The Red River settlement stood uneasily at the gateway of a transition from fur commerce to sedentary agriculture, from an era when the Indian was vital to the European's economic activities to a period when Natives would be viewed by the intruders as much less essential to the outsiders' objectives.

    West, who represented both the Hudson's Bay Company and the evangelical Anglican organization known as the Church Missionary Society (CMS), found his efforts largely frustrated by the contention of old and new focuses. Suspicious Indians had to be reassured about the motives behind the educational initiatives. As had been the case before in some of the New France schools and at Sussex Vale, the few Indian children were quickly surrounded in the day school by larger numbers of settlers' children. Chief Peguis 'shrewdly asked me what I would do with the children after they are taught what I wished them to know. I told him they might return to their parents if they wished it, but my hope was that they would see the advantage of making gardens, and cultivating the soil, so as not to be exposed to hunger and starvation, as the Indians generally were, who had to wander and hunt for their provisions. The little girls, I observed, would be taught to knit, and make articles of clothing to wear, like those which white people wore; and all would read the Book that the Great Spirit has given them, which the Indians had not yet known, and would teach them how to live well and to die happy.' Significantly, Chief Peguis never did hand over his own children, although he arranged that his widowed sister's child should be assigned to the school.