Jefferson and the Gun-Men by M.R. Montgomery

Author:M.R. Montgomery
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780676806564
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2002-02-04T16:00:00+00:00

73

January 4, 1806, All My Children

JUST AFTER THE NEW YEAR, a horde of Indian chiefs, some recruited by Lewis and Clark, some by the St. Louis fur traders, and a few by General Wilkinson, descends on Washington City. They are on a public relations tour, intended to impress them with the wealth, the numbers of whites, and the enormity of the cities on the coastal plains. It helps, when reading Jefferson’s speech to the Indians, to remember his way of regarding the Mississippi River as a channel, a barrier, between the settled states and Indian Country. And it helps to remember why, when he writes of the “inalienable rights” of man, that he, and his contemporaries to a man, regard blacks and Indians as true human beings, but trapped in a state of arrested development. They are like us, so to speak, but fated never to grow up, as we do. Much is made of the inconsistency of Jefferson’s views of the rights of man and his suborning of slavery. There is no intellectual conflict, there is no psychological dissonance. Nonwhites are perpetual children. Jefferson may be terribly wrong, but he is not confused.

So, that said, here is how he begins his address to forty-five Indians from eleven tribes and subdivisions of tribes:

“My friends and children, Chiefs of the Osages, Missouris, Kanzas, Ottos, Panis, Ayowas, and Sioux: [different spellings aside, the only one that might cause confusion is Panis for Pawnee]

“We are descended from the old nations which live beyond the great water,” Jefferson explains, but we have lived here so long we are sprung from the soil like you, “we are united in one family with our red brethren.” The most important message is simple: Jefferson is now the Great Father. “The French, the English, the Spaniards, have now agreed with us to retire from all the country between Canada and Mexico, and never more to return to it.”

In case the Indians have not gotten the message by traveling to the great cities and through the well-settled farmlands of Pennsylvania and Delaware and Virginia, Jefferson makes it clear: “We are become as numerous as the leaves of the trees, and, tho’ we do not boast, we do not fear any nation. We are now your fathers.”

Then, in a statement that would bring a shock of astonishment to the St. Louis traders and General Wilkinson, Jefferson paints a picture of a utopian and socialist trading system. Given that this is the same man who encouraged getting Indian tribes into debt in order to have an excuse to take over their tribal lands, the simplest explanation is that Thomas Jefferson is lying through his teeth: “In establishing trade with you we desire to make no profit. We shall ask from you only what every thing costs us, and give you for your furs and pelts whatever we can get for them again.” Naturally, this will take some time, and until this charitable program is under way, “the traders who have heretofore furnished you will continue to do so.

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