the government wanted the land for the purposes of building a railroad through western canada as the hudson’s bay company was in need of more permanent means of transportation of goods. the written treaty covered roughly 130,000 km of land from the rocky mountains to the west, the cypress hills to the east, the red deer river to the north, and the us border to the south. through the treaty all nations retained the right to use the land for hunting. however, due to their rapidly depleting population of buffalo, the indigenous people wanted to learn more about agriculture and how to cultivate their own produce seeing as how they would be more sedentary without the buffalo herds. the government brought money, cattle and the promise of education with the intention of teaching indigenous people the western ways of living so that they would be able to sustain their populations without the buffalo.