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

The Blackfeet Irrigation Project would cost the Indians over $1,000,000 of their ceded land funds, and by 1914 the Supervisor of Farming reported that not one Indian acre was under cultivation. The Interior Department in 1913 paid the tribe $10,937 for “just compensation” for damages and rights of way for 2863.93 acres of tribal land to construct the lower St. Mary Reservoir and Diversion Canal, and paid individual Indians $2,493 for damages and rights of way across individual allotments.

The Indians irrigated farm lands were forty miles from the agency where the Indians lived and their grazing lands chosen for their cattle ranch operations. The Indian Office provided no food, cash, training or equipment costs estimated at $2,000 to $3,500 to get a decent start in farming, nor did the canals and ditches bring water to the Indian farm lands, but instead transported the water to the border-whites and border-towns off-reservation. In 1904, the agency superintendent reported there were no records or documents to support the expenditure of over three million dollars of Indian money from 1887 to 1904, and there was less than $4,000 left in the Blackfeet account in Washington D.C. The Indians were once again facing starvation after the expenditure of their treaty money, their cattle herd had been stolen by the white stockmen and the agent, and their waters were diverted off-reservation, downstream to border-whites and border-towns.
-The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau
pg.145