What made the effort to 'civilise' the indigenous people a congenial task for church people was their belief that Indians, though harder to assimilate than some other groups, produced a better product once assimilated. 'There is a certain innate dignity about the Indian.' Thought the Anglican journal, 'that marks him off from the negro, who in adaptability his superior, is his inferior in those qualities, which, when cultivated and developed place him on a level of acknowledged equality with civilised peoples.'

      Aboriginal infantilism was definitely taken for granted among church workers. A childlike morality was held to be the explanation of many of the defects in Indian society. One consequence of this assumption of Native infantilism was missionary refusal to pay attention to Indian grievances and requests.

Nowhere were the racist attitudes underlying missionary work more graphically represented than in the famous 'échelle de Lacombe'. Lacombe's ladder represented two possible pathways -- heaven and hell. To students the message was clear: 'If you participated in your rituals and things like that, that's where you were going to end up (i.e. hell). To students, Lacombe's ladder was simply the graphic expression of an ethos in which all things Indian were pagan, evil, and unacceptable.

      Dress and grooming were considered indicators of the degree to which the assimilative program was succeeding.