It can be inferred from the passage that which one of the following was true of Native American life immediately befo...
rjaf123July 25, 2020
Answer E
Could I please get an explanation about why the answer choice can’t be E? I chose this one because I thought the passage was suggesting that native Americans wanted to do this but couldn’t do to the Dawes Act. Thank you!
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This question is asking about what is true immediately BEFORE the passage of the Dawes Act. Therefore, the logic that Native Americans wanted to sell land to non-Native Americans but were barred from doing so by the Dawes Act is invalid because we are looking at a time before the Dawes Act existed. If it is true that Native Americans wanted to sell their land to non-Native Americans, the Dawes Act would not stop them at that time. Moreover, (E) ("few Native Americans were willing to sell their land to non-Native Americans") only discusses if Native Americans were willing to sell, not if they were allowed to sell. Lines 18-21 may suggest that many Native Americans would want to transfer "large amounts of former reservation land to non-Native Americans," which is the opposite of (E). Nevertheless, we first need to determine if Native Americans owned their own land to sell, which brings us to (B).
Does that make sense? Please let us know if you have any other questions!
Anthony-ResendesFebruary 25, 2021
@skylar could we also infer that because Native Americans believed in communal use of land and not sole property that would be reason to believe, "not many Native Americans owned the land on which they lived?"
