Henry Laurens Dawes

Henry Laurens Dawes (October 30, 1816 – February 5, 1903) was an American attorney and politician, a Republican United States senator and United States representative from Massachusetts. He is notable for the Dawes Act, which was intended to stimulate the assimilation of Native Americans by ending the tribal government and control of communal lands. Especially directed at the tribes in Indian Territory, it provided for the allotment of tribal lands to individual households of tribal members, and for their being granted United States citizenship. This also made them subject to state and federal taxes. In addition, extinguishing tribal land claims in this territory later enabled the admission of Oklahoma as a state in 1907.

Early life Dawes was born in Cummington, Massachusetts, in 1816. After graduating from Yale University in 1839, he taught at Greenfield, Massachusetts, and also edited The Greenfield Gazette.

He studied law with an established firm, and in 1842, was admitted to the bar. He began the practice of law in the village of North Adams, Massachusetts. For a time he edited The North Adams Transcript.

In 1875 Dawes was chosen by the state legislature (as was the practice at the time) to succeed William B. Washburn as U.S. Senator from Massachusetts. He served multiple terms, until 1893.

During his long period of legislative activity, Dawes served in the House on the committees on elections, ways and means, and appropriations. He took a prominent part in passage of the anti-slavery and Reconstruction measures during and after the Civil War, in tariff legislation, and in the establishment of a fish commission. He also initiated the production of daily weather reports to be provided by the federal government.

Strategist for "Half-Breed" Republicans During the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes (spanning 1877–81), Dawes was a prominent member of congressional "Half-Breeds" within the Republican Party allied with Hayes' support for civil service reform. Along with fellow Massachusetts senatorial Half-Breed George F. Hoar and Rep. John Davis Long, he became one of the faction's leading strategists.

During the 1880 United States presidential election, the agreed strategy planned was to prevent either former president Ulysses S. Grant, the leader of "Stalwarts," nor Blaine faction leader James G. Blaine of Maine, from obtaining the nomination at the Republican National Convention.

Dawes Act

The Dawes Act was intended to assimilate Indians by encouraging them to undertake subsistence farming, then widespread in American society. Enacted in 1887, it was amended in 1891, again in 1898 by the Curtis Act, and again in 1906 by the Burke Act.

The Dawes Commission, set up under an Indian Office appropriation bill in 1893, was created not to administer the Act but to attempt to persuade the tribes excluded from the Act by treaties to agree to the allotment plan. After gaining agreement from representatives of the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory, the commission appointed registrars to register members on rolls prior to allotment of lands. Many tribes have since based membership and citizen qualifications on descent from persons listed as Indians on the Dawes Rolls. (Also listed were freedmen of each tribe, and intermarried whites.)

On leaving the Senate in 1893, Dawes became chairman of the commission to the Five Civilized Tribes, also known as the Dawes Commission, and served for ten years. He negotiated with the tribes for the extinction of the communal title to their land and for the dissolution of the tribal governments. The goal was to make tribal members a constituent part of the United States.

In popular culture Aidan Quinn played Dawes in the film Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, adapted from Dee Brown's 1970 history of Native Americans, the United States, and the West