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The Friends Of The Indians And Their Foes: A Reassessment Of The Dawes Act Debate, Christopher J. Love

Honors Papers

In the centennial of the passage of the Northwest ordinance, 1887, the U.S. Congress passed the Dawes Act, continuing the program set up by the earlier document. The Northwest Ordinance had sought to incorporate lands previously uninhabited by whites into the American realm by imposing a Euro-American sense of order onto areas viewed as "wild" and "savage" The document created a program by which the western development of the continent would proceed in a rational manner, and by which lands would be attributed worth and meaning in relation to the developed areas to the east. The Dawes Act proceeded in …