H L Dawes

Henry Laurens Dawes (1816-1903) was a lawyer and politician, representing Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1857 to 1875, and in the U.S. Senate from 1875 to 1893. He was chairman of the Senate's Committee on Indian Affairs and his major legislative achievement was the General Allotment Act of 1887, known as the Dawes Act, that was intended to force Native Americans to assimilate into the culture of the European settlers through allotments of reservation land parcels to heads of families. "Surplus" land that wasn't allotted or reserved for future allotment was sold by the government, resulting in the loss to the Indigenous people of nearly two-thirds of the land that had been promised to them in perpetuity.