Dawes joined the Republican Party and was elected to the
Massachusetts House of Representatives, serving in 1848–1849 and in 1852. He served in the state Senate in 1850. He was elected as a delegate to the
Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1853. In 1875 Dawes was chosen by the state legislature (as was the practice at the time) to succeed
William B. Washburn as
U.S. Senator from Massachusetts. He served multiple terms, until 1893. During his long period of legislative activity, Dawes served in the House on the committees on elections, ways and means, and appropriations. He took a prominent part in passage of the anti-slavery and
Reconstruction measures during and after the
Civil War, in tariff legislation, and in the establishment of a fish commission. He also initiated the production of daily weather reports to be provided by the federal government.
Strategist for "Half-Breed" Republicans During the presidency of
Rutherford B. Hayes (spanning 1877–81), Dawes was a prominent member of congressional "
Half-Breeds" within the Republican Party allied with Hayes' support for
civil service reform. Along with fellow Massachusetts senatorial Half-Breed
George F. Hoar and Rep.
John Davis Long, he became one of the faction's leading strategists. During the
1880 United States presidential election, the agreed strategy planned was to prevent either former president
Ulysses S. Grant, the leader of "
Stalwarts," nor
Blaine faction leader
James G. Blaine of Maine, from obtaining the nomination at the
Republican National Convention.
Dawes Act The Dawes Act was intended to assimilate Indians by encouraging them to undertake subsistence farming, then widespread in American society. Enacted in 1887, it was amended in 1891, again in 1898 by the
Curtis Act, and again in 1906 by the
Burke Act. The
Dawes Commission, set up under an Indian Office appropriation bill in 1893, was created not to administer the Act but to attempt to persuade the tribes excluded from the Act by treaties to agree to the allotment plan. After gaining agreement from representatives of the
Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory, the commission appointed registrars to register members on rolls prior to allotment of lands. Many tribes have since based membership and citizen qualifications on descent from persons listed as Indians on the
Dawes Rolls. (Also listed were freedmen of each tribe, and intermarried whites.) On leaving the Senate in 1893, Dawes became chairman of the commission to the Five Civilized Tribes, also known as the Dawes Commission, and served for ten years. He negotiated with the tribes for the extinction of the communal title to their land and for the dissolution of the tribal governments. The goal was to make tribal members a constituent part of the United States. In the process Native American tribes lost about 90million acres (360,000km2) of treaty land, or about two thirds of their 1887 land base, over the life of the
Dawes Act. About 90,000 Indians were made landless. The Act forced Native people onto small tracts of land, distant from their kin relations. The allotment policy depleted the land base and ended hunting as a means of subsistence, creating a crisis for many tribes. The
Coolidge administration studied the effects of the Dawes Act and the current conditions for Indians in what is known as the
Meriam Report, completed in 1928. It found that the Dawes Act had been used illegally to deprive Native Americans of their land rights. ==Death==