The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau pg.53

Catlin completed his brief, but notorious tenure as agent in October of 1890 in a muddle of confusion, mismanagement, and complicity in peculations of the Indians property, cattle, hay, wagons, water rights, jobs, wages, rations and land cession funds.

                                    The reign of the “morphine eater”

Agent George Steell served his first term at Blackfeet Agency between 1890 and 1893 even though the agency doctor confirmed Steell to be a narcotics addict, “a morphine eater” in Dr. Jenkins words. The Blackfeet Chiefs complained that Steell would only talk to them through a hole cut in the door to his office, while they sat outside in a separate room. Steell grazed 200 head of cattle on the reservation and was building up his ranch property just outside the southern reservation boundary at Birch Creek.

Chief Clerk E. C. Garrett was conspiring with James J. Hill, owner of the Great Northern Railroad, who was cutting his rail lines through the reservation taking tribal land and resources without any compensation to the Indians, albeit sanctioned by the Secretary of the Interior who waived fees and payments to the Indians.

 Chief Clerk Garrett was enlisting Hill’s support for grabbing the western reservation mineral strip, the gold and copper ores, which he and the reservation squaw men had discovered illegally prospecting in the mountainous portion of the reservation.
-The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau  
pg.53