In practice, it was not enforced.

The result was that by the summer of 1874, the Southern Plains peoples were watching both the material destruction of their subsistence base and the explicit failure of the United States government to honor treaty commitments that had been made in exchange for significant concessions.

The Reservation System And Its Failures

The Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867 had attempted to resolve the ongoing conflict between the United States and the Southern Plains peoples by concentrating them on reservations in Indian Territory — what is now Oklahoma.

The Comanche and Kiowa were assigned a reservation centered on Fort Sill in what is now southwestern Oklahoma.