Miller Grant, Shane Jack, Snipp C Matthew
School of Medicine, Department of Health Policy, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305.
National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA 02138.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2025 Jul 15;122(28):e2418836122. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2418836122. Epub 2025 Jul 11.
In contrast to earlier US policies of open war, forcible removal, and relocation to address the "Indian Problem," the Dawes Act of 1887 focused on assimilation and land severalty-making American Indians citizens of the United States with individually titled plots of land rather than members of collective tribes with communal land. Considerable scholarship shows that the consequences of the policy differed substantially from its stated goals, and by the time of its repeal in 1934, American Indians had lost two-thirds of all native land held in 1887 (86 million acres)-and nearly two-thirds of American Indians had become landless or unable to meet subsistence needs. Complementing rich qualitative history, this paper provides quantitative evidence on the demographic impact of the Dawes Act on mortality among American Indian children and adults. Using 1900 and 1910 US population census data to study both household and tribe-level variation in allotment timing, we find that assimilation and allotment policy increased the American Indian child mortality ratio by a little more than 15%. In secondary analyses (requiring additional assumptions) focused on total mortality, we find increases among young American Indians of nearly one-third (implying a decline in life expectancy at birth of about 20%). These results confirm contemporary critics' adamant concerns about the Dawes Act.
与美国早期旨在解决“印第安问题”的公开战争、强制迁移和重新安置政策不同，1887年的《道斯法案》侧重于同化和土地私有化——使美国印第安人成为美国公民，并拥有个人产权的土地，而非作为拥有公共土地的集体部落成员。大量学术研究表明，该政策的后果与其宣称的目标大相径庭，到1934年该法案被废除时，美国印第安人已失去了1887年时所拥有的全部本土土地的三分之二（8600万英亩），并且近三分之二的美国印第安人变得无地可耕或无法满足基本生活需求。在丰富的定性历史研究基础上，本文提供了关于《道斯法案》对美国印第安儿童和成人死亡率的人口统计学影响的定量证据。利用1900年和1910年美国人口普查数据，研究分配时间在家庭和部落层面的差异，我们发现同化和分配政策使美国印第安儿童死亡率上升了略超过15%。在侧重于总死亡率的二次分析（需要额外假设）中，我们发现美国印第安年轻人的死亡率上升了近三分之一（这意味着出生时预期寿命下降了约20%）。这些结果证实了当时批评者对《道斯法案》的强烈担忧。
