 In a dissertation by a Purdue University scholar, Cloud's significance is described ""as a reformer, an educator, and Indian Service official.As a prominent Indian figure of the 1920s and 1930s, Cloud's life demonstrates how and to what extent Indians were able to influence federal Indian policy.His life also provides a window into the close ties between progressive ideas and the evangelical Protestant Christianity that prompted and guided many of the reform efforts in the first decades of the twentieth century.