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Excerpts from the Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson |
| I (continued) |
| INDIGENOUS
AMERICAN TRIBES / LAW Isham Lewis arrived here last night and tells me . . . that four Iowas had been delivered up to you as guilty of the murder which had been charged to the Sacs and Foxes, and that you supposed three of them would be hung. As there was but one white murdered by them, I should be averse to the execution of more than one of them, selecting the most guilty and worst character. Nothing but extreme criminality should induce the execution of a second, and nothing beyond that. Besides their idea that justice allows only man for man, that all beyond that is new aggression, which must be expiated by a new sacrifice of an equivalent number of our people, it is our great object to impress them with a firm persuasion that all our dispositions towards them are fatherly . . . There is the more reason for this moderation, as we know we cannot punish any murder which shall be committed by us on them. Even if the murderer can be taken, our juries have never yet convicted the murderer of an Indian. |
Meriwether
Lewis 24 Aug 1808 |
| INDIGENOUS
AMERICAN TRIBES / LAND OWNERSHIP I have now the honor to return you the petition of Mr. Moultrie on behalf of the South Carolina Yazoo company. Without noticing that some of the highest functions of sovereignty are assumed in the very papers which he annexes as his justification, I am of opinion that government should firmly maintain this ground; that the Indians have a right to the occupation of their lands, independent of the States within whose chartered lines they happen to be; that until they cede them by treaty or other transaction equivalent to a treaty, no act of a State can give a right to such lands; that neither under the present constitution, nor the ancient confederation, had any State or person a right to treat with the Indian, without the consent of the General Government; that that consent has never been given to any treaty for the cession of the lands in question; that the government is determined to exert all its energy for the patronage and protection of the rights of the Indians, and the preservation of peace between the United States and them; and that if any settlements are made on lands not ceded by them, without the previous consent of the United States, the government will think itself bound, not only to declare to the Indians that such settlements are without the authority or protection of the United States, but to remove them also by the public force. |
General
Knox 10 Aug 1791 |
| INDIGENOUS
AMERICAN TRIBES / MIGRATION OF I thank you for the extract of the letter you were so kind as to communicate to me, on the antiquities found in the western country. I wish that the persons who go thither would make very exact descriptions of what they see of that kind, without forming any theories. The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees, in every object, only the traits which favor that theory. But it is too early to form theories on those antiquities. We must wait with patience till more facts are collected. I wish your Philosophical Society would collect exact descriptions of the several monuments as yet known, and insert them naked in their Transactions, and continue their attention to those hereafter to be discovered. Patience and observation may enable us in time, to solve the problem, whether those who formed the scattering monuments in our western country, were colonies sent off from Mexico, or the founders of Mexico itself? Whether both were the descendants or the progenitors of the Asiatic red men? |
Charles
Thomson 20 Sep 1787 |
| INDIGENOUS
AMERICAN TRIBES / MIGRATION TO AMERICA The conjecture that inhabitants may have been carried from the coast of Africa to that of America, by the trade winds, is possible enough; and its probability would be greatly strengthened by ascertaining a similarity of language, which I consider as the strongest of all proofs of consanguinity among nations. Still a question would remain between the red men of the eastern and western sides of the Atlantic, which is the stock, and which the shoot? If a fact be true, which I suspect to be true, that there is a much greater number of radical languages among those of America than among those of the other hemisphere, it would be a proof of superior antiquity, which I can conceive no arguments strong enough to overrule. |
Edward
Rutledge 18 Sep 1789 |
| INDIGENOUS
AMERICAN TRIBES / MOHAWK LANGUAGE My last to you was of the 18th of November; since which, I have received yours of the 21st of September and October the 8th, with the pamphlet on the Mohican language, for which, receive my thanks. I endeavor to collect all the vocabularies L can, of the American Indians, as of those of Asia, persuaded, that if they ever had a common parentage, it will appear in their languages. |
James
Madison 12 Jan 1789 |
| INDIGENOUS
AMERICAN TRIBES / PIORIA One of the Indian chiefs now here, whom you may remember to have seen at Monticello a day or two before Tarleton drove us off, remembers you and enquired after you. He is of the Pioria nation; perhaps you may recollect that he gave our name to an infant son he then had with him, and who, he now tells me, is a fine lad. |
Martha
Jefferson Randolph 31 Dec 1792 |
| INDIGENOUS
AMERICAN TRIBES / RELOCATION OF TO WEST OF MISSISSIPPI RIVER I accept with pleasure, and with pleasure reciprocate your congratulations on the acquisition of Louisiana; for it is a subject of mutual congratulation, as it interests every man of the nation. The territory acquired, as it includes all the waters of the Missouri and Mississippi, has more than doubled the area of the United States, and the new part is not inferior to the old in soil, climate, productions and important communications. If our Legislature dispose of it with the wisdom we have a right to expect, they may make it the means of tempting all our Indians on the east side of the Mississippi to remove to the west, and of condensing instead of scattering our population. |
Horatio
Gates (General) 11 Jul 1803 |
| INDIGENOUS
AMERICAN TRIBES / SACS AND FOXES With the Sacs and Foxes I hope you will be able to settle amicably, as nothing ought more to be avoided than the embarking ourselves in a system of military coercion on the Indians. If we do this, we shall have general and perpetual war. When a murder has been committed on one of our stragglers, the murderer should be demanded. If not delivered, give time, and still press the demand. We find it difficult, with our regular government, to take and punish a murderer of an Indian. Indeed, I believe we have never been able to do it in a single instance. They have their difficulties also, and require time. In fact, it is a case where indulgence on both sides is just and necessary, to prevent the two nations from being perpetually committed in war, by the acts of the most vagabond and ungovernable of their members. When the refusal to deliver the murderer is permanent, and proceeds from the want of will, and not of ability, we should then interdict all trade and intercourse with them till they give us complete satisfaction. Commerce is the great engine by which we are to coerce them, and not war. |
Meriwether
Lewis 21 Aug 1808 |
| INDIGENOUS
AMERICAN TRIBES / SPECULATION ON ORIGIN Moreton's deduction of the origin of our Indians from the fugitive Trojans, stated in your letter of January the 26th, and his manner of accounting for the sprinkling of their Latin with Greek, is really amusing. Adair makes them talk Hebrew. Reinold Foster drives them from the soldier sent by Kouli Khan to conquer Japan. Brerewood, from the Tartars, as well as our bears, wolves, foxes, etc., which, he says, "must of necessity fetch their beginning from Noah's ark, which rested, after the deluge in Asia, seeing they could not proceed by the course of nature, as the imperfect sort of living creatures do, from putrefaction." Bernard Romans is of opinion that God created an original man and woman in this part of the globe. Doctor Barton thinks they are not specifically different from the Persians; but, taking afterwards a broader range, he thinks, "that in all the vast countries of America, there is but one language, nay, that it may be proven, or rendered highly probable, that all the languages of the earth bears some affinity together." This reduces it to a question of definition, in which every one is free to use his own: to wit, what constitutes identity, or difference in two things, in the common acceptation of sameness? All languages may be called the same, as being all made up of the same primitive sounds, expressed by the letters of the different alphabets. But, in this sense, all things on earth are the same as consisting of matter. This gives up the useful distribution into genera and species, which we form, arbitrarily indeed, for the relief of our imperfect memories. To aid the question, from whence our Indian tribes descended, some have gone into their religion, their morals, their manners, customs, habits, and physical forms. By such helps it may be learnedly proved, that our trees and plants of every kind are descended fr6m those of Europe; because, like them, they have no locomotion, they draw nourishment from the earth, thcy clothe themselves with leaves in spring, of which they divest themselves in autumn for the sleep of winter, etc. Our animals too must be descended from those of Europe, because our wolves eat lambs, our deer are gregarious, our ants hoard, etc. |
John
Adams 27 May 1813 |
| INDIGENOUS
AMERICAN TRIBES / VISIT WITH I have within a few days had visits from the Pottawattamies, Miamis, Chippewas, Delawares, and Cherokees, and there arrived some yesterday, of, I believe, the Ottoways, Wyandots, and others of that neighborhood. Our endeavors are to impress on them all profoundly, temperance, peace, and agriculture; and I am persuaded they begin to feel profoundly the soundness of the advice. |
George
Logan 27 Dec 1808 |
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