The resolution of 'the Indian problem' after 1865

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Native Americans lost about 90 million acres, falling from about 138 million acres in 1887 to about 48 million in 1934. One reason was the Dawes Act of 1887, which divided reservation land into family allotments and sold the 'surplus' land to white settlers.

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Interpretation A presents the Dawes Act as a generous reform that would make Native Americans independent and equal, while Interpretation B presents it as a way of taking their land and destroying their tribes. A calls it 'the most hopeful law ever passed for the Indian': it says the reservation system had made Native Americans dependent on rations and corrupt agents, and that owning a family farm, protected for twenty-five years, together with citizenship, would bring farming, schooling and self-respect. B says the Act was 'presented as a gift' but was really 'a way of taking land': land held in common was cut into plots, the 'left over' land was sold to settlers, much of the land given out was too dry to farm, and families lacked tools and training. While A expects equality with white neighbours, B says Native Americans lost about two-thirds of their land and that the Act attacked their tribes, leaders and way of life.

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Government policy affected Native American children's lives in several ways. Most dramatically, many were separated from their families. In 1879 Richard Henry Pratt opened the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, and many more boarding schools followed. Children were taken hundreds of miles from the reservations, often for years at a time, which broke the close family bonds through which they would normally have learned their people's ways.

Second, the schools tried to destroy their culture. On arrival, children's hair was cut, they were put into uniforms and given English names. They were forbidden to speak their own languages and were punished if they did, and they were taught Christianity while their own religion was treated as superstition. Boys were trained to farm or learn trades and girls to do housework, and under the 'outing' system some were sent to live with white families. Pratt summed up the aim as 'kill the Indian in him, and save the man'.

Third, children's health suffered. Crowded schools spread diseases such as tuberculosis, and many children died far from home. Even those on the reservations grew up hungry, dependent on rations, and without the traditions of earlier generations, because the buffalo had gone and ceremonies such as the Sun Dance were banned from 1883.

These changes were linked: by separating children from their families, the government hoped to raise a generation that would no longer be 'Indian'. Many returning pupils found themselves caught between two worlds, although some later used their education to defend their people's rights.

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The desire to 'civilise' Native Americans was an important reason for the Dawes Act. By the 1880s many Eastern reformers, in groups such as the Women's National Indian Association (1879) and the Indian Rights Association (1882), and at the yearly Lake Mohonk conferences from 1883, believed that Native Americans could only survive by giving up tribal life and becoming like other Americans. They saw the reservation system as a failure, because it kept people dependent on rations and at the mercy of corrupt agents. They believed that owning private property and farming would turn Native Americans into independent, Christian citizens. Senator Henry Dawes presented the Act as a reform to help them: allotments were protected from sale for twenty-five years, and those who accepted them became US citizens. The Act fitted alongside other 'civilising' policies, such as the Carlisle boarding school (1879) and the ban on ceremonies such as the Sun Dance (1883).

However, the demand for Native American land was also very important. By the 1880s the frontier was filling up, and settlers, railroads, ranchers and speculators wanted the large areas still held by tribes. Under the Act, once each family had its allotment, the 'surplus' land could be sold to white settlers. 'Boomers' were already pressing for Indian Territory to be opened, and in 1889 the Unassigned Lands were opened in the Oklahoma Land Rush, while the Great Sioux Reservation was broken up and about 9 million acres were opened to settlers. Critics in Congress warned at the time that the real aim was to get at Native American land, and the results support them: Native land fell from about 138 million acres in 1887 to about 78 million by 1900.

Overall, the demand for land was the more important reason. The reformers' belief in 'civilising' Native Americans gave the Act its moral justification and led the campaign for it, but the Act passed so easily because it also gave settlers and western politicians what they wanted. The way it was designed - with 'surplus' land sold off - and the speed with which land was transferred show that, whatever the reformers intended, getting land for white Americans was what the Act actually achieved and why it won such wide support.