The tribal land base essentially ceased to exist as a collective holding.

The cultural pressure was intensive.

The boarding school system removed children from their families and prohibited the use of Indigenous languages, the practice of traditional ceremonies, and the maintenance of traditional lifeways.

The Sun Dance — a central ceremonial practice for the Kiowa — was suppressed by government order in the 1890s.

The Ghost Dance movement, which spread through many Plains nations in the late 1880s, was treated as a military threat and suppressed with violence that culminated in the Wounded Knee massacre among the Lakota in 1890.

The economic situation was impoverished.