Native American images sell everything from butter to baking powder.

Obviously, we're obsessed with Native American culture. But ask a typical person what the Trail of Tears was and they might think it's a heavy metal album, not an event that took thousands of innocent lives.

And who knew about one of the biggest real estate swindles in history: the Walking Purchase of 1737, where the Lenape tribe, honoring an earlier treaty with William Penn, agreed to sell land to his sons (who pretty much owned Pennsylvania), land bounded by the distance a man could walk through that wooded territory in a day and a half. The sleazebag Penns hired the fastest sprinters they could find, trained them for months, and cleared an easy path for the runners. The result? The Lenape were kicked out of an area the size of Rhode Island and had to move to crummy land farther west or work as laborers for the Pennsylvania colonists.

And admit it: if it wasn't for Shmoop would you have even known about the Dawes Act?

The more people are made aware of how we've treated Native Americans—in the past and present—the more we'll be likely to finally give fair shakes to our nation's original inhabitants.

A good start is learning from the people who've been affected by illegal land grabs, cultural genocide, and anti-Native American legislation. Visit the National Museum of the American Indian next time you're in D.C., or check out their website if you can't make it there; see what the National Congress of the American Indian has to say; read about American Indian takes on environmental issues; visit some Native American historical sites if you're on vacation near them.

Sure, those are perspectives from a particular point of view. But Native Americans have had to live out their history from the U.S.'s point of view.

It's their turn, dontcha think?