The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau pg.144-145

By 1904, a government inspector reported “For several years now, these Indians, unfortunate in their agents, having men who were inefficient, and who have held office for comparatively short terms. A few years ago these Indians had accumulated between 20,000 and 25,000 cattle, of which by this time they have lost four fifths or more, largely through the fault of their agent.” Indian Inspector William J. McConnell suggested that “those tribesmen living in the western reservation valleys along the St. Mary and Milk Rivers be relocated to the eastern reservation valleys because the level eastern lands could be made even more desirable than the western hay lands they now occupy.”

W.H. Code, Chief Irrigation Inspector for the Federal Reclamation Service held a large tribal council in 1903 with the Blackfeet Indians and only four half breeds spoke in favor of building a large Indian irrigation project. The Indians requested their ceded land funds be used to build up their depleted cattle herds instead of a large irrigation project.

The lower St. Mary Lake water storage facility and diversion canal were located on the western edge of the Blackfeet Reservation, and the eastern boundary of Glacier National Park. Agent Monteath had requested the U.S.G.S. to incorporate “as partial compensation for the tribe’s water rights and rights of way, whereby the use of water could be secured to the Indians as their needs might appear.”
-The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau  
pg.144-145