[1] During negotiations of the Numbered Treaties, First Nations were promised assistance in transitioning to sedentary life on Indian reserves and expected to receive the contemporary tools used in agriculture.
Historian Derek Whitehouse-Strong suggests they had an expectation that treaty terms "would allow reserve populations...to compete successfully in the agricultural economy of the Canadian prairies.
The large Blackfoot reserves in Southern Alberta apparently produced an "immense" potato crop in 1884 and achieved good sales.
Local settlers, often unaware of the terms of the treaties and hostile to their Indigenous neighbours, felt the assistance being given to First Nations gave them an unfair advantage and complained to the Indian Commissioner.
[1][5] Historian Walter Hildebrandt suggests that the Department of Indian Affairs "seemed more concerned with keeping the Natives under control than with assisting them fully to develop their skills as agriculturalists".