The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau pg.77-78

Monteath had already warned the Indian Office in January: “We are certainly in bad shape on the school question.” While Monteath was in Washington Dr. Martin sent home 37 students who had become infected with tuberculosis at the school.

 Inspector McConnell charged “students with tuberculosis; their clothing being laundered with that of healthy children was a health hazard as the water is rarely if ever sufficiently hot to destroy the germs.” Dr. Martin reported “several cases of lymphatic tuberculosis existed among children at the school, who were placed in wards used only for tuberculosis cases and were there instructed by a special teacher.” Later the hospital was closed and the children were sent in with the other pupils. In June of that year 14 cases of lymphatic tuberculosis were treated and discharged. When the next school year opened four of the afflicted children returned, slept in the same dormitory, ate at the same table and occupied the same school room with other pupils. The same clothing of all children at the school was washed in the same laundry, no discrimination being made for illness. Dr. Martin testified he has never been asked by the agent to examine all children before their admission into school. He had, however, been asked by Indian parents to so examine when they desired to keep their children from illness. Dr. Atkinson stated “it is useless to spend time and money educating a child that is doomed to die in a few years at longest; better to spend the money on those that have some expectancy of life.”      

Agent Monteath opposed any expenditures for the proposed new government school at Cut Bank Creek claiming he needed all available tribal monies to make the transition from rations to farming, pointing out it would be a year before the Indians harvested their first crop, notwithstanding killing frost in July and blizzards in August. Monteath insisted, “I believe that there are other matters of equal importance with education” and asked for plaster for repairs to the Willow Creek School and $33,000 for irrigation projects in the first quarter of the new fiscal year, which the Indian Office reduced to $5,000. Blackfeet reserved water rights were under attack by Montana border-whites demands to usurp the reservation waters for massive off-reservation Reclamation Service irrigation projects paid for with Blackfeet land cession funds.
-The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau  
pg.77-78