appear in the Handbook of American Indians North
of Mexico. Bushotter will become known as the first
Lakota ethnographer. Much of his work will later
be translated by the Nakota Sioux linguist and nov-
elist Ella Deloria (see entry for 1932).
February 8
The General Allotment Act is signed
into law.
One of the most influential pieces of legislation in
Native American history, the General Allotment
Act (also known as the Dawes Act, after its sponsor
Senator Henry L. Dawes) authorizes the president
to survey Indian lands and compile tribal rolls in
preparation for dividing reservations into 160-
acres tracts called allotments. Unlike reservation
land, which is owned communally by a tribe, al-
lotments are to be held as private property. The act
stipulates that when a reservation is allotted, the
male head of each family will receive U.S. citizen-
ship with his allotment. Because the government
believes that most Indians are incompetent in busi-
ness affairs, allotments are to be held in trust for
25 years, during which time they cannot be sold or
leased by their Indian owners. Any land left over
after all allotments are granted will be sold by the
U.S. government.
The Allotment policy has broad support
among non-Indians. Many reformers advocate Al-
lotment as the best means of assimilating Indians:
As landowners they will be better able to live like
whites. Other “friends of the Indian” hold that In-
dians stand to lose all their lands to unscrupulous
whites unless they own it as private property. The
majority of whites, however, favor Allotment be-
cause the sale of the surplus lands will open huge
areas to non-Indian settlement.
Few Indians support Allotment. Several large
tribes—including the Five Civilized Tribes (the
Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Semi-
nole), the Osage, and the Seneca—are explicitly
excluded from the General Allotment Act because
their leaders have lobbied Congress to retain their
tribally held lands and tribal government.
November 5Crow warrior Sword Bearer is killed by
U.S. troops.
A group of young Crow warriors, led by Sword
Bearer, raid a camp of Blackfeet, who have stolen
some of the Crow’s horses. Recapturing the horses,
the young men ride triumphantly through the town
of Crow Agency, Montana. During the excitement,
Sword Bearer fires his rifle into the agent’s house
and the town store. Fearing an uprising, the agent
calls his superiors in Washington, D.C., to re-
quest military support. With the troops and local
whites terrified of rebelling reservation Indians, the
army orders Sword Bearer’s arrest. A shoot-out fol-
lows, leaving eight Crow Indians, including Sword
Bearer, dead.1889Susan La Flesche becomes the first female
Native American physician.
Graduating first in her class, Omaha Indian Susan
La Flesche is awarded a medical degree from the
Women’s College of Medicine in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, thereby becoming the first Indian
female to be fully trained in Western medicine.
Her education has been funded by the Connecti-
cut Indian Association, a group of pro-assimilation
non-Indian reformers.
After graduation, La Flesche will return
to the Omaha Reservation in Nebraska. There
the Bureau of Indian Affairs will hire her as the
reservation’s physician, making her the only doc-
tor available to the more than 1,000 reservation
residents.The Sioux Bill breaks up the Great
Sioux Reservation.
Congress passes the Sioux Bill, which divides the
Great Sioux Reservation established by the Treaty
of Fort Laramie (see entry for NOVEMBER 7, 1868)
into six smaller reservations: Standing Rock, Pine
Ridge, Rosebud, Cheyenne River, Crow Creek, and