Jefferson Had Flaws, But Also Had A Vision
In his wonderful book on the Lewis and Clark expedition, “Undaunted Courage,” Stephen Ambrose finds an instructive place for the Indians for whom the achievement of Thomas Jefferson’s nation-building dream was a catastrophe.
No revisionist, Ambrose unapologetically embraces the mission’s drama and glory. Not for him to convert a historical expedition into a contemporary American guilt trip. No sentimentalist, he understands that nations are made by the force of arms, men and ideas, that there are winners and losers. But he is not so chauvinistic as to ignore the impact of the white men’s deeds on a hopelessly overmatched and outgunned Indian presence.
I single out the matter not only because Jefferson’s triggering of the American “mad rush west,” as Ambrose calls it, is a fascinating case study in the possibilities and perils of historical judgment. Works of popular culture always are being measured against the ostensibly higher standards of “history,” and Ambrose’s book is exactly the sort of history against which the popular culture needs to be held.
Lewis and Clark in their voyage of 1804-06 depended on Indian good will and generally treated Indians accordingly. But this did not keep the party from stealing a canoe from a group that had aided them, a particular betrayal that leads Ambrose to second a colleague’s judgment that “(t)he essential honesty that distinguished Lewis and Clark from explorers like Hernando DeSoto and Francisco Pizarro had been tarnished.”
In fact, the expedition’s true impact went far beyond theft of a canoe. Accept President Jefferson as the “Great Chief,” Capt. Meriwether Lewis, his chosen man, told the Indians he encountered, “lest by one false step you should bring upon your nation the displeasure of your great father, who could consume you as the fire consumes the grass of the plains.” This was the word. Everything else followed.
Ambrose writes: “Hypocrisy ran through (Jefferson’s) Indian policy, as it did through the policies of his predecessors and successors. Join us or get out of the way, the Americans said to the Indians, but in fact the Indians could do neither. By pushing them ever west, the Americans made it impossible for the Indians to become civilized as they meant the term, and it turned out there was almost no place where the Indians would be out of the way of the onrushing pioneers.”
How could “the greatest champion of human rights in American history” steal land from Indians? Ambrose asks. Jefferson and his contemporaries “would not have regarded the question as valid. In their view, Indian ideas about land ownership were a lot of foolishness. A band of Sauks rode twice a year through a territory as big as an eastern state and claimed it as their own. That land could support thousands of farms, tens of thousands of settlers.
“Anyway, no matter how much compassion Jefferson felt toward the Indians, however badly he wanted law and order and bureaucratic regularity on the frontier, on (the land) question the people, not the government, ruled. Americans had but one Indian policy - get out of the way or get killed - and it was non-negotiable. The only thing that separated Jefferson from the settlers was that he wanted to buy the Indians out rather than drive them out. But that too was more rhetoric than reality.”
Some may wonder if Ambrose is not dodging the issue of Jefferson’s responsibility by positing a popular force so strong that it swept the will of a scrupled government aside. I am not up to a judgment on the historical merits. But it does not take more than a glance around our contemporary world to see that when the central authority is not only weak but equivocal and the people are determined and able, the latter take decisions on their own and force governments to come along.
The “cynical” (Ambrose’s word) Indian policy that Jefferson introduced without serious non-Indian resistance could not be imagined in our own time. But it is glib to apply retrospectively the standards of a modern day with a higher claim to public virtue.
Even in retrospect, moreover, those who would fault the Jefferson policy come under a symbolic burden not to avail themselves of the fruits of the policy they deplore. This is absurd. It is not possible to live in America without enjoying the immense benefits that Jefferson brought by reaching out to make the United States a continental country.
His vision is the worthier of respect for being the product not of a cardboard saint but of a principled but flawed politician navigating his way through the rapids of American politics. What is left is a requirement of regard and solicitude for the Indians’ losses, not just in the honest writing of history but in the fair treatment of their descendants - the latter a task that remains to be completed.
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