The natives were in fact forced to assimilate
Native American boarding schools were established in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries to educate and assimilate Native American children and youths according to Euro-American standards. These boarding schools were first established by Christian missionaries of various denominations, who often started schools on reservations and founded boarding schools to provide opportunities for children who did not have colonial schools nearby,[1] especially in the lightly populated areas of the West. The government paid religious orders to provide education to Native American children on reservations. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) founded additional boarding schools based on the assimilation model of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School off-reservation.
