<Li> Signed into law by President Grover Cleveland on February 8, 1887 </Li> <P> The Dawes Act of 1887 (also known as the General Allotment Act or the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887), authorized the President of the United States to survey Native American tribal land and divide it into allotments for individual Native Americans . Those who accepted allotments and lived separately from the tribe would be granted United States citizenship . The Dawes Act was amended in 1891, in 1898 by the Curtis Act, and again in 1906 by the Burke Act . </P> <P> The Act was named for its creator, Senator Henry Laurens Dawes of Massachusetts . The objectives of the Dawes Act were to abolish tribal and communal land ownership of the tribes into individual land ownership rights in order to transfer lands under Native American control to white settlers and stimulate assimilation of them into mainstream American society, and thereby lift individual Native Americans out of poverty . Individual household ownership of land and subsistence farming on the European - American model was seen as an essential step . The act provided that the government would classify as "excess" those Indian reservation lands remaining after allotments, and sell those lands on the open market, allowing purchase and settlement by non-Native Americans . </P> <P> The Dawes Commission, set up under an Indian Office appropriation bill in 1893, was created to try to persuade the Five Civilized Tribes to agree to allotment plans . (They had been excluded from the Dawes Act by their treaties .) This commission registered the members of the Five Civilized Tribes on what became known as the Dawes Rolls . </P>

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