The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau pg.51-52

Agent John B. Catlin became the new agent in 1889, the choice of Montana’s Republicans, who had criticized the conditions at the agency and reported that Baldwin had failed to take a proper census of the Piegans and he had attempted to charge tribal accounts for doing so. Agent Catlin fired the agency farmer and replaced him with his brother, Pope Catlin. Catlin asked the Indian Commissioner if it were proper to pay the Indians for their labor on agency projects with annuity goods purchased by tribal land cession funds. In 1889 Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Thomas Jefferson Morgan Proclaimed, “The logic of events demands the absorption of the Indians into our national life, not as Indians, but as American citizens.” Commissioner Morgan’s Indian Assimilation Program recommended an intense and extensive Indian Education system staffed by capable Indian educators which was essential to the task at hand.

 School Superintendent Coe reported that the Blackfeet Agency School was a disaster. Agent Catlin saw the agency boarding school as inadequate, but he did not inform the Commissioner that the School Principal and Chief Clerk at the agency had serious drinking problems. Local justice of the peace George Magee informed the Indian Office that the Piegans were greatly dissatisfied with Catlin, and that Chief Clerk Livingstone was frequently drunk. Agent Catlin and Livingstone had profited from a sale of cheap “pinchbeck” jewelry to the squaws displayed in the agent’s office. The drunken clerk was urging the Indian women to buy, while their “squaw-man” husbands were afraid to protest because of their fear of the agent expelling them from the reservation.

The agency “pimp” trader C.L. Bristol confirmed and expanded Magee’s charges, and claimed that Catlin had placed his brother-in-law in the position of agency carpenter; had swindled the Indians on their beef issue and had received payment from “himself” for flour purchased out of Great Falls. Joe Kipp, the licensed agency trader complained, “I have got to sell out and leave, they are getting away with all the police money and everything in sight.” C. L. Bristol warned the Indian Office that an inspector could not expect to uncover evidence by carrying on an investigation in front of Catlin, whose power intimidated witnesses, especially the vulnerable squaw men. George Bird Grinnell wrote the Indian Office regarding the whiskey trade in the border-towns surrounding the reservation and even on the reservation, and offered Commissioner Morgan the names of reliable witnesses, but admitted it would be impossible to get frightened squaw men and corrupt agency employees to testify in court before a cattlemen jury and judge.
-The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau
pg.51-52