Summary: Indian Policy needed to adapt to the industrial growth of the Untied States in the last third of the 1800's, and the Dawes Act was the answer. The Federal Government gained the power to split up traditional Native lands and redistribute them among the population dependent on, essentially, white ideas of land ownership including age, family statues and gender. The distribution was created to help populate reservations, giving families a "better" system. Family heads received one fourth of property, adults one eight, and minors one sixteenth. It was made sure that Indian land between the tribes stayed constant to prevent conflict. The U.S. government walked all over the Indians and their territories, allowing themselves to use indian land for agriculture, new white populations, irrigation, education, railways, power lines and highways. The Act provided for Indian assimilation, excluding the Chickasaw, Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Seminole, Fox, Sioux and other tribes that had to deal with Jackson.
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