The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau pg.66-67

Cooke wrote the Secretary of Interior Hoke Smith that his mineral claims were filed on mineral lands outside the reservation: “I naturally concluded that they did not begin and end here and not being of the genus of Kennerly, Baldwin et al, who sheep like, finding themselves all together in one meadow, are too lazy and indifferent to seek pastures fresher, I, as I had a perfect right to do, with others, ‘grub-staked’ two practical miners and sent them into Flathead County.”

George Bird Grinnell, soon to be appointed U.S. Treaty Commissioner for the 1896 Blackfeet land cession of the mineral belt, also came under Captain Cooke’s official criticism, “I have been aware for some time that Mr. Grinnell corresponds with some of the worst characters on the reservation, and as they believe him to be all powerful with the authorities in Washington, the effect is bad.”

Party politics and peculations paralyzed administration of the agency as Cooke reported, “Schultz, I may state here, speaks Piegan fluently and has a good English education. Last fall I learned that he had advised the Indians to ask for my removal. I sent for, and asked him, if it were true. He replied that it was. I then asked if I had not always treated him kindly, to which he made the answer in the affirmative. I then asked him why he committed so grave an offense. He replied, “because I would not permit him to prospect on the Reservation, when I had allowed Irvin (meaning my son) to do so.”

Agent Cooke recommended the sale of the mineral strip and suggested it would become increasingly difficult to keep mineral trespassers off the reservation and that he would need military support if a “gold stampede” developed, and that the Indians were willing to sell. The mining interests of the agency ring were becoming too widely known to hide, as even the Indian Office was aware that Cooke and his friends were prospecting and filing claims. The Commissioner of Indian Affairs issued a report to Secretary of the Interior Hoke Smith: “This office has been informed that the clerk, licensed trader, and other whites have been engaged in mining on the Blackfoot reservation in Montana. Whilst I am of the opinion that there are large gold deposits on that reservation, I do not consider it proper to engage in mining there as long as it is part of the reservation.”
-The Sacred Buffalo Visions by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau  
pg.66-67