"In all cases where any tribe or band of Indians has been, or shall hereafter be, located upon any reservation... the President of the United States be... authorized... to allot the lands in said reservation in severalty to any Indian located thereon... To each head of a family, one-quarter of a section." — Dawes Severalty Act, 1887
By 1934 the act had most directly resulted in:
- A
The return of the Plains to bison-based subsistence economies
- B
An expansion of tribal sovereignty over reservation governance
- C
Universal U.S. citizenship for all Native Americans by 1900
- Dcheck_circle
A loss of roughly two-thirds of Native-held land base
Explanation
Allotment, fee patenting, and "surplus" land sales reduced Native land from about 138 million acres in 1887 to roughly 48 million by 1934.