Civilization was always an excuse to justify fiat authority. The BIA and its agents ran an occupation regime. Besides wielding police force and influencing courts where they existed, the agent determined the flow of resources to the reservation. By 1915 the superintendent had “control of all welfare services, and anyone who found fault with his doings could be set down as a malcontent.”58 More often than not, reservations appeared as “mammoth poorhouses rather than nurseries of civilization.”
