“The Indians Complain, and with Good Cause”: Allotting Standing Rock—U.S. Policy Meets a Tribe’s Assertion of Rights

Abstract

Land allotment was embraced by the U.S. Government in the late 1800s and early 1900s as part of a solution to the “Indian problem”, the goal of which was assimilation into the Euro-American cultural and economic system. As a progressivist program, it was imposed with enthusiasm and confidence, dividing reservations into rectangular land parcels (allotments) in the belief that the allotment recipients would become yeoman farmers of the Jeffersonian mold. Tribes were unable to thwart the imposition of allotment, despite their best efforts, and its devastating long-term effects are now well known. Much less is understood, however, about the efforts of various tribes, sometimes successful and sometimes not, to obtain modifications to the terms of allotment imposed on them. We describe how the people of the Standing Rock Reservation in North and South Dakota successfully advocated for modifications which worked to their significant advantage. We draw heavily from the outgoing correspondence and allotment records of the Special Allotting Agent, Carl Gunderson, along with contemporaneous records of legislative proceedings and other documents. The successful efforts of the people of Standing Rock resulted not only in equitable access to scarce timber, but in allotments to numerous individuals who otherwise would have been ineligible. The net impact was the additional allotment of nearly 400,000 acres (160,000 ha) to over 1800 individuals who otherwise would have received nothing.

1. Introduction

As Banner [1] and many others have pointed out, one of the long-term goals of settlers in North America was to induce Native peoples to accept Euro-American concepts and systems of land ownership [2,3,4,5]. To realize this goal, it was proposed that land belonging to a tribe be divided into tracts of land allotted to individuals, with the lands ultimately to be held in fee simple, or outright ownership, with all the rights, opportunities, and risks that fee simple ownership entailed. Although many view the enactment of the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 [6] as the beginning of allotment, it was conceptualized and, in some cases, put into place much earlier. Advocacy for allotment can be dated back to as early as 1633 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and sporadic allotment projects in limited areas of the U.S. can be dated from the early 1800s (pp. 259–260, [1]). As Paulson [7] notes, “the idea of allotting land in severalty progressed slowly during the first half of the nineteenth century”, including several limited attempts among the Dakota peoples in western Minnesota and the eastern parts of Dakota Territory. Nevertheless, most agree that the push for universal allotment did not gain serious and widespread political and public support until the post-Civil War period [8,9,10].

1.1. Allotment as a Solution to the “Indian Problem”

Following the U.S. Civil War, the attention of many Eastern reformers turned to solving the plight of Native peoples in the U.S., commonly referred to as “the Indian Problem”. The roots of the Indian Problem were complex, but the key factor was that most Native tribes had been removed from their ancestral lands and confined to reservations while white settlement had surged around them. Confinement to reservations led to poverty internally and conflict externally as settlers encroached on Native lands and resources. In addition, there was precious little remaining open land to which Native peoples might have been further exiled and isolated from white settlers, as had been the practice from early in the colonial period.

Although there were strongly dissenting voices from some government officials and advocates for the rights of Native peoples, as well as many of the Native tribes themselves [4,11], the solution embraced was that of assimilation [8,12], in which Native people would be integrated into mainstream society by imposing Euro-American land holding systems, education, and culture, while suppressing traditional practices and breaking up tribal authority and cohesion, thereby opening the path for Native people to become “civilized”. This would be accomplished through a multi-pronged approach, the two most important components of which were education and land allotment.

As noted, the key concept of allotment was that tribally held reservation lands should be subdivided and transferred (“allotted”) to individual tribal members to encourage self-reliance through adoption of “progressive” agricultural practices that would putatively enable them to compete in the market economy. This proposed policy, allotment in severalty, was based in part on the grossly simplistic and erroneous notion that Native people had no concept or practice of private land holding and that all tribal lands were held in common [13,14]. It was in turn asserted that this was holding back progress toward civilization (p. 1 in [5]).

From the standpoint of the U.S. government, allotment offered the promise of a means to relieve itself of its responsibilities for the welfare of its Native wards, as specified in numerous treaties, while also accomplishing the express goal of breaking up the power of the tribes [10]. In his message to Congress in 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt referred to allotment as “a mighty pulverizing engine to break up the tribal mass” (pp. xlvii in [15]). For white settlers, and especially for land speculators, allotment offered yet another opportunity to obtain Native lands through whatever means they might devise.

1.2. The Dawes Act

The General Allotment Act, Dawes Severalty Act, or simply the Dawes Act, enacted in 1887 [6], represented the culmination of assimilationists’ efforts to implement near-universal land allotment on virtually all reservations. Under the terms of the Dawes Act, heads of household were to receive one quarter section of land (160 acres or 64.7 ha), which also was the standard parcel size under the Homestead Act [16], while single persons over the age of 18 and orphans under the age of 18 were to receive one-eighth of a section (80 acres or 32.4 ha), and children were to receive one-quarter of a quarter section (40 acres or 16.2 ha). (See Appendix A for a brief explanation of the U.S. Public Land Survey System (PLSS.).

Table 1. Hectare equivalents for PLSS aliquots expressed in acres, where 1.0 acre = 0.4 ha.

PLSS Parcel Description	Acres	Hectares
Section	640	259.0
Half section	320	129.5
Quarter section	160	64.7
Half of a quarter section	80	32.4
Quarter-quarter section	40	16.2

presents a list of conversions from acres to hectares for common allotment sizes.

Under the Dawes Act, married women were not given separate allotments, under the notion that they would share the benefits of the allotments of their husbands, although not holding legal joint title. (This accorded with the English legal concept of couverture (or coverture), which meant literally that a married women was under the “cover” of her husband legally. “In theory, a wife’s moveable property passed to her husband upon marriage and her ability to control real property was curtailed. She could not contract, she could not sue in a common law court, and she could not run a business” ([17], as cited in [18]). In practice, there were numerous exceptions and variations, but the underlying concept of a wife’s legal identity being subsumed under that of her husband was widely embraced in the U.S. in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when land allotment took place.) On the other hand, non-married adult women did receive allotments as heads of household under the Dawes Act. These included widows and divorcees. Moreover, the plural wives of men who had multiple wives received allotments as single adults. However, the first wife in plural-marriage families was regarded as the “legal” wife and therefore not entitled to an allotment. The Dawes Act also stipulated that any lands remaining on a reservation after all members of the tribe had been allotted, referred to as “surplus lands”, could be sold to non-tribal settlers, with the proceeds of the sale going to the tribe, provided that the tribe agreed to the sale.

1.3. Resistance and (Sometimes) Accommodation

Reaction to impending allotment varied widely among the tribes. Many or most strongly opposed it. The Kickapoo tribe of Kansas adamantly opposed allotment, believing it a grave offense to presume to claim ownership of land that belonged to the Creator (pp. 129–130, [19]). On the other hand, some members of the Omaha Tribe actively advocated for early allotment to be able to gain full title to their land, viewing it as a means to protect themselves from fraud and dispossession by surrounding white settlers [20,21]. In the end, not only the Omaha and the Kickapoo, but virtually all other tribes residing on reservations, were forced to undergo allotment.

This is not to say that none of the various objections by the tribes went unheeded. Conditions on the ground at each reservation, including environmental, cultural, and political factors, frequently led to situations that required, or at the very least suggested, that modifications, adjustments, or adaptations to standard policies be made. In fact, as will be seen in the story of Standing Rock, adjustments and accommodations were made on a number of occasions under pressure from tribal members, often in cooperation with allies in the U.S. government and elsewhere. The result of these conditions and pressures and the adjustments and accommodations that were (or were not) made is that each reservation has its unique allotment story to tell.

1.4. Our Goal: The Story of Resistance and Accommodation at Standing Rock

Our overall goal is this: to reveal how the people at Standing Rock, despite the U.S. government’s imposition of allotment and all it implied, successfully advocated for modifications to allotment policy, both major and minor, that worked to their significant advantage. This resulted, among other things, in equitable access to timber (one of the scarcest resources on the reservation); allotment to all women and all children; the right to retain selected lands, even under pressure to exchange them for other parcels not to their liking; and the right to modify some of the terms of sale of their “surplus” lands. Additionally, personal-level appeals resulted in numerous corrections, adjustments, and exchanges of allotment parcels that worked to the advantage of both individuals and the tribe. It would be difficult to overstate the benefits that resulted from their advocacy for allotment modifications, not least of which was the acquisition of nearly 400,000 acres (160,000 ha) of additional land by over 1800 additional allotment recipients.

Our narrative for this study is an in-depth account of allotment at the Standing Rock Reservation from 1906 to 1910. In recounting this historical geography, we seek to add to our still somewhat limited knowledge of the detailed processes, the “nuts and bolts”, of allotment at the various reservations. Geographically speaking, we aim to expand an understanding of allotment on the northern Great Plains, a vast semi-arid region that has been surprisingly underrepresented in studies of allotment, given that it is home to several large reservations. We rely primarily on government documents, including treaties, executive orders, and legislation, and especially the voluminous outgoing correspondence of the Standing Rock Special Allotting Agent, Carl Gunderson.

This study seeks to build on, and complement, previous studies that have examined allotment on a number of different reservations in the Western USA, These include, among others, the Cheyenne and Arapaho [22], the Pawnee [23], and the Kiowa [24] in Oklahoma; the Jicarilla Apache in New Mexico [25]; the Oneida in Wisconsin [26]; the Sisseton and Wahpeton in South Dakota [27]; the White Earth Anishinaabeg in Minnesota [28]; the Omaha in Nebraska [20]; the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde in Oregon [29]; and the Nez Perce in Idaho [25,30,31].

Since we focus here primarily on the processes of allotment at Standing Rock, we also view our findings as setting the stage for further study into visualizing and understanding the complex spatio-temporal patterns of land holding that took form there. While we include a limited number of maps with this study, we envision that the next stage of research will combine archival documents and large digital cadastral databases with the powerful mapping and analytical capabilities of geographic information systems (GIS) to more extensively visualize and dynamically explore the configurations, arrangements, and relationships of allotment.

2. The Great Sioux Reservation: Breakup and the Seeds of Allotment

The Treaty of Fort Laramie [32] established the Great Sioux Reservation, a vast area primarily inhabited by Lakota and Dakota peoples (Figure 1a). It encompassed the majority of the western part of what later became South Dakota, including the sacred Black Hills (Paha Sapa), plus a small portion of northern Nebraska. Various agencies were established to serve the geographically scattered tribes; among these was the Grand River Agency located on its namesake river, later relocated to Fort Yates on the Missouri River and renamed the Standing Rock Agency. In 1875, the territory of the Great Sioux Reservation (including the Standing Rock Agency) was extended into North Dakota, with the Cannonball River as its northern boundary (Figure 1b).

In contravention of the Fort Laramie Treaty, miners rushed into the Black Hills in the mid-1870s following the discovery of gold. This resulted in an outburst of violence, including the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, which ultimately led to the imposition of a new treaty in 1877 [33] wherein the U.S. government confiscated an area of land in western South Dakota that included the Black Hills (Figure 1b). Later, by an act of the Fiftieth Congress in 1889 [34] the Great Sioux Reservation was broken up into five smaller reservations: Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, Lower Brule, Rosebud, and Pine Ridge (Figure 2). In the same year, the states of North Dakota and South Dakota were admitted to the Union.

The new Standing Rock Reservation comprised 2.3 million acres (920,000 ha) in south-central North Dakota and north-central South Dakota. The topography at Standing Rock is primarily characterized by rolling hills, with areas of eroded outcrops known as badlands and significant river valleys formed by the Missouri, Grand, and Cannonball Rivers. The continental semi-arid climate experiences an average of 16 to 17 inches (40.6 to 43.2 cm) of precipitation annually and has wide diurnal and annual temperature swings. Natural vegetation consists almost entirely of shortgrass prairie, with meager stands of timber along rivers and streams (see, e.g., [35,36]). Four tribal groups were settled on the Standing Rock Reservation, two each from the Lakota and Dakota Nations. The Dakota groups were the Upper Yanktonai (Ihanktonwana) and Lower Yanktonai (Hunkpatina); the Lakota groups included the Hunkpapa and the Sihasapa or Blackfeet Sioux. (The Blackfeet Sioux should not be confused with the Blackfeet peoples located farther to the west in Montana and Idaho.)

2.1. Setting the Terms of Allotment on the New Reservations

The same Act of Congress of 1889 [34] that broke up the Great Sioux Reservation set the terms of future allotment for the five new reservations. These generally followed the pattern of the Dawes Act that had been passed only two years before, varying mainly in the amounts of land allotted to individuals. Since the lands of the new reservations primarily were located in a semi-arid grassland environment, allotment sizes were doubled for all categories of allottees. Heads of household were to receive one half section (320 acres, 128 ha) of land, single persons over the age of 18 and orphan children under 18 were to receive one quarter section (160 acres, 64 ha), and children under 18 were to receive one eighth section (80 acres, 32 ha). However, the Act also stipulated that if the land to be allotted was “mainly valuable for grazing purposes”, the acreages allotted would be doubled.

An underlying assumption was that there would be sufficient land on each reservation to make allotments to all members of the tribe. A commission visited the new reservations in 1889 to determine, among other things, how many acres of land per capita were available [37]. They calculated that Pine Ridge had approximately 563 acres (225 ha) per capita, while Rosebud had 550 (220 ha), Standing Rock 665 (266 ha), Cheyenne River 972 (389 ha), and Lower Brule 442 (177 ha); thus, all had sufficient lands to allot all eligible tribal members, plus enough “surplus” land to sell to the public. (Unfortunately, the Crow Creek Reservation in Dakota Territory, while not a part of the Great Sioux Reservation but still under the remit of the Appraisal Commission, only had 260 acres (104 ha) of land per capita. In compensation, Congress added USD 187,039 to the tribe’s permanent fund, based on a valuation of only 1 USD/acre of land lost to the tribe.)

2.2. Benefits Promised to Allottees under the 1889 Act

Section 17 of the Act of 1889 specified an array of benefits to be provided to people accepting allotments. These included benefits to individuals, as well as benefits provided collectively to all the tribes living on the new reservations. The benefits were designed not only to assist allottees in getting started in working on their allotments, but to serve as a significant inducement to those who otherwise might have been reluctant to accept allotment in the first place.

2.2.1. Individual Benefits (Restricted to Heads of Families or Single Persons Older Than 18). According to the Text of the Treaty (Act, p. 895 in [34])

“[E]ach head of family or single person over the age of eighteen years, who shall have or may hereafter take his or her allotment of land in severalty, shall be provided with two milch cows, one pair of oxens [sic], with yoke and chain or two mares and one set of harness in lieu of said oxen, yoke and chain as the Secretary of the Interior may find advisable, and they shall also receive one plow, one wagon, one harrow, one hoe, one axe, and one pitchfork, all suitable to the work they may have to do, and also fifty dollars in cash, to be expended under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior in aiding such Indians to erect a house and other buildings suitable for residence or the improvement of his allotment; … for two years the necessary seeds shall be provided to plant five acres (2 ha) of ground into the different crops, if so much can be used, and provided that in the purchase of such seed preference shall be given to Indians who may have raised the same for sale …”

2.2.2. Collective Benefits

The main benefits provided to all the tribes collectively included a 20-year extension of education benefits provided in the Treaty of Fort Laramie; provision of beef cattle, including up to 25,000 breeding cows and 1000 bulls; and a deposit of USD 3 million in a trust account. In addition, up to 10 percent of the principal of the fund could be expended annually “in the employment of farmers and the purchase of agricultural implements, teams, [and] seeds, including reasonable cash payments per capita”. (Act, p. 895, [34]).

3. Implementing Allotment at Standing Rock

The timing of the decision to impose allotment on Standing Rock and the other reservations of the Great Sioux Reservation in the early 1900s must be viewed in the context of a greatly increased demand for land by white settlers as they began to surge around (and not infrequently on) the reservations in the western regions of North and South Dakota. Indian land allotment and the construction of new railway lines went hand in hand to create a major surge in white settlement. Historians refer to the period of 1902 to 1915 as the Second Boom in the settlement of the Dakotas, the first having taken place from 1878 to 1887, primarily east of the Missouri River, or the East River area. The Second Boom focused on the area west of the Missouri, with allotment and associated surplus land sales helping to fuel the boom. As Schell (1982, p. 93, [38]) put it, “The sale of surplus Indian lands on the Great Sioux Reservation and the extension of railway lines across the Missouri were major local factors that contributed to the rush of the settlers into the ‘west-river’ country”.

Although the Dawes Act had been passed in 1887 and allotment provisions for the Standing Rock Reservation were defined by Congress in 1889, allotment did not come to Standing Rock until nearly 20 years later. By this time, most families had become well established in their home locations at Standing Rock for at least three or four decades and in some cases longer. They had built homes, sheds, and barns, established their garden plots and herding areas, and had identified locations of other resources such as timber. In other words, they had established a geography that represented, at least in part, their traditional cultural and economic practices, although severely constricted by general confinement to reservation boundaries. With the arrival of allotment, their established geography was overlaid, or “overprinted”, with a new geography [39] based on the rectangular grid of the north–south/east–west lines of the Public Land Survey System (PLSS).

3.1. Appointment of the Special Allotting Agent

The allotment process at Standing Rock formally began on 26 September 1905 when President Theodore Roosevelt ordered that allotment take place there. Carl Gunderson, a resident of South Dakota, was appointed as Special Allotting Agent for the Standing Rock Reservation on 4 October 1905 [40]. Gunderson was a South Dakota homesteader who had been educated at the University of South Dakota and Cornell and had served four terms in the South Dakota State Legislature prior to becoming involved in Indian land allotment. He served as the Special Allotting Agent at the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota in 1904 and soon afterwards engaged with his surveying partner in offering “location services” to settlers wanting to purchase surplus lands there. He later continued work as special allotting agent at Cheyenne River and Standing Rock, and immediately afterwards served briefly as an Allotment Inspector in the West. He estimated that he made over 10,000 allotments in all. After his stint in the Indian Service, he went on to serve as Lieutenant Governor and then Governor of South Dakota in the 1920s (pp. 29–34, [41]) [42].

Special Allotting Agents differed from the regular Agents appointed to supervise day-to-day activities at reservations. However, the two frequently had to collaborate closely on important allotment-related issues, such as who was on the tribal rolls and therefore eligible for allotment, which individuals living at the reservation were members of other tribes and may already have been allotted elsewhere, and numerous other questions. The nature of this forced working relationship sometimes led to friction between the two, as happened with Alice Fletcher when she allotted the Nez Perce tribe (pp. 158–259, [31]; pp. 88–89, [30]), although Gunderson appears to have enjoyed a mostly amicable relationship with Agent William P. Belden at Standing Rock.

Each Special Allotting Agent presided over a complex process that included surveying the land, conferring with people about their allotment selections, recording all allotments in detail, correcting errors, responding to requests for changes, and adjudicating appeals regarding conflicts over land selections. Gunderson also was required to maintain a voluminous correspondence throughout his term as Special Allotting Agent, primarily with the Office of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C. Fortunately, letterpress copies of his outgoing correspondence from late 1905 to early 1910 have been preserved in a single volume in the Kansas City Branch of the National Archives [43]. Totaling over 400 pages, his letters provide rich insights not only into the everyday workings of the allotment process at Standing Rock and the questions, concerns, and complaints of allottees, but also the attitudes of national and local officials and other interested parties, such as school heads, church officials, and railroad agents, as well as his own personal attitudes and decisions.

In addition to his regular correspondence, which included making regular progress reports, Gunderson was required to compile and maintain (1) a register of all people receiving allotments, organized numerically by the order in which the allotments were made, (2) a plat book, organized geographically according to the U.S. Public Land Survey System (PLSS), indicating the locations of all allotments, and (3) a ledger book of “family histories” of the people being allotted. These “histories”, which in actuality consisted of a register of names and detailed family relationships of allottees, were designed primarily to protect the inheritance rights of the descendants of those receiving allotments. A full copy of the allotment register recording all the allotments made by Gunderson at Standing Rock is held in the Kansas City Branch of the National Archives [44]. For a more detailed description of allotment registers and plat books, see Ref. [45], (pp. 6, 13–14). For our research, both Gunderson’s letters [43] and the Standing Rock Allotment Register [44] were fully transcribed into digital format for research and analysis.

Several individuals figure prominently in Gunderson’s outgoing correspondence. Chief among these were the Commissioner of Indian Affairs (and his many clerks); William Belden, the Standing Rock Indian Agent throughout most of the allotment process; and Colonel James McLaughlin, an inspector with the Indian Service and a man with a long history of involvement at Standing Rock [46]. McLaughlin had emigrated from Canada to the U.S. early in life, married Marie Louise Buisson, a Mdewakanton woman, and took up work as a blacksmith at the Devils Lake Indian Agency in North Dakota in 1871. After studying to become an Indian Agent he was appointed as Agent at Devils Lake in 1876 and subsequently at Standing Rock in 1881, where he served as Indian Agent until 1895, an unusually long tenure. His grave is on the reservation, as is the town of McLaughlin which was named for him. At the time of allotment at Standing Rock, McLaughlin had been promoted to Inspector for the Office of Indian Affairs with wide-ranging responsibilities. Although the extent of McLaughlin’s involvement in allotment at Standing Rock is not fully known, it is clear from Gunderson’s correspondence that he took a keen personal interest in the details of allotment activities there—soliciting reports, making recommendations from time to time, and involving himself in legislative proposals.

We offer an important caveat regarding the documents we reference in this study: all of them are accounts and actions seen through the eyes of Euro-Americans. However well-meaning they may have been and how much they supported and sympathized with the people at Standing Rock, their views were just that—their views—and caution is warranted at all times. Similarly, while it appears that both Carl Gunderson and James McLaughlin were genuinely sympathetic and supportive of requests for modifications to allotment requested by the Standing Rock Tribe as a whole and by its individual members, it must be remembered always that they were fully committed to government policies of assimilation, including allotment. It is unclear whether it ever crossed their minds that there might have been better alternatives. That being said, Native voices often do appear indirectly in the letters and documents (although rarely in the first person)—in their petitions for corrections to their allotments, in requests for additional allotment acreage for family members, in disputes over allotment boundaries, and more. We invite readers to examine the original documents for themselves to discover the richness of the historical documents and the nuances they reveal.

3.2. Letter of Instruction

Pursuant to Gunderson’s appointment as Special Allotting Agent, he received a letter of instruction from the Office of Indian Affairs dated 10 October 1905 [40]. Although each set of allotment instructions carried at least some general wording that applied to all reservations, the circumstances of each reservation required that provisions unique to that reservation be implemented (for a comparison, see pp. 52–55 in [30]. Summary of Commissioner of Indian Affairs letter to Special Allotting Agent Alice Fletcher on the Nez Perce Reservation in 1889).

The six-page letter to Gunderson consisted of a preamble, 17 numbered sections of specific instructions, and a few concluding paragraphs (see Appendix B for the full letter). Four important instructions or groups of instructions stand out. First, an effort was to be made to give each allottee equitable access to timber. Second, all land on the reservation, irrespective of location, was to be categorized as grazing land, thereby doubling all allotment sizes from those specified in the 1889 treaty [34]. Third, the rights of the allottees were to be respected, including permitting them to make their own choice of allotment parcel(s), allowing them to be able to retain land on which they had already made improvements, and being shown the boundaries of their allotments, which were to be clearly marked. Fourth, certain categories of women and all girls would be allotted, but all married women, including the first wife in a plural marriage, were to be denied allotments. However, plural wives after the first were eligible for allotments. As will be seen, several of the policies laid out in the instruction letter were significantly modified by subsequent legislation.

3.3. Allotment Begins at Standing Rock

Gunderson began his work by hiring a surveying crew, which included his nephew, Harry O. Gunderson, but actual allotment work was delayed because Gunderson had to return to the Cheyenne River Reservation to make allotments to a group of people who initially had refused to take allotments there, referred to as “kickers” (p. 73 in [47]; [43] 11 June 1906). Once he returned to Standing Rock in early June of 1906, Gunderson and his crew took up their work in earnest. Over the next four-plus years (1906 through 1909 and a little into 1910) they proceeded in a methodical fashion to create a detailed allotment survey of Standing Rock; Figure 3 illustrates the year-by-year progress of their work. Seasonally, the crew worked from spring through autumn, the bitterly cold winters making surveying work impossible. During the winters, Gunderson himself retired to his home in Vermillion, South Dakota, where he compiled plats and registers of allotments for the past year, planned for the coming year’s work, and maintained his stream of correspondence.

Overlaying the PLSS survey grid on top of the existing patterns of land holding and land use at Standing Rock inevitably led to disputes. Although Gunderson infrequently mentioned them in his correspondence, they did occur and the topic made an early appearance in his letters. In early September of 1906, in requesting for the first time that he be permitted to retire to his home in Vermillion for the winter, he told the Commissioner of Indians Affairs that if he were to remain at Standing Rock, his work “… would be continually interrupted by the many who daily call on me to settle disputes between Indians who claim the same tract of land. … disputes can only be settled, on the ground, and after running the lines and taking the testimony of all concerned” ([43] 1 September 1906). Later, in a November letter to McLaughlin he noted: “Taking into consideration the eagerness of the Standing Rock Indians for the very best land and the best locations, it would not be strange if there were some dissatisfaction with the decision made in some of the many disputes over “Prior rights” to choice tracts” ([43] 26 November 1906).

As the surveying crew progressed, the people living in the area being surveyed assiduously followed along to see where the corners and boundaries of land parcels were located and then indicated their allotment selections to Gunderson, which he recorded in his field notes ([48], p. 62). In keeping with his letter of instruction, Gunderson was also required to survey and record allotments made to religious societies or organizations and to include a survey and record of parcels used for agency, school, or other government purposes. Contemporaneous with Gunderson’s allotment work, Dr. Charles Eastman came to Standing Rock in 1907 to carry out a program known as “Renaming the Indians” under the direction of the Indian Office. The movement to rename the Indians (described in detail in [49,50,51]. was in some ways complementary to the creation of the registers of family histories. The goal was to create permanent surnames for all members of an extended family for the purpose of ensuring that future heirs to allotted lands could be more easily identified and making it more difficult for fraud to be perpetrated. McLaughlin (pp. 60–63 in [46] reported that he had earlier renamed the people at Standing Rock while serving as Agent there; it is unclear how Eastman’s work in 1907 related to McLaughlin’s efforts.

3.4. The Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad

Also concurrent with the work of allotment, the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad (generally known as the Milwaukee Road) was extending its lines through the Standing Rock Reservation [52]. Railroad construction in the U.S. had long been given priority status by Congress, and pushing railroad lines through Indian reservations was no exception. Section 16 of the act breaking up the Great Sioux Reservation recognized the rights of railway companies to build across reservation lands [34]; ten years later, an act was passed “To provide for the acquiring of rights of way by railroad companies through Indian reservations, Indian lands, and Indian allotments…” (pp. 990–992 in [53]). The latter act prescribed the specific dimensions of various right-of-way features, as well as the means by which allottees, or tribes in the case of unallotted lands, would be reimbursed for lands taken.

From Gunderson’s correspondence and papers, it appears that he was an enthusiastic supporter of the extension of the Milwaukee Road, even playing a role in convincing the railroad owners to seek the advice of James McLaughlin’s nephew, Harry McLaughlin, on the best place for building a bridge across the Missouri River [54]. As railroad construction proceeded through the reservation, however, the railroad generated some ill will in its handling of options its agents had acquired on the land of several allottees, which required Gunderson to make adjustments to their allotments. However, it appears overall that the construction of the railroad and the route it followed played a relatively minor role in the actual allotment process, although the topic deserves much further study, and not just at Standing Rock.

3.5. The Importance of Cutoff Dates in the Allotment Process

Gunderson’s letter of instruction had stated that, “The ages of the allottees on 26 September 1905, the date of the President’s order, determines the class to which they belong, and their ages should be given as of that date” ([40], emphasis added). This effectively established an initial cutoff date as to who was eligible for allotment and how much land they would receive. As will be seen, subsequent legislation established additional cutoff dates for certain categories of allotment recipients.

It would be hard to overstate the importance of these cutoff dates to individuals and families as they underwent allotment. A single day’s difference in a person’s “class” as of a given date could mean a significant difference in the size of the allotment received or whether they would receive one at all. For example, a teenage boy who was age 17 on 26 September 1905 (the date of the President’s order in 1905) might very well have been a married man of 20 when he received his allotment in 1908, meaning that he would receive only 160 acres (64 ha) rather than 640 acres (256 ha), and a child born on or after 27 September 1905 would not receive any land at all.

The rigidity of these cutoff date policies comes through clearly in Gunderson’s letters ([43] 24 November 1908). For example, toward the end of his allotment work in 1909, Gunderson addressed an issue in regard to allotting two orphan boys ([43] 1 February 1909):

“While making allotments in the Bull Head district, John and James Old Crow were represented to me as being orphans. It appears now that their father was alive on 28 September 1906, and he has been on the land on which he lived and which he requested. I presume they were reported to me as orphans because their father was dead when they were allotted, but that would not make them orphans in 1905, and they would not be entitled to 320 acres as was given them.”

The unfortunate Old Crow brothers had been allotted as orphans, each receiving 320 acres (128 ha), because they indeed were orphans at the time they were allotted, but since they were not orphans at the date of the President’s order on 26 September 1905, they were authorized to receive only 160 acres (64 ha).

As if to add to the confusion and complexity created by the various cutoff dates, policies at a finer level of detail were established at the discretion of the Indian Office, the most controversial of which was whether an otherwise eligible person for an allotment had to have made their selection before they died. Gunderson urgently wrote to the Indian Office regarding the topic in May of 1906 ([43] 28 May 1906):

“The Indians, in this locality, unite in declaring that when they agreed to take allotments in severalty they were assured by Inspector McLaughlin that each and every Indian, alive on the date of the President’s order … would receive an allotment whether or not the Indian was alive when the allotments were being made and regardless of whether or not the selection had been made before death. I have explained to these people the instructions covering such cases on the Rosebud and Cheyenne River Reservations, viz.: that an allotment could be made to a deceased person where a selection had been made by or for such person before death. These people, however, insist that all deceased people must be allotted whether or not selections were made before death. Will a different rule govern, in the case of deceased people, than that heretofore followed?”

No response to the question is noted in his letters, but most likely he was told that allotments could only made in cases where a person made a selection before they died. Since members of the tribe clearly believed they had been promised otherwise by Inspector McLaughlin, Gunderson appealed to him directly ([43] 7 November 1907):

“I desire to remind you of our conversation at the Standing Rock Agency, during your visit there last July, relative to making allotments to Indians who die before making selections… I trust that you will urge the Department to so change that ruling as to permit allotments to be made to all Indians of the Standing Rock Reservation who were alive on the date of the President’s order, directing allotments to be made, and who were entitled to allotments.”

Despite the apparently clear language of the original allotment order that all persons who were alive as of the date of the order (26 September 1905) would receive allotments, it appears that the Department of the Interior had ruled that individuals who died before actually making their selections could not receive allotments. This decision deprived families and heirs of land they otherwise would have received, and Gunderson’s appeals on their behalf appear to have gone unheeded. The arbitrary nature of the cutoff dates, and their finality, were fundamentally unfair aspects of allotment—something that the people of Standing Rock recognized and for which they sought redress.

4. Pushback: Modifications to Allotment Policy at Standing Rock

Beyond the modifications to the Dawes Act specified in the letter of instruction to Gunderson, including much larger allotment sizes, at least six categories of modifications to initial policies obtained by the people of Standing Rock came to substantially impact the processes and patterns of allotment. These included (1) individual timber allotments, (2) allotments to married women, (3) allotments to later-born children, i.e., children born after the initial cutoff date, (4) the refusal of Standing Rock allottees to exchange their original allotments for land within the confines of a “diminished reserve”, (5) numerous individual appeals for corrections, modifications, and exchanges of allotment parcels, and (6) setting the terms for the sale of surplus lands in the second of two phases.

Almost all of these modifications began while the allotment process was ongoing and, as a result, Gunderson had to adjust and extend his planned schedule of allotting work while dealing with additional questions raised by the new policies. More importantly to the residents of Standing Rock, many of the modifications substantially increased the number of allottees and the total amount of land allotted, while at the same time impacting the spatio-temporal patterns of allotment.

It is important to note that these modifications to allotment practices primarily were a result of local initiatives, specifically from the people of Standing Rock themselves along with the support of Special Allotting Agent Gunderson and Inspector McLaughlin. Gunderson himself negotiated the details of the policy of awarding separate small tracts of timber, while the people of Standing Rock, with the support of Gunderson, McLaughlin, and others, initiated the request that married women and later-born children be given allotments. These three major modifications required and resulted in Acts of Congress, while the latter three were the result of local initiatives that were settled without requiring legislation.

4.1. Timber Allotments

How to allot the valuable but scarce timber at Standing Rock urgently drew Gunderson’s concern from the outset. Located primarily along the Missouri, Grand, and Cannonball Rivers and a few smaller streams (and almost entirely lacking on the upland areas) timber was highly prized, primarily for construction lumber and firewood. There is no question that the people of Standing Rock assumed that they would continue to have access to timber as they always had. Officials in Washington, DC were well aware of this; hence the inclusion of the guidance to award each allotment recipient “a proper proportion of Wood land” in the letter of instruction to Gunderson [40]. In most cases, access to timber also meant access to water, since virtually all woodlands at Standing Rock were found along streams and rivers.

The big challenge was how to accomplish this in an equitable manner without unnecessarily complicating and lengthening the surveying and allotment process. During May and June of 1906, the Indian Office and Gunderson exchanged several proposals and counter-proposals for allotting timber ([43] 6 May 1906). Both parties appeared eager to provide woodland in an equitable manner, but Gunderson, as an experienced allotment agent, knew that the solutions offered up by the Office of Indian Affairs would have resulted either in a great many allottees receiving no timber at all, since “at least three fourths of the allotments on the reservation will be land on which there is no timber”, or a surveying nightmare where each regular allotment would have to have a few acres notched out of it to make up for a small separate timber allotment at another location ([43] 11 June 1906).

To remedy these shortcomings, Gunderson proposed a different solution altogether: that larger blocks of woodland (“family timber reserves”) be set aside for timber allotment up front, with the actual surveying and allotting of individual timber parcels within the blocks to take place after the completion of the regular allotments ([43] 11 June 1906). Commissioner of Indian Affairs F.E. Leupp approved of Gunderson’s counter-proposal but realized that he required Congressional approval. Therefore, he wrote a letter to Interior Secretary Hitchcock summarizing Gunderson’s arguments, which Hitchcock endorsed and submitted to the House of Representatives for action [55].

Gunderson’s timber allotment plan was accepted and approved by an Act of Congress stating that the Secretary of the Interior was authorized “to cause an additional allotment of not less than two and one-half acres (1 ha) or more than ten acres (4 ha) of timber land to be made to each member of the Standing Rock Band of Sioux Indians” who were receiving allotments under the 1889 Act ([56]). It included the caveat, however, that timber allotments were only to be made to those who were alive “at the close of the work of allotting” ([56], p. 1042), whenever that might be. This, of course, created another cutoff date for Gunderson and the people at Standing Rock to deal with.

As surveying and allotment proceeded, Gunderson’s team first set aside blocks of timber (“Family timber reserves”). In September 1906, he was pleased to report that “The plan of setting aside ‘Family timber reserves’ to be apportioned to the members thereof at the close of the allotment work, is meeting with general approval” ([43] 9 September 1906). A month later, he reported that 53 blocks of timber land had been surveyed that year ([43] October 1906).

The second phase of making timber allotments, i.e., dividing the “Family timber reserve” blocks into individual holdings, began in April 1908 (Figure 4). To facilitate this, Gunderson wrote to Agent W.L. Belden, in March of that year, requesting that he examine a list of allottees for 1906 and note which ones had died since the initial allotment cutoff date of 26 September 1905, since these would be ineligible for timber allotments ([43] 1 March 1908). In April, he confirmed to Belden that he was about to begin “subdividing ‘Family Timber Reserves’” in the Oak Creek District, emphasizing that it was “necessary that a representative of the family be present when the reserve belonging to that family is surveyed”. ([43] 12 April 1908).

Given the scattered and irregular pattern of timber on the reservation, one unavoidable consequence of setting aside separate timber parcels for all allottees was that many of them would need to travel some distance to obtain timber from their timber allotments. Gunderson acknowledged this in late 1907 when he explained that “A large number of Indians residing in the Northern part of the Reservation will have to come to the Grand River for their timber. It will not be convenient for them but it is the best we can do for them”. ([43] 25 December 1907).

In early September 1908, Gunderson reported that he would be able to complete the timber allotments early in 1909 ([43] 3 September 1908). As before, in January 1909 Gunderson requested that Agent Belden provide a complete list of names of people who had died since being allotted ([43] 20 January 1909). Gunderson’s projection for completing the timber allotments in early 1909 proved to be overly optimistic, but he was able to report in October that a total of 2500 people at Standing Rock had been given timber allotments, the final surveying of which would be completed in three days ([43] 11 October 1909). In all, he allotted 10,605 acres (4242 ha) of timber to 2456 individuals.

4.2. Married Women’s Allotments

It will be recalled that the Dawes Act of 1887 excluded married women, including the first wife in plural marriages, from receiving their own allotments, even though adult women who were single, widowed, divorced, or married to white men did receive their own full allotments as heads of families. As though adding insult to injury, plural wives other than the first wife received allotments as single adults (i.e., half the acreage for that of a head of household). The same policies also were adhered to in the 1889 Act that broke up the Great Sioux Reservation. To underline the point, Gunderson’s instruction letter reiterated that married women (not including plural wives after the first wife) were not entitled to allotments. As noted earlier, the assumption underlying the policy of not allotting married women was that they would share in the benefits of their husband’s allotments, even though they had no legal ownership rights. Not surprisingly, both that assumption and the resultant policy were strongly disputed by the people of Standing Rock and at several other nearby reservations.

In a letter to Secretary of the Interior Hitchcock on 1 December 1906, Commissioner Leupp noted that these issues had been “brought to his attention by the Indians” on the Standing Rock, Pine Ridge, and Cheyenne River reservations and he laid out their appeal in detail [57]:

“The Indians complain, and in my opinion with good cause, that the legitimate wives and mothers among them are discriminated against. The discontent over this inequality is very general, and it is accentuated by the fact that of the older Sioux men many have plural wives, so that the lawful spouse of a male head of a family is barred from any right to land, while the women whom our laws would not recognize as wives, but who are mothers of children, must be given an allotment of 640 acres (256 ha). Moreover, the notions of the Sioux concerning the permanency of the marriage tie still being extremely lax, it has been in the past, and will probably continue to be in the future, no uncommon occurrence for the male head of the family to conclude that his landless wife is no longer to his liking and put her aside for another woman who has an allotment. Thus, the present law, which was founded on the theory that the head of the family would always share the enjoyment of his land with the woman who had a right to his life companionship, in actual practice places a premium upon infidelity on the part of the male Sioux. The legitimate wife is not given any land, and no other provision is made for her, so that she is liable to be left without any means of support.”

In closing his letter, Leupp included recommended wording for a bill that would provide allotments to married women on the Standing Rock, Pine Ridge, and Cheyenne River Reservations.

Secretary Hitchcock approved and endorsed Leupp’s letter and forwarded it to the House of Representatives. Thereafter, the same Act of Congress that authorized the implementation of Gunderson’s recommended method of timber allotment also authorized allotments of 320 acres (128 ha) (versus the 640 acres (256 ha) requested) to be made to each woman “now living, and who is not entitled to and has not received an allotment under existing law, by reason of her having been a married woman at the date of the President authorizing allotments on the reservation to which she belongs” ([56], p. 1049). The authorization to allot married women created two more cutoff dates: to be eligible for a married woman’s allotment a woman had to be married as of the President’s original allotment order on 26 September 1905 and be alive on the date of the passage of the legislation authorizing the allotments to married women (1 March 1907).

It appears that Gunderson received instructions to make allotments to married women only in December 1907, even though the enabling act had been passed in March of that year ([43] 31 December 1907). After receiving further clarifications from the Indian Office, Gunderson began to allot married women in mid-1908, after he had completed the majority of the regular allotments ([43] 6 July 1908, 15 July 1908). He continued through the end of the year, by which time all but a handful of allotments to married women were completed (Figure 5).

Although married women were allotted as if they were single adults, 320 acres (128 ha) versus the 640 (256 ha) requested, these allotments had a huge impact both individually and collectively, providing allotments to just over 651 married women who previously had received nothing and significantly increasing the acreage allotted to families and to the tribe as a whole, totaling over 206,000 acres (82,400 ha). On the other hand, because allotments to married women did not begin until after most regular allotments had been completed and much of the most desirable land already allotted, the spatial patterns of allotment were also significantly altered, with married women’s allotments often being located some distance away from their husbands’ and children’s allotments. As Gunderson explained in one somewhat complicated example, Lewis Elknation had requested that he be able to exchange his wife’s allotment, which was two miles away, for a deceased aunt’s allotment which was adjacent to his. Gunderson recommended that the request be approved so that “their land may be kept in one compact body where it can be used to better advantage” ([43] 22 May 1909).

4.3. Allotments to Later-Born Children (Children Born after 26 September 1905)

The initial cutoff date of 26 September 1905 also pertained to children, and it led to the manifestly unfair policy of denying allotments to children born on 27 September 1905 and later. This sentiment was only exacerbated by the fact that regular allotments made by Gunderson continued for four years after the initial cutoff date, during which time numerous children were born who would have been ineligible to receive any of the tribe’s land. Furthermore, unlike some reservations, Standing Rock had more than enough land to allot the entire tribe, including later-born children, for some time to come. Again, this was remedied in the same act that provided for timber allotments and allotments to married women. The relevant text simply read as follows: “That hereafter the President shall cause allotments to be made under the provisions of said Act [Act of 1889] to any living children of Indians affected thereby who have not heretofore been allotted: Provided, That the tribe to which said Indian children belong is possessed of any unallotted, tribal, or reservation lands)” (pp. 1048–1049 in [56]).

Unlike the delay in making allotments to married women, Gunderson was able to take a much different approach with later-born children, beginning to make allotments to them in March 1907, immediately after the passage of the Act (Figure 5). He made 153 allotments to later-born children in 1907, continuing with 233 in 1908 and 204 in 1909. (This pattern continued after Gunderson completed his work, with a total of 567 more allotments made to later-born children between 1910 and the end of allotment.)

In allotting later-born children, one of the most contentious issues Gunderson faced was the phrase “any living children of Indians affected thereby who have not heretofore been allotted” (pp. 1048–1049 in [56]). The people of Standing Rock insisted that it meant that children who had been born and had lived, even a short time, qualified for allotments, regardless of whether a selection had been made for the child. This, however, was not the view of the Indian Office, which sent instructions to Gunderson that an allotment selection had to be made before a child died; otherwise, the child (in actuality, the parents) would be ineligible. In February 1909, Gunderson wrote to Agent Belden as follows: “Please request the farmers of all districts on the reservation to notify the Indians that allotments will not be made to children who die soon after being born unless a selection of land is made and the description and date of selection be given, while the child is living, to the Allotting Agent, the Agent of the reservation or one of the farmers” ([43] 24 February 1909).

In all, it appears that nearly 1160 allotments were made to later-born children, comprising nearly 189,000 acres (75,600 ha). As with married women, many of the later-born children’s allotments were located at a distance from the allotments of their fathers and siblings who had received allotments earlier. For instance, in 1909 Gunderson asked the Indian Office to approve a request by Sebastian Whitehorse for an exchange of land for two of his children because the new land adjoined his own allotment and was better than the land his later-born children were allotted, which was “three miles from the home allotment” ([43] 14 May 1909).

4.4. At the Personal Level—Individual Requests for Changes

Beyond the broad modifications that applied to members of the tribe as a whole, there were numerous requests by individuals for corrections, exchanges, and settlements of disputes regarding allotments. Usually these were directed to Gunderson, but occasionally a person would appeal directly to the Office of Indian Affairs or the Secretary of the Interior, which, of course, was referred back to Gunderson. He dealt with each request on an individual basis and spent considerable time doing so.

While most corrections consisted simply of amending errors in the written record as to the legal description of parcels awarded to an allottee, requests for exchanges and modifications or settlements of disputes were another matter. These required not only a knowledge of the specific terms of allotment in force at the time a selection was made, but also the facts of the specific request, the latter of which frequently involved the testimony of witnesses. Gunderson occasionally enlisted the help of Agent Belden for clarifying information. For example, he wrote to Belden in November of 1906 that “Charles Hawk … claims that he can furnish proof sufficient to show that his daughter, Amy, was 18 instead of 14 on 26 September 1905. Please investigate this case and advise me of the result” ([43] 8 November 1906). (If true, Amy would have been eligible to receive 320 acres (128 ha) as a single adult, vs. 160 (64 ha) as a child.)

When it came to enforcing cutoff dates, Gunderson was inflexible, undoubtedly due to the Office of Indian Affairs reviewing all his decisions. Referring back to the case of James and John Oldcrow (above) who were allotted as orphans, receiving 320 (128 ha) acres each, Gunderson made his investigation and found that they were only authorized to receive 160 acres (64 ha) each. He duly cut their allotments in half, although stating that, “The land retained is the best part of the selection made by the allottee” ([43] 15 February 1909).

In a similar vein, Gunderson refused to allow changes for what he considered to be trivial reasons, apparently because he feared that such requests would become commonplace and result in a large increase in his workload. In response to one person requesting a change in his timber allotment, Gunderson replied: “I cannot change your timber Land as you request. If I make a change for you others will ask for changes whether it is to their interest or not and I could not refuse to make changes for them also” ([43] 24 January 1908).

On the other hand, Gunderson was generally sympathetic to people who had encountered problems in selecting or completing their allotments due to factors beyond their control. In late 1907, he wrote to the Indian Office, “A number of Indians who were allotted on the Standing Rock Reservation during the past season failed to complete their allotments for the reason that in some localities there was not sufficient land for all who lived there to complete their allotments.” His appeal was that the people who had not been able to complete their allotment selections that year still be added to the year’s list of people who would immediately begin receiving their allotment benefits promised in the Act of 1887 ([43] November 1907).

Gunderson also appears to have been much more amenable to asking for approval for requests that he regarded as being fair to individual allottees, such as enabling family members to have their land closer together, to exchange poor quality land for that of better quality, or a variety of other situations that arose. In early 1909, for example, Gunderson wrote in support of a request by Herbert Hawkshield that he be allotted a small parcel of land (0.95 acres, 0.38 ha) on which he had built a store and dwelling place in Wakpala, which was separate from his regular allotment of 651 acres (260.4 ha). Additionally, in one unique situation, he defended his decision to allow a Mrs. Thompson to relinquish an allotment (it is not clear whether it was hers or her husband’s) in exchange for another because, “Mrs. Thompson represented that her husband was addicted to the use of strong drinks and that a home on the former allotment would be near a place where he could readily secure liquor. She desired to relinquish that allotment and be allotted land farther distant from places where strong drinks could be obtained” ([43] 22 May 1909).

In mid-1908, Gunderson dealt with several requests for land exchanges for selections that had been made along the route of the Milwaukee Road. As noted earlier, it appears that in 1907 representatives of the railroad had convinced a number of people to take their allotments along the proposed route, allowing the representatives to make their selections for them. In return, the allottees signed options to sell their land at an agreed price as soon as sales along the right of way were approved. However, the deal fell through because, as Gunderson put it, “It now transpires that the parties taking the options [i.e., the railroad agents] refuse to purchase all the land thus selected and allotted. Some of these allottees now find, on investigation, that the land thus selected for them is almost worthless either for farming or grazing purposes and have therefore requested permission to cancel them and select other land in lieu thereof. In view of the above facts I would respectfully recommend that their request be granted” ([43] 10 May 1908).

Since he had to gain approval from Washington, D.C. for all decisions regarding changes in allotments, Gunderson would sometimes compile lists of several requests and submit them in a single letter. In September 1908, Gunderson sent a two-page letter to the Office of Indian Affairs requesting changes for 14 individuals for a wide variety of reasons, a few of which are quoted here ([43] 12 September 1908).

“Allottee No. 566, Mary Longbull, has since married allottee No. 1684, Edward Callousleg, and desires that her land be near that of her husband in order that better use may be made of same.”

“Allottee No. 2278 made application for Sec. 36 after the field work had closed in 1907. On investigation, this year, I find that the allottee, Mary Vermillion, gave the wrong description of the land wanted as her improvements are allotment Sec. 25.”

“Mrs. Nancy Little Eagle, was allotted, in part, the SE/4. SE/4 of Sec. 23, T. 21, R.26. This being an undesirable tract of land she desires to have allotted to her, in lieu thereof, the NW/4. SW1/4 of Sec.5, T.19, R.26.”

“John Loneman, Allottee No. 140, was allotted in part, the SW/4. NW/4 of Sec.33, T.20, R.28, 40 acres (16 ha). This tract of land is wanted by the Catholic Church as a location on which to build a church. Mr. Loneman therefore requests that this portion of his allotment be canceled and that the NW/4/SW/4 of Sec.36 be allotted to him in lieu thereof.”

These many small-scale changes in personal allotments had a negligible impact on the total acres or the number of people allotted at Standing Rock; however, at the individual level, they significantly transformed for the better the fortunes of the individuals who sought them.

4.5. Sale of Surplus Lands

Under the Act of 1889, any lands that remained unallotted at Standing Rock after all eligible members of the tribe had received allotments were to be considered “surplus” and offered for sale to outside individuals, provided they agreed and the President considered it to be in the best interests of the tribe. (The requirement to obtain the agreement of the tribe for the sale of surplus land was more than occasionally abused by a combination of corrupt government officials and unscrupulous land speculators, or “land sharks”). The same terms applied not only to the other reservations carved out of the Great Sioux Reservation, it was standard policy at all reservations during the allotment period. At Standing Rock, the sale of surplus lands occurred in two phases. In the first phase, specific areas in the western and southern parts of the reservation were opened for sale, while parcels in the core of the reservation (the “diminished reserve”) were off limits. In the second phase, all remaining unallotted lands, including those in the diminished reserve, were put up for sale to the public.

4.5.1. First Phase of Surplus Land Sales

Sales in “the strip to be opened”. In 1908, as allotments at Standing Rock were nearly complete, an act of the Sixtieth Congress authorized the “sale and disposition of the surplus and unalloted lands” at Standing Rock and the adjoining Cheyenne River Reservation [58]. Under this Act, only certain portions of the two reservations were to be opened to outside purchase and settlement. On the Standing Rock Reservation, the areas to be sold off were on the western and southern parts of the reservation (Figure 6); Gunderson referred to these areas collectively as “the strip to be opened”, and they were generally areas of low allotment density, with the exception of the eastern portion of the southern strip. (Gunderson apparently referred to the entire area to be opened for sale as a “strip” because the southern part of the area to be opened was a swath or strip of land that extended from the far western edge of the reservation all the way to the Missouri River on the east.) The remaining area was referred to as the “diminished reserve”.

Terms of the sale were detailed in an information letter published by Commissioner of Indian Affairs J.W. Witten on 21 August 1909 [59]. Unallotted lands in the strip to be opened were to be evaluated by an appraisal commission, which was to assign each quarter section (160 acres, 64 ha) to one of five categories, with a sale value attached to each [58]. Shockingly, the cost of the appraisal commission was to be subtracted from the proceeds of the land sales, a situation the tribe resented and sought to remedy in the second phase of surplus land sales.

The beginning of surplus land sales had a major impact on new allotment selections, which were still ongoing. Once the first-phase surplus area (“the strip to be opened”) had been designated, it was announced that as of 1 January 1909 no new allotment requests would be accepted within that area ([43] 20 December 1908). This created a final cutoff date for potential allottees—if they had not already selected their desired allotment parcel(s) by 31 December 1908, they would be restricted to selecting land in the diminished reserve. Not unexpectedly, this led to a flurry of last-minute appeals from those who had procrastinated making their selections.

Gunderson generally held firm, only making exceptions for a few who had earlier communicated to him their desire to make selections in the strip to be opened. For example, Gunderson requested that an exception be granted for Clara Elkeagle, who had been born on 14 December 1908 and whose parents desired an allotment for her in the western part of the reservation, far to the west of the diminished reserve. Although an allotment application had been made prior to the 1 January 1909 deadline, Gunderson had not been able to complete the allotment, stating: “Owing to insufficient information regarding date of birth and name of child the allotment was not scheduled. The necessary information has now been supplied and I would respectfully, recommend that the allotment be scheduled…” ([43] 4 February 1909). On the other hand, just two days later, Gunderson wrote to Antoine Iron Whiteman that, “By falling to embrace the opportunity you have lost the right to select land on the strip to be opened. I cannot wait for you any longer as plats showing the allotments there must be prepared at once. It will therefore be necessary for you to select land on the diminished reservation” ([43] 6 February 1909).

In an unexpected twist, people who had already received allotments in the area outside the diminished reserve were now to be offered the opportunity to relinquish their allotments and select new allotments within the diminished reserve. The encouragement of these allottees to exchange their allotments appears to have run contrary to one of the underlying rationales for allotment—that having Native farmers and ranchers living side by side with Euro-American settlers would provide allottees examples of how to best manage their land, while at the same time tending to break up the power of the tribe. More likely it represented an effort to enable settlers to acquire better quality land (most of which the Standing Rock allottees had already claimed) and to further segregate the Standing Rock people from the settlers. However, and perhaps not surprisingly, in 1911 the Standing Rock Indian Agent reported that “There are on this public domain [referring to the land at Standing Rock outside the diminished reserve], 263,756.98 acres (105,502.8 ha) of allotted lands still remaining, the allottees not caring to take advantage of the offer made them to exchange these pieces for unallotted lands still remaining on the diminished reserve” [60].

Gunderson earlier had said the same thing—not a single person among the all the allottees at Standing Rock wanted to relinquish their original allotments in the “strip to be opened” in favor of new allotments within the diminished reserve. In so doing, the allottees at Standing Rock had once again stood their ground (in this case, literally) and had thwarted the plan to dispossess them of their selected lands in favor of ones less desirable to them.

4.5.2. Second Phase of Surplus Land Sales

Sales throughout the reservation. The second phase of surplus land sales occurred after Gunderson had carried out his allotting work at Standing Rock (around 85% of all allotments that were made) and had departed for the Klamath Reservation where he served as an allotment inspector along with Charles C. Bates, who had just completed allotting the Pine Ridge Reservation. In the second phase, all unallotted lands of the entire reservation, including within the diminished reserve that had previously been protected, were to be opened to settlement.

Authorization for the second phase of surplus land sales was made by the Sixty-Second Congress on 14 February 1913 [61]. Many of its provisions were similar to those in the legislation authorizing the first phase of surplus land sales; however, there were at least two notable differences. First, the people of Standing Rock asserted themselves by objecting to the cost of another appraisal commission, as before to be borne by the tribe [62]. Once again they prevailed, and fixed prices were set for land based on when they were entered or filed upon, the underlying rationale being that in general the most valuable lands would be selected first while less valuable parcels would be selected later. Second, and perhaps more important, the legislation provided that (p. 676 in [61]).

“… prior to said proclamation the Secretary of the Interior shall cause allotments to be made to every man, woman, and child belonging to or holding tribal relations with said reservation who have not heretofore received the allotments to which they are entitled under provisions of existing laws: Provided, however, that the said Secretary is hereby authorized to designate the superintendent of the Standing Rock Indian School to allot each child born subsequent to the allotments herein provided for and sixty days prior to the date set by said proclamation for the entry of said surplus lands.”

The sale of so-called “surplus” land at Standing Rock ultimately came at a great cost to the tribe, even though it received monetary compensation for the land sold. Altogether, approximately 943,264 acres (377,306 ha) of land were offered for sale to the public, land that might have provided around 5900 160-acre (64 ha) allotments to additional later-born children, for example, or that that might have been held by the tribe itself for later use and development as they saw fit. However, the combined pressures of enforcing assimilation on the one hand and satisfying the hunger for land by white settlers on the other prevailed.

5. Summarizing Allotment Work at Standing Rock

In June 1906, Gunderson was happy to report to the Commissioner that, “The Indians of this reservation are showing better judgment in the selecting of land than did the Indians on the Rosebud and Cheyenne River reservations. They are selecting the very best land on the reservation and are willing to take it, as a general thing, in a compact body and conforming to the government surveys” ([43] 19 June 1906). Later in the year, he wrote in a similar vein to Inspector McLaughlin, adding that their good judgment “… is due largely to the advice constantly given them by yourself while acting as their agent” ([43] 26 November 1906).

In the same letter to McLaughlin, Gunderson reported that between 14 May and 13 October 1906 a total of 871 allotments had been made, amounting to 295,496.41 acres (118,198.56 ha) (

Table 2. Annual summaries of allotments made by Gunderson, 1906–1910, and his successors. * The final allottee number and the total allottee count differ because of cancelled allotments.

Year	Allottee Roll Numbers	Annual Number of Allotments	Cumulative Number of Allotments	Percent	Cum. %
1906	1–871	871	871	18.5%	18.5%
1907	872–2494	1623	2494	34.5%	53.0%
1908	2495–3768	1274	3766	27.1%	80.1%
1909	3769–4026	258	4026	5.5%	85.6%
1910 to end	4027–4726 *	673	4699	14.3%	99.9%

). He also noted that land had been reserved and surveyed for 12 schools and churches ([43], 26 November 1906).

The relatively low number of allotments in 1906 was due to the allotment team’s mid-season start, noted earlier. Gunderson’s team made nearly double that number of allotments (1621) in 1907 and another 1274 allotments in 1908. In early 1907, he also began making allotments to later-born children throughout the year (Figure 5). The next year, 1908, was a significant year of transition—it marked the completion of most regular allotments and the beginning of timber allotments and allotments to married women. Individual timber allotments began in April 1908 and allotments to married women, although authorized in the spring of 1907, did not begin until mid-1908. Allotments to later-born children in 1908 continued, but at a faster pace than before.

By the end of 1908, Gunderson had made over 80% of allotments that would eventually be made and he pronounced his work substantially complete, although this appears, as usual, to have been overly optimistic. He made some allotments in early 1909, but his work was briefly interrupted mid-year at the request of the Indian Office to join a team of Appraisal Commissioners to appraise surplus lands to be offered for sale on the Cheyenne River Reservation. The commission, with Gunderson at its head, began work in June 1909, finishing in late September of the same year. He then returned to Standing Rock to wrap up his work ([43] 16 September 1909).

On 11 October 1909, Gunderson reported that “all the Indians residing on or entitled to reside on the Standing Rock Reservation, N. & S. D., have been given allotments. The total number of allotments being 3911. This number will be gradually increased by allotments made to children born hereafter” ([43] 11 October 1909). Altogether, he made a relative handful of allotments in 1909 and very early 1910 (a total of only 258 in both years), filing his final reports and maps in January 1910 ([43] 28 January 1910). Gunderson’s allotment registers show that he made allotments to a total of 4026 individuals (Table 2).

After Gunderson closed his work in 1910, additional allotments and adjustments to allotments continued to be made at Standing Rock. In his annual report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for 1911 the Indian Agent at Standing Rock reported that, “All of the allotment work, as far as it pertains to living Indians, is now completed to date. There remains enough unallotted lands to satisfy new-born children for a period of two years from this date at the present birth rate” [60]. In all, approximately 699 allotments beyond those made by Gunderson, or nearly 15% of the total allotments on the reservation, were made until allotments finally were discontinued. Gunderson and his successors allotted nearly 1,345,000 acres (538,000 ha) of the original 2,286,000-acre (914,400 ha) land base of the reservation, or nearly 59%, leaving 943,000 (377,200 ha) acres of “surplus” land.

Figure 7 shows the overall spatial distribution of allotment at Standing Rock. It can be seen that although allotments were primarily located on the eastern part of the reservation, in some cases they followed major water courses all the way to the western boundary. On the other hand, the upland areas between the major water courses, especially in the western part of the reservation were generally avoided. The spatial patterns of allotment should be seen primarily as a reflection of existing settlement patterns and of land choices already made by the residents of Standing Rock based on perceived land quality, access to resources, and familial and tribal relationships.

6. Conclusions and Some Observations on Future Research

In this study, we explored the processes that characterized allotment at the Standing Rock Reservation under the direction of Special Allotting Agent Carl Gunderson. We particularly underscored how the people of the reservation, with the support of Gunderson and Inspector James McLaughlin, successfully petitioned Congress, through the Office of Indian Affairs and the Department of the Interior, to pass legislation that significantly and substantially impacted the “normal” allotment processes and the resulting spatio-temporal patterns. These included equitable timber allotments, as well as allotments to married women and later-born children, the latter two of which were not envisioned in the Dawes Act of 1887, the 1889 Act to break up and allot the Great Sioux Reservation, or the detailed allotment instructions to Gunderson in 1905. These exceptions to stated policy, initiated by the people of Standing Rock, resulted in allotments to over 1800 additional people, totaling nearly 400,000 acres (160,000 ha) of additional land. In addition, nearly 2500 individuals received their own timber allotments, many more than might have received timber otherwise.

On the other hand, we revealed that the delay in allotting later-born children and married women often forced those individuals to select allotments at a distance from the allotments of their husbands and of their children who had been born prior to the original cutoff date of 26 September 1905. This occurred either because there was no land or no suitable land next to the allotments of their family members. Likewise, we showed how the government’s decision to begin the process of the sale of surplus land sales in 1909 forced individuals who had not yet selected allotments (primarily later-born children) to select land only within a designated “diminished reserve”, thereby denying them the option of selecting allotments in the western and southern portions of their own reservation.

As always, there is much more that can and should be done, especially in view of the expanding availability and scope of digital spatial and other databases that can be explored through the capabilities of GIS and other tools for analysis and mapping. To that end, we offer the following three broad topics and related questions for future research.

• There is a need for many more studies exploring how allotment processes played out at various reservations, including a particular emphasis on whether and how the people at the reservations were able to obtain modifications or adaptations to the allotment regime imposed upon them.
  • What would a detailed comparison of the letters of instruction from the Office of Indian Affairs to each of the Special Allotting agents reveal in terms of similarities, differences (especially local ones), and other factors?
  • How, and how often, did Congress or the Office of Indian Affairs formally modify allotment policies subsequent to the issuance of the letter of instruction to the Special Allotting Agent, and how were the processes and patterns of allotment impacted? Specifically, how did married women and later-born children fare on other reservations? Was the practice of awarding them allotments, either initially or belatedly, widespread?
  • How were scarce resources, such as timber, water, and tillable soil, allocated on other reservations?
• A more challenging but important topic is that of giving voice to Native recipients of allotments and their descendants. As Fixico (2021) notes [63], “Without sufficient Native perspectives, there is a continual general bias in studying United States–tribal relations.” Although virtually all of the original recipients of allotment have now passed away, there is still much that can be discovered, especially in historical preservation archives and interview records. Questions that could be addressed might include:
  • What memories have been passed on to later generations by the original allotment holders?
  • What more might be drawn from accounts of individuals and groups on the reservation through petitions to Indian Agents, census records, church records, and others?
  • What were the specific spatial and social impacts of overlaying and enforcing the rectangular survey grid of the Public Land Survey System upon the traditional system of land holding and usufruct long established by Native peoples [39]? This topic alone deserves much greater attention in allotment research.
• As we noted in our Goal statement, we view our findings here as setting the stage for further study into understanding the complex spatio-temporal patterns of land holding that took form at Standing Rock because of allotment. We have included a few illustrative maps with this study, but we envision that further study will combine our allotment databases with the powerful mapping and analytical capabilities of geographic information systems (GIS) to visualize and dynamically explore the impacts of allotment. As Farrell et al. [64] put it “[T]here is an urgent need to understand the magnitude of place-specific impacts for particular Native nations resulting from settler colonialism in future research”. This will provide the capability to examine numerous questions and hypotheses raised here, such as these:
  • We pointed out that at least some married women and later-born children were forced by circumstances to take allotments at some distance from those of their husbands or fathers. How far, and in what direction were those allotments “offset” from those of the father?
  • Gunderson said that he was pleased that people were taking allotment in a “compact” fashion. Can that be seen in the patterns of an individual’s selection of parcels?
  • How do familial distribution patterns of allotment selection manifest themselves, both for family members who qualified for allotment as of the initial 26 September 1906 cutoff date and those who became qualified by later legislation? Were they compact or dispersed, and in what manner?
  • Four tribal groups were located on the reservation. What settlement patterns can be observed as to where the allotment selections of members of the four groups were located?
  • In resolving numerous appeals for settlement of disputes or requests for exchanges of allotments, Gunderson frequently provided legal descriptions of the lands involved. What might be revealed by mapping these allotments at a “micro” level of detail?
  • We noted that the overall pattern of allotment selections appears to reflect the already existing pattern of settlement on the reservation. Assuming that is the case:

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    What was the relationship of the locations of natural resources, such as streams, soils, and woodlands, to strategies of parcel selection?

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    How did the location of both existing and planned infrastructure, particularly trails and roads, railroad lines, and town sites, influence allotment selections, and in what way?

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    How are the locations of land set aside for agency and sub-agency operations, churches, and schools reflected in settlement patterns as seen through allotment selections?

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    What, if any, was the impact of contemporaneous activities taking place at the reservation, such as railroad building, during the time of allotment?

It is hoped that these questions, and others like them, will provide jumping-off points to explore the wide range of possibilities for extending our understanding of this crucial episode in the experience of the Indigenous peoples of the U.S. We offer this study of the allotment processes at Standing Rock as part of the rich history of the reservation and the people residing there, and we hope it will serve as a foundation for further studying the geospatial patterns, processes, and impacts of allotment there and throughout North America.