ABSTRACT
As part of a larger package of policies aimed at the assimilation of Indians into the general populace, Congress passed the Dawes Act in 1887. The Dawes Act provided for the allotment of reservations into small, individually owned plots of land. The Southern Ute Reservation in Colorado, like the majority of Indian reservations in the U.S., was broken up into small tracts of about 160 acres per family. The U.S. sold the surplus lands, usually to white settlers, and then even more reservation land fell into non-Indian hands as individual Indians lost their allotted land through tax forfeiture, sale, and fraud. Osburn’s essay assesses the impact of the Dawes Act on divorced Indian women, who were especially hard-hit by changes resulting from cultural assumptions about women and the family guiding the allotment process.
