Indian Appropriations Act - 1851 Act

1851 Act

The 1851 Indian Appropriations Act allocated funds to move western tribes onto reservations. Reservations were protected and enclosed by the US government. According to the federal government at that time, reservations were to be created in order to protect the Native Americans from the growing encroachment of whites moving westward. This act set the precedent for modern-day Native American reservations.

There are differing explanations as to why these this act was instituted.

One of which is that the average Independent Americans regarded Indians’ control of land and other natural resources in parts around the country as a serious potential threat towards their expansionary and economic goals.

Another explanation is that due to the country's fixed amount of land, the previously unrestricted presence of the Indians living under different tribal laws but off the jurisdiction of American Law began to unintentionally but naturally conflict legally with the growing number of Americans settling on more and more lands and their own less freedoms and duties. This quickly posed as a potentially dangerous security and insurance concern for many enterprising Americans, and the federal government, responsible for protecting its own citizens, was expected to respond with a solution not known before and departing from that previously practiced by the British Empire.

But the explanation more often utilized is one that originated in the 1830s, nearly two decades before the passing of this Act, when many Americans agreed with President Jackson theories that Indians needed to be resettled westward for their own protection. As decided, Native Americans in the South were forced to move to the Great Plains, but by the 1850s, Americans began to move into that area as well. Thus, the federal government, acting on such exigency and on Americans’ long-standing sentiments regarding the Indians, passed the Indian Appropriations Act of 1851, placing Indians on reservations given there were no other lands available for another forced relocation.