The Dawes Act, otherwise known as the Dawes General Allotment Act, was passed by Congress in 1887, regarding the Indian Policy. The law focused on how reservations would be divided into sections of land assigned to individuals. Each head of the family was fiven one quarter of a section. Each individual person over the age of eighteen, as well as an orphaned child under the age of eighteen was assigned one sixth of a section. Lands that werenot given to Indians were open to settlement by others, as well as the continued development of the railroad. Evem of a Native American did not live on a reservation, they were still entitled to their allotted plot of land, and would receive a patent for it, protected by the government. The act emphasized individual land ownership, which contrasted the unity and culture previously held by many Indians living in communal villages. In a way, The Dawes Act can be seen as an attempt to assimilate and further deprive the Native Americans of their land, and put it to use for infrastructure, roads, bridges, and railroads.
This is similar to the Indian Removal Act, because both were created in attempt to move Native Americans away from the land where they had currently resided to land that was convenient for the government, so that they could expand to land previously occuppied by Indians.
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