According to the Virginia Plan, the legislature was to be bicameral. That is, it was to have two houses, like the Parliament of Great Britain. At that time, the British Parliament consisted of a House of Lords, which represented the nobility, and a House of Commons, which represented the people of the towns and counties. In the Virginia plan, the bicameral legislature would consist of a lower and an upper house. The upper house would be selected by the lower house. The president would be elected by the legislature. The number of representatives that each state would have in the legislature was to be based on the population of the state. The larger the population of a state, the more representatives it would have in Congress.
A bicameral legislature features "two legislative bodies" (from "bi" meaning two). This is the standard arrangement for legislatures in the west, such as in the US and Great Britain.
The Dawes Act of 1887 (also known as the General Allotment Act or the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887), authorized the President of the United States to survey American Indian tribal land and divide it into allotments for individual Indians.
