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Retelling Allotment: Indian Property Rights And The Myth Of Common Ownership, Kenneth H. Bobroff

Vanderbilt Law Review

The division of Native American reservations into individually owned parcels was an unquestionable disaster. Authorized by the General Allotment Act of 1887, allotment cost Indians two-thirds of their land and left much of the remainder effectively useless as it passed to successive generations of owners. The conventional understanding, shared by scholars, judges, policymakers, and activists alike, has been that allotment failed because it imposed individual ownership on people who had never known private property. Before allotment, so this story goes, Indians had always owned their land in common. Because Indians had no conception of private property, they were unable to …