When, in 1870, President Grant announced the inauguration of his new Indian policy, the sects saw in it an opportunity of carrying on their propaganda among the Indians with little or no cost to themselves, and of interfering with, and probably compelling the total cessation of, the work of the Catholic Church among many of the tribes. To begin with, here were 72 places in which they could install the same number of their ministers, or laymen devoted to their interests, with salaries paid by the general government. Once installed as Indian agents, these men would have autocratic power over the affairs of the tribes entrusted to them; and they could make life so uncomfortable for the Catholic missionaries already at work there that they would probably retire. If they disregarded petty persecutions, the agent could compel them to depart, since it is held by the Indian Bureau that an agent has power to exclude from a reservation any white man whose presence he chooses to consider as inconvenient, as well as to prevent the Indians from leaving the reservation for any purpose whatever. There were, it was known, many Indian agencies at which the Catholic Church had had missions for many years, and where all, or nearly all, the Indians were Catholics. If these agencies could be assigned to the care of the sects, how easily could the work of converting the Indian Catholics into Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, or Unitarians be accomplished! The priests could be driven away and forbidden to return; the sectarian preachers would have full play; and the Indian appetite for Protestant truth could be sharpened by judicious bribery and intimidation. On the borders of the reservation there might be—as there are—Catholic churches and Catholic priests; but the Catholic Indians on the reservation might be—as they have been—forbidden to cross the line in order to visit their priests and to receive the sacraments.