The Dawes Act of 1887, enacted by Congress, allowed the President of the United States to divide reservation lands into small plots for individual Native Americans. The act is named after its author, Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts. The primary goal of the Dawes Act was to assimilate Native Americans into American society by providing them with land and, ultimately, U.S. citizenship. Many claimed that the Dawes Act of 1887 was a historic law that would benefit Native American people, but it ultimately failed and did more harm than actual good. During the 1800s, the United States federal government became increasingly aggressive in its westward expansion. . Large numbers of Native Americans were forced to relocate further west. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 allowed then-U.S. President Andrew Jackson to relocate all Native Americans to federal territory west of the Mississippi River. This relocation would be tested again with the arrival of new European immigrants. Many of these new immigrants did not believe that the two racial societies could coexist. Needing a solution to this problem, the implementation of reservations, by William Medill, allowed the two societies to live separately again. This communal reservation system, although imposed on Native Americans, was a system that gave each tribe the right to claim their new lands, the protection of their territories, and the right to govern themselves. The unity of these reservations would, over time, be forced to dismantle with the introduction of the Dawes Act of 1887. The primary goal of the Dawes Act of 1887 was to assimilate Native Americans into the rest of American society. In order... middle of paper ... So, Native Americans were primarily a hunter-gatherer society, so they had no interest in agriculture. Because those who decided to go into farming could not afford the tools, animals, seeds and other supplies needed to get started. There was also a problem of inheritance. The children who were to inherit the plots could not cultivate the land because most were sent to boarding schools. Multiple heirs would also be a problem because the land would have been divided among the children, so the plot size was too small to farm effectively. In 1887, Native Americans owned 138 million acres. This number would drop significantly to 48 million acres by 1934. Most of the land was deemed surplus and sold to non-Native Americans. The inability to farm due to land conditions and inheritance issues led to Native Americans losing most of the land they had been promised..