What was a difficulty faced by american indians under the dawes act?

They were used to working together as a community, not individually.

Explanation:

The Dawes Act of 1887 authorized the President of the United States to survey Native American land and divide this into several allotments that corresponded with individual Native Americans. It also stated that the people who accepted such allotments and lived apart from their tribe would be granted American citizenship. The main purpose of the Act was to abolish communal land in order to make more productive use of the land, assign some of it to white settlers and encourage native assimilation. However, a difficulty faced by the Native Americans was that they were inexperienced in individual ownership and individual farming.

They were used to working together in communities instead of as individual families.