The labor question and other problems excluded from public thought a change in our dealings with our Indian wards that should not be overlooked. Up to 1887 the Indian village communities could, under the law, hold land only in common. Individual Indians could not, without abandoning their tribes, become citizens of the United States. Such a legal status could not but discourage Indians' emergence from barbarism. A better method was hinted at in an old Act of the Massachusetts General Court, passed so early as October, 1652. "It is therefore ordered and enacted by this Court and the authority thereof, that what landes any of the Indians, within this jurisdiction, have by possession or improvement, by subdueing of the same, they have just right thereunto accordinge to that Gen: 1: 28, Chap. 9:1, Psa: 115, 16." This old legislation further provided that any Indians who became civilized might acquire land by allotment in the white settlements on the same terms as the English. In 1887, the so-called "General Allotment" or "Dawes" Act, empowered the President to allot in severalty a quarter section to each head of an Indian family and to each other adult Indian one eighth of a section, as well as to provide for orphaned children and minors, the land to be held in trust by the United States for twenty-five years. The act further constituted any allottee or civilized Indian a citizen of the United States, subject to the civil and criminal laws of the place of his residence. The Dawes Act was later so amended as to allot one-eighth of a section or more, if the reservation were large enough, to each member of a tribe. The amended law also regulated the descent of Indian lands, and provided for leases thereof with the approval of the Indian Department. This last provision was in instances twisted by white men to their advantage and to the Indians' loss; but on the whole the new system gave eminent satisfaction and promise. CHAPTER IX. NEWEST DIXIE The reader of this history is already aware how forces and events after the Civil War gradually evolved a New South, unlike the contemporary North, and differing still more, if possible, from ante-bellum Dixie. By 1900 this interesting situation had become quite pronounced. The picture here given is but an enlargement of that presented earlier--few features new, but many of them more salient, and the whole effect more impressive. Harmony and good feeling between the capital sections of our country continued to manifest itself in striking ways, as by the dedication of a Confederate monument at Chicago, the gathering of the Grand Army of the Republic at Louisville, Ky., and the cordial fraternizing of Gray and Blue at the consecration of the Chickamauga-Chattanooga Military Park, on the spot where had occurred, perhaps, the fiercest fighting which ever shook United States ground.