3rd of 4 part ‘Circle of Life’ series. In the mid to late 1800’s, Manifest destiny was in full swing and the conquest of America was a fait accompli, but the indigenous populations, the Native Americans still presented problems. After the defeat of Custer’s Seventh Calvary at the battle of Little Big Horn the US government realized it could not eliminate every last Indian through force and a new solution to the Indian Problem was needed. For over a century and into the 1960s the United States government uprooted and transported more than 100,000 Native American children into a school system designed to destroy their culture and tribal identity. It was an attempt to integrate indigenous peoples into western society as an alternative to the reservation – but their mission, according to Captain Richard Henry Pratt, superintendent of Carlisle Indian Industrial School was to “kill the Indian and save the man.”