In 1881 a government official did the math. It cost $1 million to kill a Native American in warfare. It cost $1,200 to erase one through education. This was never compassion. It was accounting. A government official did the math. It cost $1 million to kill a Native American in warfare. It cost $1,200 to erase one through education. This was never compassion. It was accounting. This is fundamentally true that this economic argument was made by a U.S. government official to justify the forced education and assimilation of Native American children in the late 19th century. While the exact phrasing and numbers vary slightly depending on the source (ranging from $11,000 to $1 million to kill, vs. roughly $150 to $1,200 to educate), the premise that “education” was cheaper than warfare was a central justification for the boarding school system.  In his 1881 essay “Present Aspects of the Indian Problem,” Carl Schurz, who served as Secretary of the Interior from 1877 to 1881, articulated t...