Ahhhh, rhetoric: Teachers love to teach it, students groan when forced to study it, but we can all agree that it's important. No matter what we're writing about, when we bother to put pen to paper we're attempting to persuade an audience of some sort to consider what we're talking about. Even the lowliest Buzzfeed listicle is attempting to convince you of something – even if it's just that sloths are adorable.

So the Dawes Act may seem like three pages of legal jargon, but the people who wrote it were trying to do something. We think they were using two modes of rhetoric: Ethos, and a bit of Logos.

Ethos

Ethos is when the rhetor (or the speaker, or author, or writer, what-have-you) is perceived by the audience (in our case: U.S. lawmakers and citizens) as reliable. Now, we all know that different governmental regimes vary in their credibility, but it's pretty much standard that while in power, the government is trying to convince us all that they are the ones we can rely on. After all, they're our elected officials; we certainly hope they know what they're doing.

So part of the function of all the legal-speak and nit-picking in the Dawes Act is to show how very capable our lawmakers were. They want us to see that they're covering all the bases, and that it's all done in the best interest of the Native Americans. "See? No moral ambiguity here, just good intentions," they're saying. Which brings us to the other rhetorical device that they used: Logos.

Logos

Logos attempts to persuade the audience by the use of arguments that they will perceive as logical and rational. Since the writers of the Dawes Act thought of everything from who gets allotted land, to securing water rights, and how this will affect the law of inheritance, they were laying out a well-reasoned (if misguided) argument. They've thought of everything. Let's pass this bill, baby.