Thomas Jefferson is an historical and philosophical enigma. As a philosopher and member of the “American Philosophical Society”, he held many personal ideals privately that he did not voice publicly as a politician and official.[1] I believe that this is what Anthony F. C. Wallace meant in the preface of his book Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans, when he wrote, “Jefferson was at times a shape-shifter, articulating one policy in public only to execute another in private, or later publicly. In no domain of his life as a philosopher-politician-official do such dilemmas appear more conspicuously than in his relations with Native Americans.”[2] It seems evident by the many references in the book that Jefferson held a great fascination for the Indians, but his personal fascination seems merely cerebral in scope. Some could say that his handling of Indian affairs proved his ideas to be preferences rather than convictions. The purpose of this analysis of Wallace’s book is to show how Jefferson’s Indian ideology was often in sharp contrast to the reality of the various situations he found himself involved in.
Wallace gives credit to Jefferson for establishing “the federal policy of removal – involuntary or voluntary – as the solution for dealing with Indians who rejected “civilization” or waged war on the United States.[3] However, according to Wallace, when the Cherokees (who were at this time “civilized” by Jeffersonian conditions) were asking “to be made citizens” of the United States, (1808) “Jefferson put them off.”[4] Jefferson, at this time, was President of the United States and could have very well done the Cherokees this service, but his inaction shows a refusal to accept the Cherokee into “civilized” society.
After reading this book, I came away with the general understanding that Jefferson’s response to the Indians was more detached and cerebral than up-close and personal. In fact, Wallace points out that Jefferson’s main focus involved linguistics and their relationship to Indian origins.[5] Wallace called this “the advancement of the vocabulary project.”[6] Jefferson’s disappointing loss of several years work in this area is sure to have bothered him as testified to in a letter he wrote later to Benjamin Smith Barton.[7]
Jefferson “lamented” the extinction of so many Indian tribes and the loss of their languages, but he was responsible for the continued displacement and removal of the Indians from their homelands and helped to destroy their culture, history and even language.[8] He even espoused the doctrine that even if the Indians killed “some of us; we shall destroy all of them.”[9] Such ideologies only served to do publicly to the Indians what Jefferson privately lamented.
Wallace also informs us that Jefferson never really saw a true Indian community, only two “civilized” ones.[10] I wonder then how he was able to define what an “uncivilized” community looked like. He made conclusions based on other’s writings or conversations about such things, which detached his understanding from the realities of Indian life and left him with a romanticized view. Wallace wrote, “Thomas Jefferson’s views of American Indians were formed not just in the peaceful study at Monticello and in the halls of the American Philosophical Society. They were also fashioned on horseback, in taverns, and in legislative chambers….”[11] With that in mind, is it any wonder that Jefferson’s Indian policies were often philosophically laudable, but nearly impossible to practice?
The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 mandated:
The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians, their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent, and in their property, rights and liberty, they shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars authorized by Congress; but laws founded in justice and humanity shall from time to time be made, for preventing wrongs being done to them, and for preserving peace and friendship with them[12]
Wallace calls this ordinance Jefferson’s “legacy”, but while its aims seem altruistic, the reality of the situation was that the frontiersmen constantly attacked and encroached onto Indian land with the unspoken consent of a government that desired to have as much land as the states and its individuals did. Jefferson realized this and even wrote to his friend, and treaty commissioner, Benjamin Hawkins, that “two principles on which our Conduct towards the Indians should be founded, are justice and fear. After the injuries we have done them they cannot love us, which leaves us no alternative but that of fear to keep them from attacking us, but justice is what we should never lose sight of & in time it may recover their esteem.”[13] Sadly, the wrongs dealt the Indians have only been compounded upon one another since that time and we as a nation should be brought to task for our failure to deal justly with the Indians. Jefferson understood that in order for the United States to survive any retribution from the Indians we had to be more powerful and fearful than they, but he also realized the futility of such action and regretted its necessity.
I think Jefferson justified his dealings with the Indians by convincing himself that the “Indian way of life” was doomed to extinction.[14] By espousing such a view, he could alleviate any problems of conscience and continue to displace and remove the Indians from their homelands. Today such schemes and practices are knows as ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide, but in that time a very different ethic was involved and practiced by many men of note and historical importance, and Thomas Jefferson was not immune to the zeitgeist of his day.
It appears that in Jefferson’s mind the final form of happiness for the Indian would be their assimilation into the growing American culture (223).[15] It is unfortunate that he did not do more to facilitate in public what he espoused in private. As mentioned earlier, the Cherokees were the test for his private ruminations and he failed them. Jefferson misjudged the Indians as a whole. He felt that they would eventually die out or assimilate into what he considered “civilized,” but the “native resistance has never ceased.”[16]
We are beneficiaries today of a policy that was framed and instigated by a man who justified himself in order to build a new nation. In my opinion, the enigma of Thomas Jefferson is how he managed to initiate public policies that he personally knew went against his private philosophy.
[1] Anthony F. C Wallace, Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2001), 13.
[2] Ibid., viii
[3] Ibid., 275.
[4] Ibid., 274.
[5] Ibid., 150.
[6] Ibid., 151.
[7] Ibid., 152.
[8] Ibid., 145.
[9] Ibid., 235.
[10] Ibid., 180.
[11] Ibid., 13.
[12] Ibid., 163.
[13] Ibid., 165.
[14] Ibid., 222.
[15] Ibid., 223.
[16] Ibid., 337.
The Pillar and Ground of Truth 