What the 1887 Law Was
The General Allotment Act of 1887, usually called the Dawes Act after Senator Henry Dawes of Massachusetts, authorized the president to divide reservation land into individual parcels. The stated aim was to turn Native people into private farmers and landowners, and to end shared tribal ownership of land. It was one of the central tools of the federal assimilation policy of the late nineteenth century.
The general design was as follows:
- A head of household could receive an allotment, commonly 160 acres, with smaller shares for others.
- The government held each allotment in trust for a period, generally 25 years, before ownership passed to the individual.
- Land left over after allotment was classed as “surplus” and could be sold, often to non-Native settlers, with payment going to a tribal fund.
- Allottees were made United States citizens under later provisions of the act and related laws.
Later amendments changed the rules. The Burke Act of 1906 allowed the trust period to end earlier if an official judged an owner “competent”, and that opened many allotments to sale or tax foreclosure. Across the country, Native-held land fell from roughly 138 million acres in 1887 to about 48 million by 1934, a figure that historians commonly cite. Treat such totals as approximate.
Why Most Apache Reservations Were Different
It is easy to assume that the Dawes Act reshaped every reservation. In fact its application varied. Many Apache reservations in Arizona and New Mexico, including those of the Mescalero, Jicarilla and Western Apache groups such as the White Mountain Apache and San Carlos Apache, were not broadly allotted in the way that some Plains and Midwestern reservations were. Reasons often given include the arid, rangeland character of much of the land, which suited grazing more than 160-acre farms, and the way each reservation had been created. Some limited allotment efforts and individual assignments did occur in places, and readers who need details for a specific reservation should check that nation’s records and the sources in the National Archives rather than assume.
Because the details differ by group, it is not accurate to say that “the Apache” were allotted or were not. The main point is that the law’s strongest direct effect on Apache land fell on one group in particular.
The Plains Apache in Oklahoma
The Plains Apache, historically called the Kiowa Apache, shared a reservation in what was then Indian Territory with the Kiowa and the Comanche, a reservation set up under the Medicine Lodge treaties of 1867. In the 1890s the three nations were pressed to accept allotment under an agreement commonly called the Jerome Agreement, which was ratified by Congress in 1900. Each tribal member received a parcel, and the remaining land was opened to non-Native settlement in 1901, in part by a lottery. Many members of the three nations opposed the process, and the Kiowa leader Lone Wolf went to court to challenge it. In Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock (1903) the Supreme Court held that Congress had broad power to act in this way. The decision is widely cited as a low point for tribal treaty rights.
For the Plains Apache this meant that a shared land base was replaced by scattered individual parcels, with a large share of the former reservation passing out of Native hands. Later decades saw further losses, as allotments were sold, taxed or divided among heirs. Today Plains Apache land is held in a mix of trust, restricted and other forms. The Apache Tribe of Oklahoma is the current tribal government, and its own website is the best source on present land status.
Longer Effects of Allotment
Where allotment did take hold, several problems followed:
- Fractionated heirship. When an allottee died, the parcel was commonly divided among heirs, and over generations a single tract could have dozens or hundreds of owners. This made land hard to use, lease or sell.
- Loss of land through sales, tax problems and the end of trust status.
- A checkerboard of Native and non-Native ownership inside former reservation boundaries, which complicated governance and services.
- Pressure on shared community life, since the policy was designed to weaken tribal ties.
These effects are not confined to one nation. They are part of why later law reversed course.
Ending Allotment
The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 ended further allotment. Later laws and programs have tried to deal with fractionated ownership and to help tribes buy back land, although the scale of the problem has meant slow progress. The Indian Claims Commission was one of the places where some groups later pursued compensation for land taken in earlier decades, and the Cobell settlement dealt with the separate matter of individual trust accounts.
Reading About Allotment Carefully
Allotment history can be misread in two opposite ways: as something that happened everywhere in the same form, or as something that did not affect Apache nations at all. The accurate picture is more varied. For land-loss history in a particular Apache community, the best sources are the nation’s own cultural and records offices, county and federal land records, and published scholarship that names the specific reservation. This site is independent and speaks for no Apache nation.