The Dawes Act was put in place to break up the Indian Reservations by giving landing to individual Native Americans and extending the protection laws of the US over the Indians. The Act includes 11 section which explains the different procedures the Indians must take. The first section give specific rules over the allotment of the land, like each head of the family gets one-quarter of a section and each person over the age of 18 gets one-eighth of a section. The next section talks about how these lots should be set up, that they should be selected by indians, heads of families selecting for their minor children, and the agents selecting for each orphan. The third section states that the allotments set up by this act will be mad by agents selected by the president. The Act then continues on explaining the rest of the provisions for how to allot the land, including allowing for indians to become citizens after a certain period of time. However this Act does not apply to every Indian tribe. The Act also does not offer any protection for Indian Reservations from Railroads, highways, telegraph lines, public uses, etc. set up by the government. The Act just showed how much control we had over the indians.
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