Abstract
The Nelson Act of 1889 established the allotment of American Indian lands for American Indians in Minnesota; subsequent changes allowed land to be sold to non-Indians. Allotment was intended to provide private land ownership for American Indians during this period where none had previously existed on reservation lands. This dramatic shift in land tenure occurred throughout the USA for many reservations. In this analysis, I examine two different Minnesota reservations over time: one that was allotted and another that was not allotted. I find a dramatic reduction in home ownership and an increase in household size for households that were treated to the land-titling program as compared to those households that were not treated. I also document a noticeable effect on wage sector employment; there is a large movement from self-employment in farming to the wage sector.
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Notes
The Dawes Act of 1887 initiated the allotment processes for other American Indian reservations and is often the main act referred when discussing the allotment program for American Indians; the Nelson Act provided the same land tenure change for reservations in Minnesota alone.
Anishinaabe is the preferred adjective for this group and Anishinaabeg is the preferred noun for this group. Alternative terms used are Chippewa or Ojibwe. I use the currently preferred terms throughout this analysis.
While the terms “mixed blood” and “full blood” were used throughout legislation for American Indians in general and Anishinaabeg in particular, these concepts were completely American in origin. Meyer (1994) and Doerfler (2015) discuss these terms in detail and how they are not based in Anishinaabe concepts.
Royster (1995) notes that “the exact size of allotments varied over time. As originally enacted, the General Allotment Act varied the size of the allotment by the status of the individual. Each head of family received 160 acres; single adults received 80 acres; and orphans and other single persons received even less. General Allotment Act, ch. 119, § 1, 24 Stat. 388 (1887). The Act was amended in 1891 to equalize the size of allotments: ‘each Indian’ was now entitled to 80 acres.” (Royster 1995; footnote 34)
Hacker and Haines (2005) also use historical data from the Minnesota Population Center IPUMS data to estimate the mortality rates of American Indians at the turn of the twentieth century.
Appendix 1 provides the list of counties used for the creation of these data sets across the two survey years and reservations.
As Hacker and Haines (2005) have noted, there may be important differences in cultural understanding of family or household units between American Indian and non-Indian enumerators in the US Census. While this is probably the case in both of these US Censuses, there does not appear to be a systematic change in how family members or household members were counted between the 1900 and 1910 US Censuses. As a result, any cultural differences that existed in 1900 should have been equally present in the 1910 enumeration.
Ownership of homes does not contradict communal or tribal land ownership. After the introduction of private property (for land) with the Dawes and Nelson Acts, the land under dwellings was able to be privately owned in contrast to the past. However, there is ample evidence that dwellings and other items had been historically owned by individuals in many American Indian tribal communities and nations.
All American Indians would be made US citizens in 1924 under the Snyder Act (also known as the Indian Citizenship Act) and would all have been liable for taxation.
I use the term “occupation” in place of the Census terminology which is “trade or profession” for convenience and without loss of meaning in the analysis to follow.
In Appendix Table 6, I provide the distribution of reported occupation types for the 1900 Census for the two reservations. The occupation of farmer is the most frequently reported occupation. For the Red Lake reservation, hunting and trapping is an important occupation as is day laborer, snake root digger (tumeric), and fisherman. The White Earth reservation has a slightly different composition of occupations. While farmer is the most common occupation, the next most common categories are day laborer, hunter, and then farm laborer. The laborer occupations indicate a higher participation rate in the wage labor force for White Earth household heads than in the Red Lake reservation. The heads of households report various other occupations but none are as frequent as these few initial categories. The results indicate that both reservations were primarily rural and agricultural in nature with some hunting and trapping and logging activities.
See for instance, Doerfler (2015), pp. 19–27).
Restricting the analysis to only individuals who report an occupation does not qualitatively change the results as approximately 80% of the heads of households report an occupation of some sort.
Appendix Table 7 provides a test of equality of means for selected characteristics for male heads of households by year and reservation between the cross-section and panel data.
While there is a statistically significant difference in blood quantum, I am not convinced that these are useful or accurate measures given the potential for bias in the enumeration of these characteristics.
While there is a statistically significant difference in blood quantum, I am not convinced that these are useful or accurate measures given the potential for bias in the enumeration of these characteristics.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Selena Crowley, Micah Kamoe, and Christopher Roldan for excellent research assistance. I am also grateful to Dora Costa, Jill Doerfler, and Mishuana Goeman for their insight on this project. Any errors, omissions, or oversight is mine alone.
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Appendices
Appendix 1: Data Set Creation from US Census Data
In this Appendix, I describe the Census counties and districts that were included in the data collection from the historical US Census data for 1900 and 1910 from the Indian Population forms. In addition to the standard US Census questions, there was an additional set of questions that were asked of American Indians which were known as the Indian Population forms. These were collected for American Indians residing on reservation lands only; those residing outside of reservations were enumerated using the general Census forms. See Twelfth Census of the U.S. (1900): Special Inquiries Relating to Indians (Data Collection Sheet) Source: https://www.archives.gov/research/census/native-americans/1790-1930.html.
1900 White Earth
In 1900, the reservation boundaries were included in the census simply under White Earth Indian Reservation (District 0340) and Becker County. There are 3343 American Indians on White Earth in 1900 and there are 741 American Indian household in 1900. Thus, the census data used in this analysis incorporates observations from the following Census Indian Population forms:
White Earth Indian Reservation
White Earth Indian Reservation (District 0340) [148 pgs total]
Becker County
White Earth Indian Reservation (District 0340) [52 pgs total]
1910 White Earth
Data was collected from the 1910 Census for the counties that correspond to territories associated with the White Earth reservation. There are 3332 American Indians residing on White Earth in 1910 and there are 683 households in 1910. For White Earth reservation, data was collected only for those whose names are recorded on the Indian Population forms of the 1910 Census.
Clearwater County is not established until 1902 and Mahnomen County also does not appear to exist until after 1900, but before 1910. So really, only Becker County exists prior to 1900 since it was founded in 1858.
However by 1910, some of the counties are split up (reorganized) and the White Earth reservation now covers three counties at that point: Mahnomen, Becker, and Clearwater. The counties and districts for 1910 for White Earth reservation Indian Population forms are as follows:
Mahnomen County
Beaulieu (District 87)
Bejou (District 88)
Chief (District 88)
Heier (District 87)
Lagard (District 87)
Lagard (District 87)
Lake GrEove (District 89)
Pembina (District 90)
Popple Grove (District 89)
Rosedale (District 90)
Township 143 (District 91)
Township 145 (District 88 & 91)
Township 146 (District 88 & 91)
Becker County
Callaway (District 4)
White Earth (District 21 & 22)
Clearwater
White Earth (District 74)
1900 Red Lake
Data was collected from the 1900 Census for the counties that correspond to territories associated with the Red Lake reservation. There are 1431 American Indians residing on Red Lake reservation in 1900. There were 348 households in 1900. Data was collected only for those whose names are recorded on the Indian Population forms of the 1900 Census.
Beltrami County
Red Lake Indian Reservation
Itasca County
Township 54 (District 71)
Ray Township
Roseau County
Dewey Township
Warroad Township
Township 160
1910 Red Lake
Data was collected from the 1910 Census for the counties that correspond to territories associated with the Red Lake reservation. There are 1827 American Indians residing there in 1910 and there were 446 households in 1910 for Red Lake. Data was collected only for those whose names are recorded on the Indian Population forms of the 1910 Census.
The reservation consists of Beltrami, Clearwater, Lake of the Woods, Koochiching, Roseau, Pennington, Marshall, Red Lake, and Polk counties. Data was collected from the counties and their corresponding townships. Listed below are the counties with their townships and respective districts.
Beltrami County
Alaska (District 23)
Township 147 (District 30)
Township 146 (District 30)
Redby (District 45)
Red Lake (District 45)
Oak Island (District 36)
Nymore (District 28)
Langor (District 33)
Blackduck (District 31)
Alaska (District 23)
Red Lake Indian Reservation (District 73)
Clearwater County
Red Lake Indian reservation (District 73)
Popple (District 67)
Township 143 (District 71)
Koochiching County
Township 158 (District 93)
Township 160 (District 93)
Township 65 (District 94)
Roseau County
Hereim (District 249)
Township 164 (District 246)
Lake of the Woods County
While this county currently includes the modern-day reservation, it did not exist until 1922 and was taken from northern townships from Beltrami County (http://www.co.lake-of-the-woods.mn.us/LocalHistory.aspx).
Pennington County
No Indian Population forms out of 25 possible townships
Marshall County
No Indian Population forms out of 51 possible townships
Red Lake County
No Indian Population forms out of 17 possible townships
Polk County
No Indian Population forms out of 76 possible townships
Appendix 2: Panel Data Set Creation from US Census Data
In this Appendix section, I describe the matching process for the panel data set used in the main section of the paper. I have linked individual households over time between the two censuses in order to conduct analysis of the same households over time. The linking of individual households is not complete due to differences in the spelling of names, incomplete names, and missing birth dates. Therefore, it is important to examine the nature of selection with respect to the matched sample.
In Appendix Table 10, I show the differences between the full sample of heads of households and the panel data used in this analysis. There are two large differences between the full census and the matched panel data. For White Earth, the matched sample (panel data) head of household is about 5 years younger than the full 1900 data. As a result, the panel data contains households that have lower average years of being married, slightly higher marital rates, and larger household size. The second difference is in the three variables measuring the reading, writing, and speaking of English; the reported abilities are significantly higher for heads of households in the panel data set.Footnote 18 These characteristics, based on the 1900 US Census data, are characteristics that would be associated with an increased likelihood of matching an individual household across time. Younger heads of households are more likely to be alive in the next census period and thus more easily matched. Individuals that were married are also going to be easier to identify as my method of matching only requires finding a single individual (head, spouse, or other household member) in order to link a household across time. Larger household sizes (on average) increase the likelihood of finding a unique individual across households over time. Finally, the ability to read, write, and speak English may have played an important role in how names, ages, and birth dates were reported to census enumerators; higher English language ability individuals may have reported a more consistent set of responses that facilitated the matching across time as compared to purely phonetic spellings of names which appear in a large number of cases. Overall, the panel data set appears to be one that is younger and more educated (for White Earth only) than the full data set.
In Appendix Tables 11 and 12, I show the same analysis used for Tables 3 and 4 using the panel data; the results are qualitatively and quantitatively quite similar to the main results and suggests that the observed results persist for both the full data analysis and the matched panel data.For Red Earth, the differences are primarily in the head of household age and years currently married. The direction of the difference is similar to that of White Earth above and may be due to similar issues in the matching process. The other difference between the 1900 Census and the 1900 panel data is that in the panel there is a slightly higher frequency of reported occupations (an additional 7 percentage points). There are no discernible differences in literacy.
There are several potential reasons that may explain the match rates across time. First, census enumerators wrote down the names of reservation residents phonetically if they were in the Anishinaabe language. Different enumerators may have used different variants and spellings of these phonetic names over time (Meyer 1994, p. 124). Second, many of the reservation residents tended to have both an Anishinaabe and English name. Census enumerators may have had their own preferences when recording names and requested English names more frequently than Anishinaabe. On the other hand, there may be differences across individual census respondents’ preferences for providing their Anishinaabe or English names. A third potential reason is that there may have been outmigration from the reservation to other cities or towns that are located off of the reservations. Existing research indicates that this is not the case at that point in time. There was very low migration away from the reservation to other communities in Minnesota during this time period (Carlson 1981; Sandefur 1986; Snipp and Sandefur 1988; Haas 1949).
Appropriations by year
Appropriations by year (no construction)
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Akee, R. Land Titles and Dispossession: Allotment on American Indian Reservations. J Econ Race Policy 3, 123–143 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41996-019-00035-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41996-019-00035-z