Dawes Act
lead plaintiff in the groundbreaking class-action suit Cobell v. Salazar. This challenged the United States' mismanagement of trust funds belonging to more than 500,000 individual Native Americans.
Who is Elouise Cobell?
Settlers who claimed land on the Great Plains under the Homestead Act.
What is a homesteader?
Railroad connecting the west and east coasts of the continental US
What is the transcontinental railroad?
A vast area of grassland owned by the government where ranchers could graze their herds for free
What is the Open Range?
the formal relinquishment of tribal land by Native American tribes to the U.S. government, often through treaties
What is to cede land?
independent and self-governing
What is Tribal Sovereignty?
a plot of land assigned to an individual or a family for cultivation; usually surveyed into 160 acre plots
What is an allotment?
Were a series of acts of Congress that promoted the construction of a "transcontinental railroad" in the United States through authorizing the issuance of government bonds and the grants of land to railroad companies.
What is the Pacific Railway Act of 1862?
This refers to the forced migration of massive numbers of cattle to the railroads where they could be shipped to the East.
What are cattle drives?
Free land that the federal government gives to a company, an organization, or a state
What is a land grant? (to the railroads)
process in which individuals or groups are compelled to adopt the culture, language, religion, or social norms of a dominant group, often through coercive means or policies. This can include suppressing the group's original identity, traditions, and practices, leading to cultural loss or erasure.
What is forced assimilation?
After someone had lived on the land for five years, built a house and planted five acres of crops, they would pay $30 and own their homestead outright.
What is proving up?
The first railroad to get anywhere near Montana
What is the Union Pacific?
a farming method used in dry regions in which crops are grown that rely only on the natural precipitation
What is dry farming?
annual payments in the form of food, equipment, supplies, and funds the U.S. government owed a tribe by treaty
What are annuities?
1887 law that divided up reservations and allotted parcels of land to individual Indians as private property.
What is Dawes Allotment Act?
enacted during the Civil War, provided that any adult citizen, or intended citizen, who had never borne arms against the U.S. government could claim 160 acres of surveyed government land. Claimants were required to live on and "improve" their plot by cultivating the land
What is the Homestead Act of 1862
This rail lines land grant was the largest land grant in the history of American railroads. By 1900 the railroad was the biggest landowner in Montana.
What is the Northern Pacific?
an organization formed by livestock producers, such as cattle or sheep ranchers, to advocate for their interests. These associations typically focus on issues like land use, livestock health, market access, legal protection, and the promotion of sustainable ranching practices.
What are Stockgrowers associations?
A grant or contribution of money, especially one made by a government in support of an undertaking or the upkeep of a thing (ex. land given to the railroads and homesteaders)
What are subsidies?
Land owned by American Indian Nation and designated by the Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs as exempt from most states laws and taxes.
What is trust land?
As a result, in 1895, the Blackfeet were forced to do something radical. They agreed to sell the lands, which now make up Glacier National Park, to the United States.
What is the Blackfeet Starvation Winter?
The route of this rail line became known as the Hi-line because it was the northernmost transcontinental route in the United States.
What is the Great Northern Railway?
statutes that allowed for the creation of land-grant colleges in U.S. states using the proceeds from sales of federally-owned land, often obtained from indigenous tribes through treaty, cession, or seizure; intended to educate newcomers to the West on the "benefit of agriculture and the Mechanic arts"
What is theMorrill Land Grant of 1862?
refer to the process by which ownership or control of land designated as public (managed by government entities) is transferred to private individuals, organizations, or other entities
What are land transfers?