Curtis Act of 1898

The Curtis Act of 1898 was an amendment to the United States Dawes Act that brought about the allotment process of lands of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indian Territory: the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee, Cherokee, and Seminole. These tribes had been previously exempt from the 1887 General Allotment Act, also known as the Dawes Act (also known as the Dawes Severalty Act, named for its sponsor and author Senator Henry Laurens Dawes), because of the terms of their treaties. Prior to the Curtis Act, each of these tribes had sole authority to determine the requirements for tribal membership. The act transferred this authority to the Dawes Commission. Thus, members could be enrolledwithout tribal consent. By effectively abolishing tribal courts and tribal governments in the Indian Territory of Oklahoma, the act enabled Oklahoma to attain statehood, which followed in 1907.

Officially titled the "Act for the Protection of the People of Indian Territory", the Act is named for Charles Curtis, its original author. He was of Kansa, Osage, Potawatomi, and French descent, was raised on the Kansas Reservation, and was a member of the United States House of Representatives. Although Charles Curtis was the author of the original draft of the Act, by the time the bill HR 8581 had gone through five revisions in committees in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, there was little of Curtis' original draft left to become law. In his own hand-written autobiography, Curtis noted that he was unhappy with the final version of the Curtis Act. He believed that the Five Civilized Tribes needed to make changes. He thought that the way ahead for Native Americans was through education and use of both their and the majority cultures, but he also had hoped to give more support to Native American transitions.