Early modern worlds · GCSE History
Reservations
GCSE History reservations and the Dawes Act 1887: how confinement, ration power, missionaries and allotment attacked tribal landholding after the buffalo and the wars.
A reservation was not a gift of land — it was a fenced ration book where the army and the agent held the gate.
The important bits
What you need to know
- 1
US policy moved from removal (Indian Removal earlier in the South) to concentration: keep Plains nations on bounded reservations, ideally away from trails and gold. Fort Laramie 1851 sketched territories; later reservations shrank them.
- 2
After defeat, agencies issued beef, flour and blankets. Rations were a political weapon: cut them to force compliance (sell ponies, send children to school, cede more land). Hunger is administration.
- 3
The 1868 Fort Laramie reservation (Great Sioux Reservation) included the Black Hills. The 1877 seizure after gold and 1876 war broke that. Allotment then broke what war had left.
- 4
The Dawes Severalty Act 1887 (General Allotment Act) divided tribal land into individual plots (often 160 acres) and declared “surplus” open to settlers. It attacked collective holding, the economic basis of the band.
- 5
Missionaries and boarding schools (Carlisle, founded 1879, “kill the Indian, save the man” — Pratt’s infamous logic) targeted language and ceremony. The Sun Dance was banned in practice. Cultural war after the shooting war.
- 6
Some leaders used reservation politics to preserve people (Red Cloud’s later years; other negotiators). Agency is not only war. Collaboration under duress is still history, not betrayal in a vacuum.
- 7
By the 1890 Census the frontier was “closed”. Indigenous nations had not vanished; they had been dispossessed, missionised and allotted. Population collapse from disease and war is part of the ledger.
- 8
Exam answers that only celebrate homestead grit miss the question of who lost the West. Reservations are the legal end-state of the course’s conflict, not a quiet epilogue.
Quotations worth analysing
Short evidence. Real method.
“Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”
A primary source of cultural destruction. Use it as evidence of intent, and note the human cost without sneering at students who had no choice.
“Allotment was a homestead act pointed at tribal land.”
Same 160-acre unit, opposite purpose: to break the nation rather than to plant a citizen farmer in empty space — because the space was not empty.
“You cannot eat a treaty.”
Once the buffalo were gone, paper promises about hunting meant little. Economic dependence is how reservations held people who had not been “pacified” in their heads.
Go deeper
Rations, schools and the end of independence
Independence died when people could not feed themselves off the herd and could not leave without a pass. Agents, cattle contractors and the army ran a political economy of beef. Corruption was common; so was deliberate tightness. Children sent to boarding schools were hostages to “progress” as well as pupils. In 16-mark “how were the Plains Indians controlled” answers, put reservations and Dawes beside the army. The shooting created the cage; the cage did the long work. Continuity: Indigenous families still raised children and kept stories. Change: land tenure, movement, and public ceremony were attacked by statute. A good conclusion refuses both “they vanished” and “nothing important happened after 1876”.
Go deeper
Dawes: liberal reform as dispossession
Some Eastern “Friends of the Indian” thought private farms would save Indigenous people from “tribal communism” and from land-grabbers. The result of 1887 was a massive transfer of “surplus” acres to white settlers and speculators. Allotments were often poor land; allottees lost plots to tax and fraud. The 1934 Indian Reorganization Act later reversed some of this, but that is beyond most GCSE specs — mention only if you need a limit. For the course dates (c.1835–c.1895), Dawes is the legal coup de grâce after Wounded Knee’s guns. When comparing Homestead 1862 and Dawes 1887, hammer the difference: one distributes “public” land created by conquest; the other privatises what conquest had left in trust. Same acreage number, different victim.
See the idea in action
Question: “The Dawes Act 1887 was the main reason the Plains Indians’ way of life ended.” How far? Judgement: it was the main legal attack on remaining tribal land, but the way of life had already been broken by buffalo destruction, war and reservation confinement. Support: allotment, surplus land to settlers, attack on the band economy. Challenge: hide hunters and railroads in the 1870s, Little Bighorn’s aftermath, ration agencies, boarding schools, 1890. Conclusion: Dawes finishes the conquest on paper; ecology and the army finished independence in practice. Main reason for the last land loss, not for the first hunger.
Exam technique
Turn knowledge into marks
Name reservations as rationed confinement, Dawes Act 1887, and boarding schools. Do not describe reservations as generous parks. They were instruments of control.
Common mistakes
Do not give these marks away
- 01
Confusing the Dawes Act with the Homestead Act — opposite directions of land, similar acreage figure.
- 02
Writing that Indigenous peoples disappeared in 1890. They did not.
- 03
Treating reservation chiefs as simply “sell-outs” without the gun and the empty grassland behind the choice.
What did the Dawes Act 1887 do?
AIt restored the Black Hills to the Lakota in full
BIt split tribal land into individual allotments and opened “surplus” land to settlers, undermining collective Plains economies
CIt banned all railroads west of the Mississippi
DIt created the NHS on the Plains
Show the answer
It split tribal land into individual allotments and opened “surplus” land to settlers, undermining collective Plains economies. Allotment is the legal sequel to military defeat. 160 acres here is a weapon against the band, not a homestead dream for the dispossessed.
Quick questions
If this is the bit you searched
Were all reservations the same?
No. Size, soil, agent quality and whether buffalo remnants existed varied. The Great Sioux Reservation was carved down after 1876–77. Always specify if you can.
What does “severalty” mean?
Individual ownership, as opposed to tribal/common holding. That is the point of Dawes: make land sellable and taxable like a white farm.
How should I end an American West essay on “who lost”?
With reservations and Dawes as the institutional defeat, after naming buffalo, railroad and army. Homestead success, where it happened, sat on that defeat. Both can be in the conclusion without celebrating the theft.
Is 1890 the end of the story?
It is the spec’s usual military end (Wounded Knee, census). Indigenous history continues. In the exam, close the course’s period without writing extinction.