It was at Oblate missions that an important innovation, 'the Durieu system,' was elaborated and entrenched. This regime, named after Oblate Paul Durieu, employed methods of total control over mission Indians for the purpose of effecting a permanent conversion to Christian religious values and practices. The Durieu system aimed at eradicating all unchristian behaviors by means of strict rules, stern punishments for transgressors, and use of Indian informers and watchmen or proctors to ensure conformity and to inflict punishments as necessary. The second, more positive, phase emphasized symbolism and spectacle, and treated the celebrations of Catholicism as marks of community and acceptance.

    The emphasis on control and manipulation was a feature that the Catholics shared with the most prominent representative of the second most active missionary body on the Pacific, William Duncan of the Church of England's Church Missionary Society (CMS).

After false starts in Victoria and Port Simpson, Duncan established himself in 1857 among the Tsimshian at Metlakatla, which was to become synonymous with a style of missionizing and instruction of which residential schools were but a pale reflection. Like the Durieu system of the Oblates, Duncan's Metlakatla was conceived as a regime of near-total control and mastery of the mundane features of life by Indians acting under missionary inspiration and leadership. Metlakatla, led by Duncan and assisted by a team of Indian watchmen and enforcers, attempted to impose an austere Christianity and a rigidly Euro-Canadian way of life on its convert citizenry. Individual homes replaced the great houses to which the Tsimshian were accustomed, and a rectangular layout of streets arose in place of the traditional settlement oriented to the oceanfront.