An act passed in 1887 for the ownership of lands in severalty by Indians marked a great step towards solidifying Indian civilization. There had been no greater obstacle to this civilization than communal ownership of land. The tribal standard was one of hunting, with agriculture as an incidental and rather degrading feature. Few of the tribes had any recognition of individual ownership. The educated Indian and the savage alike were forced into economic stagnation by the system. Education could accomplish little in face of it. The changes of the seventies brought a growing recognition of the evil and repeated requests that Congress begin the breaking down of the tribal system through the substitution of Indian ownership. In isolated cases and by special treaty provisions a few of the Indians had been permitted to acquire lands and be blended in the body of American citizens. But no general statute existed until the passage of the Dawes bill in February, 1887. In this year the Commissioner estimated that there were 243,299 Indians in the United States, occupying a total of 213,117 square miles of land, nearly a section apiece. By the Dawes bill the President was given authority to divide the reserves among the Indians located on them, distributing the lands on the basis of a quarter section or 160 acres to each head of a family, an eighth section to single adults and orphans, and a sixteenth to each dependent child. It was provided also that when the allotments had been made, tribal ownership should cease, and the title to each farm should rest in the individual Indian or his heirs. But to forestall the improvident sale of this land the owner was to be denied the power to mortgage or dispose of it for at least twenty-five years. The United States was to hold it in trust for him for this time. Besides allowing the Indian to own his farm and thus take his step toward economic independence, the Dawes bill admitted him to citizenship. Once the lands had been allotted, the owners came within the full jurisdiction of the states or territories where they lived, and became amenable to and protected by the law as citizens of the United States. The policy which had been recommended since the time of Schurz became the accepted policy of the United States in 1887. "I fail to comprehend the full import of the allotment act if it was not the purpose of the Congress which passed it and the Executive whose signature made it a law ultimately to dissolve all tribal relations and to place each adult Indian on the broad platform of American citizenship," wrote the Commissioner in 1887. For the next twenty years the reports of the office were filled with details of subdivision of reserves and the adjustment of the legal problems arising from the process. And in the twenty-first year the old Indian Country ceased to exist as such, coming into the Union as the state of Oklahoma.