The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau pg.74-75

The Inspector said no records were kept on punishments at Indian schools, but he described one instance at the Blackfeet Agency School in February when several boys were confined in that small cell every day for one week being fed on bread and water during that time, as they could not lie down they were permitted to sleep in their dormitories and returned in the morning. Their “offense” was riding calves.

The inspector reported, “Four years ago they were prosperous ranchers with good bunches of cattle. Everybody had cattle then, and today it is an exception to find a full blooded Indian with any left. What the traders have not got and shipped to the Chicago market the white men living upon the reserve have been allowed to buy at their own price. They have just issued some three thousand head of heifers to the Indians, but it would be better to give these people their money. Political debts have been a costly affair to the Blackfeet.” The Sheriff of Teton County came upon the reservation and removed Indian cattle for what he called “bad debts” on a regular basis, which the agent was unwilling to interfere with, or to protect the Indian’s cattle herds.

The Indian Office suggested that the licensed traders seemed to end up with large numbers of Indian cattle and had rather high priced goods in their agency stores. The agency traders were conducting an illicit whiskey trade in their stores with the impoverished Indians selling their cattle at below market prices to the traders. The agent reported “I believe I am doing all that can be done to preserve the cattle to the Indian who is inclined to be shiftless.”

Commissioner of Indian Affairs William Jones concentrated on cutting the Indians long hair which he considered a barbaric reminder of Indian customs that the government was trying to eradicate and reduced the Indian’s rations. The agency ration rolls were a grievous problem to Commissioner Jones, viewed as a government welfare system which undermined the goals of the United States Indian Service to make the individual Indians self-supporting, though the Indians reminded him the rations were paid for by land cessions to the United States. Commissioner Jones proclaimed “The ration system and the reservation system are doomed. Let them go. Take away the incentive to idleness and obliterate the boundary between ancient prejudice and modern progress.”
-The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau  
pg.74-75