Indian Bureau corruption diverted most appropriated funds from Indians.

Evidence

The Americans will never solve the Indian problem till the Indian is extinct. They have treated them after a fashion which has intensified their treachery and “devilry” as enemies, and as friends reduces them to a degraded pauperism, devoid of the very first elements of civilization. The only difference between the savage and the civilized Indian is that the latter carries firearms and gets drunk on whisky. The Indian Agency has been a sink of fraud and corruption; it is said that barely thirty per cent of the allowance ever reaches those for whom it is voted; and the complaints of shoddy blankets, damaged flour, and worthless firearms are universal. “To get rid of the Injuns” is the phrase used everywhere. Even their ”reservations” do not escape seizure practically; for if gold “breaks out” on them they are “rushed,” and their possessors are either compelled to accept land farther west or are shot off and driven off. One of the surest agents in their destruction is vitriolized whisky. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 434

Categorization

• QUESTION: The specific claim that barely thirty percent of Indian appropriation funds reach their intended recipients is a concrete, checkable figure worth chasing against historical sources.
• DEEPTHINKING: Bird’s compression — colonial policy that reads as flat contradiction (extinction and pauperization as its twin poles) — captures a structural dynamic she refuses to soften, worth sitting with for the mechanics of settler-colonial administration.