The Methodists, for their part were quietly developing a string of missions through the prairie region on which they would build their own schools. The developing pattern of rival denominational missions and schools that was growing in the western interior would, however, be profoundly altered by the direct and massive intervention of the new federal state in the 1870s and 1880s. Ottawa's presence among the large numbers of Indians in the region would give the prairies their own distinctive pattern of missions and schools, and would influence indirectly most of what was done in residential schools elsewhere as well.

    The first stage in the growing federal presence was the making of a series of treaties in the 1870s in the region from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains. The treaties, including their limited schooling provisions, had both remote and immediate origins. British and Canadian relations with the Aboriginal population had a well-established tradition of taking a pragmatic approach to gaining entry to Natives' lands. As early as the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the United Kingdom had prohibited individuals from treating with Indians for land, reserving that role for the crown as represented by its governors.