Marcus Garvey once said, “A people without knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture are like a tree without roots” (Brother). Here he proclaims the idea that to live a culture must be passed down from generation to generation, allowing its roots to grow. When two cultures were fighting for dominance in the United States, the American government developed a plan to eradicate the roots of the First Nations, adopting the philosophy of Captain Richard H. Pratt when he stated that instead of killing all the natives there would be more use to "kill the Indian and save the man" ("Kill"). In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the U.S. government used boarding schools to try to assimilate Native Americans into modern American culture; however, these plans only alienated these individuals, uprooting them and stripping them of their cultural identity and individuality and forcing them to depend on the United States. The original purpose of Native American boarding schools was to assimilate members of the First Nations towards a better life, based on the social Darwinistic belief that Indians were an inferior race to the white man. Through these colleges and the “selfless missionary spirit of one of the world's foremost Christian races” there was hope that the process of civilization and elevation of the Indians from their savagery would be accelerated (“Government” 56). They believed that the schools were established so that children of Native American descent would be educated in the practice of personal hygiene, social cleanliness, and industrial labor so that as a race they could rise to the highest level of immigrant purity. Americans (“Government” 57). This justification implies that the purpose of the boar... middle of paper... the Americans." History Matters. American Social Historical Productions, January 7, 2014. Web. January 27, 2014. Levchuk, Berenice "I leave the house for the Carlisle Indian School." Reinventing the Enemy's Language: Writings of Contemporary Native Women of North America Eds. Joy Harjo New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1997. 175-186. "Rules for Indian Schools, 1890." From the Bureau of Indian Affairs of the United States. Reprinted in The Way We Lived. 5th ed., “Early Days in Carlisle.” Native American Literature. Ed. Lincolnwood, Illinois: NTC Publishing Group, 1999. Print .Stone, Sarah E., “American Indian Education: How Assimilation Decreases Retention” (2011). 7.