After the passage of the first Indian Act in 1876, Prime Minister John A. MacDonald commissioned Mister Nicholas Flood Davin to study the workings of the Industrial Indian Boarding Schools in the United States. Davin travelled to the south and was particularly impressed with the school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania where the founder, Richard Henry Pratt claimed that he had discovered a new way to deal with the “Indian Problem”–by education and assimilation.  On March 14, 1879, Davin delivered his seventeen page report to The Minister of the Interior where he recommended the funding of four schools in the West to be operated by different religious institutions. The report provides a fascinating insight into the Colonial Mindset of governments at the time and should be required reading for all students studying this sad period of Canadian history.  http://www.canadianshakespeares.ca/multimedia/pdf/davin_report.pdf