"The Blackfoot Indians discovered their reservation had become occupied by Confederate gold miners, Texas cattlemen, Montana settlers, and Fort Benton merchants, who had established a major trade route straight through the Blackfeet reservation. Whiskey traders exploited the Indians by trading whiskey for Indian concubines, buffalo robes, pelts, horses, weapons, and even their lodges, leaving the Indians in rags and barefoot on the prairie. Behind the whiskey traders were the Fort Benton merchants, like I.G. Baker, Charles Conrad, A.B. Hamilton and T.C. Power who were their financial backers. The Bentonites carved a major transportation route straight through the heart of the Blackfeet reservation running northwest to Fort McCleod to carry freight to Canada, and haul coal mined from the Blackfeet reservation to sell in Fort Benton on the return trip, creating a commercial shipping enterprise between Fort Benton, Montana Territory and Canada's Northwest Territory. By 1873 the Blackfeet Agent reported that 25% of the Blackfeet Indians under his jurisdiction had died as a result of the liquor traffic."
-The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau
pg.22
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