Government's analysis and response to indications of the system's failure were usually counterproductive. Since both bureaucrats and church people had at best a rudimentary notion of the mechanics and pace of the process of acculturation, they tended to react to disappointing results with condemnation and compulsion. Over time, the incidence of comments about the 'innate' mental quickness and ability of Native people declined, and slurs about mental and moral inferiority of the race increased as failure fed frustration. The blaming-the-victim syndrome might not have been invented by Indian Affairs and missionaries, but they certainly refined and developed it to levels previously unmatched.

      Few missionaries recognized, as did Hugh McKay at Round Lake in the prairies, that Indian families resisted boarding and residential schools because they were an organized attempt 'to educate & colonize a people against their will.'

      The evolution of the attendance clauses in the Indian Act shows both government frustration and inability to compel attendance at the residential schools. As noted earlier, the department had initiated limited compulsory attendance provisions in the 1894 amendment of the Indian Act and an order in council. Clearly this policy did not have the hoped-for effect.