<P> Moses Tom sent his children to an Indian boarding school . </P> <P> I rejoice, brothers, to hear you propose to become cultivators of the earth for the maintenance of your families . Be assured you will support them better and with less labor, by raising stock and bread, and by spinning and weaving clothes, than by hunting . A little land cultivated, and a little labor, will procure more provisions than the most successful hunt; and a woman will clothe more by spinning and weaving, than a man by hunting . Compared with you, we are but as of yesterday in this land . Yet see how much more we have multiplied by industry, and the exercise of that reason which you possess in common with us . Follow then our example, brethren, and we will aid you with great pleasure...</P> <P> In 1634, Fr . Andrew White of the Society of Jesus established a mission in what is now the state of Maryland, and the purpose of the mission, stated through an interpreter to the chief of a Native American tribe there, was "to extend civilization and instruction to his ignorant race, and show them the way to heaven ." The mission's annual records report that by 1640, they had founded a community they named St. Mary's, and Native Americans were sending their children there "to be educated among the English", including the daughter of the Pascatoe chief Tayac . This was either a school for girls, or an early co-ed school . The same records report that in 1677, "a school for humanities was opened by our Society in the centre of (Maryland), directed by two of the Fathers; and the native youth, applying themselves assiduously to study, made good progress . Maryland and the recently established school sent two boys to St. Omer who yielded in abilities to few Europeans, when competing for the honour of being first in their class . So that not gold, nor silver, nor the other products of the earth alone, but men also are gathered from thence to bring those regions, which foreigners have unjustly called ferocious, to a higher state of virtue and cultivation ." </P> <P> Harvard College had an "Indian College" on its campus in the mid-1600s, supported by the English Society for Propagation of the Gospel . Its few Native American students came from New England, at a time when higher education was very limited for all classes and colleges were more similar to today's high schools . In 1665, Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, "from the Wampanoag...did graduate from Harvard, the first Indian to do so in the colonial period". In early years, other Indian schools were created by local communities, as with the Indian school in Hanover, New Hampshire in 1769, which gradually developed into Dartmouth College . Other schools were created in the East, where Indian reservations were less common than they became in the late nineteenth century in western states . </P>

When was the first native american boarding school opened