Final answer:
The Dawes Act threatened the interests of Native Americans who accepted allotment by preventing them from hunting and ending their communal lifestyle. It also resulted in the government acquiring large amounts of surplus land that would be distributed to Anglo settlers.
Step-by-step explanation:
The Dawes Act, also known as the General Allotment Act of 1887, allowed the president to divide up tribal land and allocate 160 acres of land to each head of a family. While this act may have seemed generous from the white perspective, it threatened the interests of Native Americans who accepted allotment in several ways.
First, dividing the land in this method prevented them from hunting and ended their communal lifestyle, which was integral to their social, economic, and religious practices. Second, the land distribution conveniently resulted in millions of acres of 'surplus' land, which would then be taken over by the federal government and redistributed to Anglo settlers. Within just two years, the government controlled 12 million acres of former Indian lands.
Overall, the Dawes Act undermined the Native American way of life, eroded their control over reservation land, and accelerated assimilation and the opening of more land for white settlement.