But the reservation period and the prisoner years changed this.

The conditions of confinement at San Carlos and Fort Marion were ideal for the spread of diseases to which the Apache had not previously been heavily exposed.

Tuberculosis — the disease that killed Lozen — was endemic in the East Coast populations from which the prison guards and administrators came, and the crowded, poorly ventilated conditions of the prisons and reservations facilitated its spread.

The mortality rate among the Apache prisoners at Fort Marion and subsequent locations was high.