In the case of a particular minority of articulate Indians, the motivation that led towards cooperation with the new regime of residential schools was in part ideological. Acting as powerful agents of social and religious change among the Ojibwa, they believed that acculturation would be beneficial in both material and religious terms.

    Both willingness and the ambivalence of some Indians about the new order came through in their leaders' important decision to accept 'manual labor schools,' the 1840s manifestation of residential schooling that the Bagot Commission recommended. At Orillia, near The Narrows where the abortive experiments of establishing reserves had been carried out in the 1830s, chiefs and other leaders from southern Ontario met at the end of July 1846 with representatives of the colonial government who were intent on persuading them to accept and support the latest Euro-Canadian educational initiative for Natives. What Superintendent Anderson proposed was an ambitious scheme of reorienting Indians' living patterns and remaking their outlook by means of residential schooling. The bands, urged Anderson, 'shall use every means in their power to abandon their present detached little villages, and unite, as far as practicable, in forming large settlements, where…. Manual Labor Schools will be established for the education of [their] children.' Furthermore, he wrote, 'You shall devote one fourth of your annuities… for a period of from twenty to twenty five years to assist in the support of your children of both sexes, while remaining at the schools.' The government hoped that 'in that time, some of your youth will be sufficiently enlightened to carry on a system of instruction among yourselves, and this proportion of your funds will no longer be required.'