The privatized allotments failed within one generation, losing two-thirds of reservation land

Evidence

By accepting citizenship, they ensured that their allotments could not be taken from them. Unless, of course, a citizen could not pay his taxes. Or a rancher offered a keg of whiskey and a lot of money, “fair and square.” Any unallocated parcels were snapped up by non-Indian settlers just as hungry squirrels snap up pecans. During the allotment era, more than two-thirds of the reservation lands were lost. Barely a generation after land was “guaranteed” through the sacrifice of common land converted to private property, most of it was gone. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 74

Categorization

• XREF: The allotment failure is the concrete historical verdict on the gift-versus-property worldview — hard data for Legal Systems land-rights analysis. — connects to: The 1887 General Allotment Act cut reservation lands by two-thirds — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 724
• SEED: An essay angle: the citizen-Potawatomi experiment as a case study in how a legal promise of permanence structurally guarantees loss.