 Consequently, they supported a national school system plan for Native American children put forth in 1889 by Thomas Jefferson Morgan, which he began to implement the following year when he took office as Commissioner of Indian Affairs.Morgan’s plan did not allow for the creation of new contracts with religiously-affiliated schools and it called for the gradual phasing out of the existing ones.Committed to saving the contract-dependent Catholic schools, Catholic Bureau director Father Joseph Stephan achieved some success in bypassing the Office of Indian Affairs and securing direct appropriations from the United States Congress.