 Immediately thereafter, the Department of the Interior issued a request to fill several vacant positions within their Indian Affairs Branch and in February 1881, Reed was appointed Indian agent in Battleford, North-West Territories.In March 1881, Edgar Dewdney (then Commissioner of Indian Affairs) sought to settle the first inhabitants of Canada (First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples) on reserves.Accordingly, in 1882, Dewdney instructed Reed (then appointed to the North-West Territorial Council) minimize the expenditure of funds by (1) restricting the amount of food supplied to the reserves inhabited by Aboriginal peoples (flour, bacon or beef and excluding luxury goods such as tea, sugar and tobacco) and (2) demanding manual labour from the Aboriginal peoples as recompense.