In the year 1842, the Choctaw Council, by law, placed four female seminaries "under the direction and management of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions," subject only to "the conditions, limitations, and restrictions rendered in the act." In accordance with the act, a contract was entered into, by which the schools were taken for a period of twenty years. The "conditions, limitations and restrictions" specified in the act and contract, so far as they bind the Board, are the following: 1. The superintendents and teachers, with their families, shall board at the same table with the pupils. 2. In addition to letters, the pupils shall be taught housewifery and sewing. 3. One-tenth of the pupils are to be orphans, should so many apply for admission. 4. The Board shall appropriate to the schools a sum equal to one-sixth of the moneys appropriated by the Choctaw Council. With these exceptions, the "direction and management" of the schools were to be as exclusively with the Board, as of any schools supported by the funds of the Board. Thus the schools were carried forward until 1853. At the meeting of the Council in that year, a new school law, containing several provisions, (and sometimes spoken of in the plural as "laws,") was enacted, bringing the Board, through its agents, under new "conditions, restrictions and limitations." A Board of Trustees was established, and a General Superintendent of schools provided for, to discharge various specified duties, for the faithful performance of which they are to give bonds in the sum of $5,000. The enactments of this law, affecting the agents of the Board under the existing contract, are the following: 1. The Board of Trustees, convened by the General Superintendent, are to hear and determine difficulties between a trustee and any one connected with the schools; to judge of the fitness of teachers, etc., and request the Missionary Boards to remove any whose removal they may think called for; and, in case of neglect to comply with their wishes, to report the same to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs through the United States Agent. Section 5. 2. The Trustees are to select the scholars from their several districts. Section 7. 3. No slave or child of a slave is to be taught to read or write "_in_ or _at_ any school," etc., by any one connected in any capacity therewith, on pain of dismissal and expulsion from the nation. Section 8. 4. Annual examinations are to take place at times designated by the General Superintendent. Section 10. 5. The Trustees are empowered to suspend any school in case of sickness or epidemics. Section 11.