The Dawes Act of 1887 regulated land rights on tribal territories within the United States. It authorized the President of the United States to subdivide Native American tribal communal landholdings into allotments for Native American heads of families and individuals. The objective of the Dawes Act was to assimilate Native Americans into mainstream US society by annihilating their cultural and social traditions. As a result of the Dawes Act, over ninety million acres of tribal land were stripped from Native Americans and sold to non-natives.
