Subdivision of Crooked Lakes and Muscowpetung Agency Reserves

Severalty policies were intended to discourage communal farming, instead encouraging the nuclear, single household, family unit. The government rationalized that Severalty policies would discourage communal farming practices (already undertaken by some Indigenous peoples); they feared that the organization and success of Indigenous communities would result in similar occurrences that started North-West Resistance. Severalty was also a tool of assimilation, forcing Indigenous peoples into "acceptable" forms of colonial/European farming. Please see other database entries on the Severalty Policy for more information on its impacts.