Cleveland viewed Native Americans as wards of the state, saying in his first inaugural address that "[t]his guardianship involves, on our part, efforts for the improvement of their condition and enforcement of their rights."[153] He encouraged the idea of cultural assimilation, pushing for the passage of the Dawes Act, which provided for the distribution of Indian lands to individual members of tribes, rather than having them continued to be held in trust for the tribes by the federal government.[153] While a conference of Native leaders endorsed the act, in practice the majority of Native Americans disapproved of it.[154] Cleveland believed the Dawes Act would lift Native Americans out of poverty and encourage their assimilation into white society. It ultimately weakened the tribal governments and allowed individual Indians to sell land and keep the money.[153]
In the month before Cleveland's 1885 inauguration, President Arthur opened four million acres of Winnebago and Crow Creek Indian lands in the Dakota Territory to white settlement by executive order.[155] Tens of thousands of settlers gathered at the border of these lands and prepared to take possession of them.