Indian Land Allotments Patents and Trusts in Michigan
By Chosen County
THE DAWES ACT - On February 8, 1887, Congress passed the Dawes Act or
General Allotment Act. Senator Henry Dawes of Massachusetts was the original
author of this act. The law allowed for the president to break up
reservation land, which was held in common by the members of a tribe, into
small allotments to be parceled out to individuals. Native Americans
registering on a tribal roll were granted allotments of the old reservation
land. Each head of family would receive 80 acres; each single person over 21
receive 40 acres; and other single persons under 21 would receive 20 acres.
If you find your ancestor in this data, please click on the link under Surname
to perform an automatic search at the Bureau of Land Management site. From there
you can retrieve more information, images of
documents and maps. Note: Common Surnames can bring up many records on the BLM site.
You may have to narrow your search once you are on their site.
Hints to use this data page:
1. The records are ordered by the Surname column. You can click on any of
the column names or headings to order the records by county, issue date,
type of land purchase, accession number, etc.
2. To page through the records go to the top or bottom of the table below and
click on the page number.
Author: Patricia Hamp