The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau pg.84-85

General Pratt, the author of the Carlisle Indian School Education Curriculum of “killing the Indian and saving the child” education program supported Senator Dawes in “the divorcement of the Indian from the worse than slavery of his old Communistic systems.” The Dawes Act left so much power to the “judgment” of Indian Office Officials that Senator Dawes became alarmed at the real possibilities of abuse. Success depended on the “character” of government officers in the Interior Department and Indian Service, so much so, that only a month before President Grover Cleveland signed the measure into law Senator Dawes declared “If my Indian land in severalty bill should become a law, it will depend entirely on the character of the government agents who execute its provisions, whether it is a success or failure. If it be entrusted to men of unflinching honesty and broad views, the Indian will be secure in the possession of homes on the best lands of the reservations, but if it is entrusted to dishonest men, the Indians will be cheated out of their lands. If the bill becomes a law, and is administered in bad faith, and by bad men, it first wipes out all the heritage of the Indian, and then it scatters him among our people without preparation for citizenship, and without the capability of maintaining himself, really in a worse condition than he can be now.”

The Indians were now left to the “character” of the agency ring. The United States Congress was washing its hands of the treaty guarantees to protect Indian lands and the promise of tribal sovereignty guaranteed by President George Washington and the United States Congress in the 1790 Indian Trade and Non-Intercourse Act. The Dawes Act opened the door to Interior Department complicity in robbing of Indian treaty lands by massive land frauds of individual Indian allotments. Illiterate Indian landowners were now left on their own to fend off the frauds, taxes and liens of whites.
-The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau  
pg.84-85