The people who came in through the winter and spring of 1874-1875 had spent months without adequate shelter or food, in conflict, with the constant awareness that the Army was somewhere behind them.

They arrived sick, hungry, depleted.

The agency conditions did not immediately improve their situation.

The transition from the mobile, self-sufficient life of the Plains to the dependent, constrained life of the reservation was not a transition that the agency system was designed to make humane or supportive.

It was a transition designed to accomplish a specific government goal — the ending of off-reservation life — and the welfare of the people making the transition was a secondary consideration at best.

Disease was prevalent at the agencies.