Excerpt From 'Broken Treaties'

From the early days of white settlement, the native people faced efforts to separate them from their traditional religions and to convert them to Christianity. Indians, especially Indian children, were also discouraged from speaking their ancestral languages and pressed to adopt Western clothing and culture.

For several years, the US Government assigned various denominations of Christian churches to the reservations. The churches were provided "captive audiences" to educate in the Christian ways, and worked to assimilate the native people at little or no cost to the government.