The written language, passed along in letters through the US Postal Service, bridged the gaps among reservations, allowing men and women to communicate efficiently across the vast distances that separated them. With their own words, distant contacts could share news and express their thoughts and beliefs outside of colonial control, accelerating the development of larger intertribal communities. Natives used the US government’s suppressive education to communicate for their own purposes, to limit colonial control, direct their own lives, and expand their cultures. By 1889, nearly 12,000 Lakotas, Santees, Yanktons, Yanktonais, Mandans, Assiniboines, Gros Ventres, Utes, Paiutes, Shoshones, Bannocks, Arapahos, Cheyennes, Kiowas, Comanches, Apaches, Wichitas, Poncas, Pawnees, Otoes, Sac and Foxes, Nez Perces, Blackfeet, Crows, Omahas, Ho-Chunks, and others could read in English or their Native language. Only nine years earlier, fewer than 3,500 had been able to read. Four percent of the individuals from those tribes could read in 1880, but by 1889, the number reached 18 percent.