Before the 1871, the United States government negotiated treaties with Indian tribes over land use and land ownership. Tribes lost control over much of their historical homelands during this period, but were able to reserve some land for their own use (hence the term "reservations"). In 1887, those reservations came under threat with passage of the Dawes Act (also known as the General Allotment Act). One of the most controversial laws in American Indian history, the Dawes Act provided for reservation lands to be allotted (divided up) into individual parcels and given to heads of households. The "surplus" land was then often sold to non-Indians. Recognizing the threat to their people, tribal leaders tried to protect as much land as possible for their own people. As a result, allotment happened in different ways, at different times on Montana's reservations--the outcome shaped by debate and diplomacy.
Secondary Sources
Montana: Stories of the Land (Helena, MT, 2008), 219-22, 255 (good brief background)
Burton Smith, "The Politics of Allotment: The Flathead Indian Reservation as a Test Case," Pacific Northwest Quarterly 70, 3 (July 1979, 131-40, reprinted by Salish Kootenai Press, 1995.
Hoxie, Frederick, Parading through History: The Making of the Crow Nation in America, 1805-1935. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995
Janet A. McDonnell, The Dispossession of the American Indian, 1887-1934 (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1991).
Rose Stremlau, “To Domesticate and Civilize Wild Indians”: Allotment and the Campaign to Reform Indian Families, 1875-1887 Journal of Family History 30 (2005): 265-286
Primary Sources at the Montana Historical Society
"A Threatened Raid on the Crow Indian Lands," Indian Rights Association, 1916 (M 970.5)
Primary and Secondary Sources on the Web
"Allotment Data," Native American Documents Project
"Hearings before the Committee on Indian Affairs United States Senate ... On the Bill S. 2963 for the survey and allotment of Indian lands now embraced within the limits of the Crow Indian Reservation..." (60th Cong., 1st Sess., Doc. No. 445, 1908) (Search the term "allotment")
"Indian Policy Reform: Extract from President Chester Arthur's First Annual Message to Congress, December 6, 1881"
"The Dawes Act, February 8, 1887," Archives of the West.
Chief Charlo biography
Vertical Files at the Montana Historical Society
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