The federal government began sending American Indians to off-reservation boarding schools in the 1870s, when the United States was still at war with Indians. Army officer, Richard Pratt, founded the first of these schools, based on an education program he had developed in an Indian prison. He (said)... a dumb general said that the only good Indian is a dead one... that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man."