In a century of disasters for Indian peoples, the General Allotment Act ranked among the greatest. In 1881 Indians held 155 million acres of land; by 1890 the total had fallen to 104 million. By 1900, when Merrill E. Gates praised the act at the Lake Mohonk Conference as “a mighty pulverizing engine for breaking up the tribal mass,” the total was down to 77 million.
