Indian Appropriations Act

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The Indian Appropriations Act is the name of several acts passed by the United States Congress.

[edit] 1851 Act

By the 1850s, the United States government had adopted assimilation and removal as a solution to the encroachment of Native American lands by white spectators, traders and settlers. The 1851 Indian Appropriations Act was an act that organized the western tribes of Native Americans into reservations. These reservations fenced in the Natives Americans on federally-protected land. Ostensibly, this was supposed to protect them from white settlers moving west, but in practice they offered little protection. The reservations shrunk as more pressure was put on them by the exploding white population surging westward. The act set the precedent for modern-day Native American reservations.

[edit] 1885 Act

After several attempts by the Boomers to enter Indian Territory, Congress passed the 1885 Act which allowed Indian tribes to sell unoccupied lands in their possession.

[edit] 1889 Act

After years of trying to open Indian Territory, President Grover Cleveland, on March 2, 1889, the 1889 Act which officially opened the Unassigned Lands to white settlers via homestead. On a sidenote, Grover Cleveland signed the Act into law days before his successor, Benjamin Harrison, took over as President of the United States.