The Massachusetts Indian Enfranchisement and Allotment Act of 1869 granted full state citizenship rights to Native Americans and simultaneously removed the special status possessed by the state’s ten Indian reservations, effectively eliminating Indian communal land holding. As a result, thousands of acres of reservation land were divided up or sold in the intervening years, and the land-holding Native American majority population became a landless minority over the span of just a few centuries.

Document D

An excerpt from the Massachusetts Indian Enfranchisement and Allotment Act approved by the state of Massachusetts on June 23, 1869. The language effectively sanctions what the Native American residents of Mashpee feared the most; it voided the land entailment provision, which had previously protected them from losing their ancestral lands.

“Section 1. All Indians and people of color, heretofore known and called Indians, within this Commonwealth, are hereby made and declared to be citizens of the Commonwealth, and entitled to all the rights, privileges and immunities, and subject to all the duties and liabilities to which citizens of this Commonwealth are entitled or subject.

“Section 2. All lands heretofore known as Indian lands…shall be and become the property of such person and his heirs…provided, that such lands shall not be held liable to be taken…for any debt or liability which existed before the passage of this act; and all Indians shall hereafter have the same rights as other citizens to take, hold, convey and transmit real estate.

“Section 3. …any lands held in common belonging to any tribe of Indians may…after notice to all parties interested and a hearing of the same, be divided…”