Agents who controlled the distribution of goods and annuities on reservations had enormous opportunities for graft — inflating purchasing costs, substituting inferior goods for contracted goods, manipulating records to conceal the diversion of funds intended for reservation populations.

The human consequences of this corruption were not abstract.

Reservation communities depended on federal supplies — food, clothing, tools, seeds — for basic subsistence.

When agents diverted those supplies or provided inferior substitutes, the communities suffered directly.

Malnutrition, inadequate clothing in harsh climates, and insufficient tools for the agricultural activities that reservation life required were among the practical consequences of agent corruption.

Parker’s reform efforts within the Bureau of Indian Affairs addressed these problems directly.