Alert Shmoopers will recall that the "Five Civilized Tribes"—the Choctaw, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Muscogee, and Seminole—were exempt from the Dawes Act. These tribes had originally lived in the so...

Could it get any worse for the Native Americans?Yes.The Dawes Act offered U.S. citizenship to tribal members who accepted the individual allotments of land carved out of their territory, allotments...

Throughout our study of the Dawes Act, the Native Americans have been pretty voiceless, don't you think? That's not by our design, but by history's; as they say, it's usually the winners who write...

President Andrew Jackson's most lasting legacy involves his handling of the "Indian Problem." (Well, that and something about the National Bank, but that's not the topic at hand here.)In fact, Jack...

The Dawes Act provisions continued for almost 50 years, resulting in the fractionation of the allotments to the point of ridiculousness—hundreds, even thousands, of heirs of the original allottee...

In the 1950s and 60s, the official U.S. policy towards the Native Americans was "Indian Termination." That's exactly what they meant: no more tribes. In 1970 President Richard Nixon had some (okay,...

By the late 20th century, those lands allotted to individual Native Americans had been divided zillions of times among heirs to the land. For example, in a court ruling about the problem, here's th...