The Southern Plains peoples had organized their lives around the specific ecology and resources of the Plains; farming in the semi-arid environment of Indian Territory was not simply a different subsistence strategy but a fundamentally different relationship to land, labor, and community.

The transition was not accomplished smoothly or quickly, and the agency system provided neither the resources nor the support that would have made the transition possible even if it had been desired.

What the agency system actually provided was a form of survival — inadequate but better than the alternative of the open Plains without horses, food, or shelter.

The people who came to the agencies in 1874-1875 came because the alternative was starvation and exposure.

They came not as converts to the Peace Policy’s vision.