a local businessman approved only one of these applicants, Elias Hill, after he successfully recited the catechism and the names of the world’s seven continents - a "civilization test... invented on the spot". Hill was the only Indian enfranchised under the Act before its consolidation into the Indian Act of 1876. The Confederacy Council refused to acknowledge his enfranchisement for three decades, eventually granting him a cash payment in place of the reserve lands promised by the Act. Influence on later legislation The Act of 1857 set legal and political precedents for later legislation by the government of the new Dominion of Canada. Milloy claims that the Act marked a change in the fundamental political ideology behind the government’s legal treatment of Indians: the goal of ‘civilization’ changed to mean the total absorption of their lands and peoples into colonial society, as opposed to their development as a separate culture. The Act established enfranchisement as the process through which this “eradication” could be achieved, leading to the expansion of this process in the Gradual Enfranchisement Act of 1869 and the Indian Act of 1876. Department officials and missionaries blamed the failure of the Act (with only one successful enfranchisement) on the resistance of tribal councils, and mounted a political campaign against Indian self-governance in the 1860s. They argued that tribal authorities were “the major block on the road to civilization”. The Gradual Civilization Act had already granted the colonial government the ability to interfere with Indian governance over their lands, with its provision for individual allotment of reserve lands to enfranchised Indians. The Gradual Enfranchisement Act expanded on this precedent, giving the Canadian government the power to veto any and all legal decisions made by tribal councils. The later Indian Act passed complete control of Indian governance over to the Parliament of Canada. See also Cultural assimilation of Native Americans Indian Act Macaulayism Code de l’Indigénat – a set of French colonial laws with a similar goal Aboriginal Protection Act of Australia, 1869 References External links Band Enfranchisement under Section 112 of 1952 Indian Act Act to Encourage the Gradual Civilization of Indian Tribes First Nations history Province of Canada legislation Assimilation of indigenous peoples of North America Legislation concerning indigenous peoples 1857 in Canada 1857 in British law Canadian federal legislation