The Dawes Act attempted to help Native Americans by ….?
How would the Native Americans in the area be affected if the following scenario occurred? Paul Lyon was a trader in Minnesota in 1862 near the Dakota Sioux reservation. Like other traders in the area, he did not provide food or other goods on credit.
A. They would potentially starve because government payments they were supposed to receive did not come.
B. They would have to trade their horses in exchange for food needed for the tribe to survive.
C. They would need to sell what few possessions they had to settlers to buy food.
D. They would send tribal leaders to Washington D.C. to collect their annuities in person.
22. How did the arrival of American troops in the land where the Nez Perce lived affect the tribe?
A. It forced them to defend their land in the Battle at Wounded Knee.
B. They were relocated to a smaller reservation in Wyoming.
C. It caused them to leave their homes, traveling 1,300-miles before being forced to settle in Oklahoma.
D. The Nez Perce were protected by the troops from people who tried to settle on their lands.
23. How did gold mining and the arrival of prospectors in the Black Hills area affect the lives of the Lakota Sioux tribe?
A. Members of the tribe were paid to assist prospectors in locating mining sites.
B. Many in the tribe decided to leave the reservation to hunt in Montana.
C. The boomtowns brought prosperity to the tribe’s reservation.
D. Crime increased in the area, which included reservation lands.
24. What was one effect of western settlement on the lives of Native American tribes?
A. The tribes were welcomed in mining communities as a source of labor.
B. Buffalo began to disappear from the plains, depriving many tribes of their main source of food, shelter, and clothing.
C. Many tribe members were able to get jobs with the railroad companies to support their families.
D. Settlers were able to share modern farming practices with the tribes, helping them become self-sufficient.
25. The Dawes Act attempted to help Native Americans by
A. giving them land for farming.
B. returning them to their native lands.
C. reintroducing the buffalo to native lands.
D. sustaining their previous way of life.
Under the 1887 Dawes Act, land owned by the Native Americans could be put into trust and administered by the federal government. In theory, the land was distributed among the individual Native Americans in 160 acres parcels. Under the trust system and they would then receive monthly payment for the land’s use. The land was then leased to ranchers, loggers and miners. The money collected from these leases is supposed to be returned to the Native Americans through trust payments.
Some 47 million (or 11 million) acres is in trust. An even greater amount was ‘bought” by the federal government then sold to settlers. This was often at a bare fraction of it’s true value.
Payments are made under the Individual Indian Monies (IIM) program. Payments run about 450,000,000 (or 500,000,000) dollars each year. There are a reported 300,000 people getting these payments with another 47,000 eligible (or 50,000) but the government doesn’t have the addresses.
There are now lawsuits intended to force the government to account for the money. The courts have ruled that accounting has been very poor and payments have not been accurate. The plaintiffs argue that some 10 Billion dollars is owed to 500,000 Native Americans. The government estimates there are only 300,000 Native Americans involved.
Complicating the process is that many records since 1887 have been lost. However a sub-committee of Congress stated:
“While mismanagement of the Indian trust fund has been reported for more than a century, there is no evidence that either the (BIA) or the Department of Interior has undertaken any sustained or comprehensive effort to resolve glaring deficiencies,”
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/02/14/usatcov-indian-fund.htm