CHAPTER 9 · Dealing with the Indians
How did allotment turn a promise of Native independence into a loss of control over land?
A practice question that prepares your thinking for the aim. Study how the model works, then build your own answer to your assigned question.
The model paragraph
Allotment promised independence while giving the federal government greater control over Native land. The Dawes Act, the 1887 law that divided reservation land into individual allotments, replaced communal ownership with separate family plots. Senator Henry Dawes argued that private ownership would teach self-reliance. Yet the president could make allotments “without tribal consent” (YPT 174). This says Native communities did not have to agree to the division of their land. It shows that officials defined independence for Native people while denying them the authority to choose their own property system. The government called land left after allotment surplus and opened it to white buyers. A later inheritance law, a 1902 rule requiring the auction of a deceased owner’s allotment, weakened family control further. Takaki explains, “Unless the heirs were able to buy their own family land, they would lose it” (YPT 176). This says inheriting a family’s land could require buying it back at auction. It shows how a rule presented as property administration created another opportunity for Native dispossession. This illustrates the Key Idea that ideas are weapons. The promise of self-reliance helped justify policies that transferred decision-making power and land away from Native communities. Because independence requires meaningful consent, the policy’s uplifting language must be tested against who actually controlled the land.
1 POINT TO NAME IT · 1 POINT TO EXPLAIN IT
How this model earns its key idea points
Gist
A story or belief can help people get others to accept unfair treatment—or work together to change it.
Check your understanding
Academic definition
Ideas influence struggles over power by legitimizing domination, defining belonging, or mobilizing resistance. To explain the connection, identify the idea, who uses it, and the action it helps justify or organize.
Check your understanding
Elaboration
- Name the idea
- Key Idea 3: Ideas are weapons
- Point to the evidence
- The Dawes Act allowed allotment without tribal consent; the 1902 inheritance rule forced heirs to buy their family’s land at auction or lose it (YPT 174; YPT 176).
- Explain how it works
- The language of civilization and self-reliance gave moral support to policies that displaced communal ownership, denied Native consent, and enabled further land transfers.
- Make the connection explicit
- Naming “Ideas are weapons” earns the naming point. To earn the explanation point, identify both the idea and its work: officials used the promise of self-reliance to justify rules that reduced Native control. Contrast the promise with the consent and inheritance evidence.
Check your understanding: explain how this model’s evidence shows its key idea without looking at the explanation above.
Compare your explanation
The language of civilization and self-reliance gave moral support to policies that displaced communal ownership, denied Native consent, and enabled further land transfers.
How the argument builds
Follow what each move adds to the answer. Then map your own paragraph in your notebook.
- Claim
A promise of independence accompanied an expansion of federal control.
- Policy language
Dawes described individual ownership as a route to self-reliance.
- First quotation
No tribal consent was required, contradicting meaningful self-determination.
- Second quotation
Inheritance rules could require families to repurchase their own land.
- Key Idea
Reform language helped justify dispossession.
- Test the promise
Ask who could choose the rules and retain the land.
Build your own sentences · Chapter 9
Choose the relationship your argument needs. These are sentence models to study; your paragraph should use your own reasoning and your assigned four words of the day.
Appositives · rename a noun precisely
A noun phrase between commas renames the noun before it. It adds useful information, not another sentence. You need two.
Check: remove the phrase between the commas. The main sentence should still work.
Henry Dawes, the senator who promoted individual allotments, treated communal landholding as an obstacle to civilization and supported policies that opened Native land to white settlers.
YPT 174–175John Collier, the commissioner behind the Indian Reorganization Act, supported Native cultural survival yet imposed a livestock reduction program over Navajo objections.
YPT 177 YPT 179 YPT 181–182The Dawes Act, the 1887 law dividing reservation land into individual allotments, allowed the government to sell land labeled surplus to white settlers.
YPT 173–174The Indian Reorganization Act, a 1934 law that ended allotment, authorized federal funding for participating tribes to buy land and establish local self-government.
YPT 177–178Lone Wolf, the Kiowa chief who challenged federal land transfers, argued that an existing treaty required tribal approval before the government disposed of tribal land.
YPT 176The Navajo, a Native people with a long tradition of sheep herding, opposed livestock reduction because their flocks sustained both family livelihoods and cultural knowledge.
YPT 178 YPT 181–182
The nine connectors · choose a relationship
But
Adds a contrast.
Dawes claimed that individual landownership would make Native people independent, but allotment opened reservation land to white buyers and weakened tribal control.
YPT 174–175So
Shows a result.
The 1902 inheritance law required inherited allotments to be auctioned, so Native heirs had to buy their own family land or risk losing it.
YPT 176Because
Gives a reason.
Railroad companies benefited from federal land policy because congressional grants let them build across Native territory and claim property along their routes.
YPT 175If
Names a condition.
If we judge Collier’s livestock policy by Navajo families’ ability to support themselves, the loss of herds reveals a serious failure in the promise of protection.
YPT 181–183Unless
Means if not.
We cannot explain allotment fully unless we connect Dawes’s language of civilization to the land sales that benefited white settlers and businesses.
YPT 174–175When
Means if with expectation.
When the Supreme Court rejected Lone Wolf’s treaty claim, it strengthened federal authority to transfer tribal land without the consent Native communities had demanded.
YPT 176Despite
Takes a noun phrase.
Despite Collier’s stated respect for Native culture, his livestock program overrode Navajo objections and removed animals that sustained family life and independence.
YPT 177 YPT 181–182Although
Takes a subject and a verb.
Although Turner’s frontier story praised conquest as the source of American strength, Takaki places that celebration beside the violence and Native suffering at Wounded Knee.
YPT 167–170However
Starts a new sentence.
Federal officials portrayed last-arrow pageants as progress toward citizenship. However, the newspaper account omitted Native participants’ own views about surrendering their names and customs.
YPT 184–186After despite, use a noun phrase. After although, use a subject and a verb. In your rubric’s pattern, put a period before however and a comma after it. The contrast must make sense in context.