The modern era of residential schooling for Aboriginal children was the product of a peculiar new relationship that developed between Natives and newcomers in the nineteenth century. While relations in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had promoted interracial cooperation because newcomers in the northern part of the continent were dependent on the indigenous population for the conditions that would allow them to harvest fish, furs, and souls, early in the eighteenth century the emphasis shifted to diplomacy and military alliance. In the more martial relationship that predominated from the Treaty of Montreal in 1701 to the War of 1812, the European who dealt with Aboriginal peoples in the future Canada continued to avoid trying to alter indigenous society. It was precisely Natives' skills in transportation, diplomacy, and warfare that made Aboriginal warriors valuable to the various European and colonial leaders who contended for control of North America. In an era of warfare, Natives were valuable just as they were.

    However, the end of the War of 1812 marked the termination of the special military relationship between the indigenous peoples and the aggressive intruders in the eastern half of the continent, In 1821 the merger of the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company eliminated Montreal as a base for the fur trade and rendered Natives in eastern North America as superfluous commercially as they were now perceived to be diplomatically and militarily. Finally, in the 1820s, large numbers of British immigrants began to flock to North America, many of them to the British colonies north of the lakes and the St. Lawrence, and an alarming number of them to establish and expand farms in the midst of the deep forests that hitherto had been the exclusive preserve of the Indian, the fur trader, the priest, and the soldier.