Not infrequently, as has been noted, the Indians were allotted lands that were wholly inadequate to supply their needs. The Sioux had outlived “the means of subsistence of the hunter state”: they were unable longer to eke out an existence exclusively through the spoils of the chase.[20] The buffalo and larger game were rapidly disappearing. But what was still worse, the Sioux often found upon going to the specified reserves that their coming had been anticipated by other hunters and the game was gone, if indeed any had ever been there. In the presence of such conditions it was useless to appeal to the garrison commanders--to whom such complaints seemed absurd. On the other hand, the killing of intruders was nearly always resorted to as a warning against marauders.[21] To live it was necessary to resist the encroachment of others not of their kind, for barbarism demands a wide range of untrammeled activity. Thus the Indians came to think that “if they would have game to kill, they must kill men too.”[22] A great deal of Indian discontent is traceable in the final analysis to another cause: the presence upon the Indian reserve, as well as on the white frontier, of a large number of undesirables, both red and white. As forerunners of white settlement, many adventurous characters found their way to the frontier posts and systematically preyed upon the Indian. Undesirable as elements of civilization, they were equally troublesome on the frontier. In civilized communities it was possible to restrain them, but along the borderland this power was either lacking or not organized. Oftentimes when these adventurers pushed matters to an extremity, the outraged feelings of the Indian would demand a settlement or make one. Unhappily, post commanders were often only too willing to take up the needless quarrels of these frontier disturbers and exact a severe and not always just settlement in their behalf. Later when the more peaceably disposed settlers--the real pioneers--began to arrive the Indian refused to make any distinction between them and their more turbulent predecessors. Again, the National government when settling the Indians upon their reserves took no account of the fact that there were both good and bad Indians--that there were Indian criminals as well as Indians willing to abide by the rules of tribal law. Both good and bad were settled indiscriminately upon the same reserve. The seditiously disposed were constantly creating trouble, and the Indian people as a whole incurred the blame and displeasure arising from the misdeeds of a few. These matters irritated those Indians who were well disposed and created an ever-ready excuse for an attack.