Burke Act (1906), also known as the Forced Fee Patenting Act, amended the Dawes Act of 1887 (formally known as the General Allotment Act ("GAA"), under which the communal land held by tribes on the Indian reservations was broken up and distributed in severalty to individual households of tribal members. It required the government to assess whether individuals were "competent and capable" before giving them free simple patents to their allotted land.