Thomas Jefferson—Deplorable or just a product of the times?

When I first started reading De Buffon’s commentary on Native Americans, I was appalled by the demeaning and inaccurate manner in which he described them. I started hoping that when Jefferson started his own critique of De Buffon’s work that he would set things straight. We learn about our Founding Fathers repeatedly over the course of our formal education, and I think we typically come to view them as brilliant, though flawed, men. Though I had already known that Jefferson had owned slaves, I was still disappointed to see how unenlightened his views were by today’s standards.

While he does correct many of the wrongful notions De Buffon put forth about the Native Americans, Jefferson still refers to them as a “barbarous people.” Moreover, he portrays the Native American men as lazy and pushing all of the work, including hunting, onto their women like slaves. In one sentence Jefferson manages to insult white women and Native American men. “With both races the sex which is indulged with ease is least athletic” (43). First of all, even the housework that white women were forced to limit themselves to was anything but easy. Secondly, Native American men did have valuable roles and are shown in another section of the Notes to be hunting with the women. When Captain Cresap murders Native Americans, he attacks “hunting parties of the Indians, having their women and children with them” (45). This sentence in its construction implies that the predominant hunters were males and that the women and children were accompanying. This is another one of the contradictions Jefferson makes, besides the ones we talked about in class.

Jefferson has such a belittling attitude towards the Native Americans, expressed through such comments as a Native American’s “vivacity and activity of mind is equal to ours in the same situation” (43), meaning that since the Europeans are apparently living such a more advanced lifestyle than the Natives, with their written language and all, the Native Americans are doing as well for themselves as can be expected. However, since their “situation” is not the same as the European colonists, they have not shown equal accomplishments, according to Jefferson. What’s worse than his treatment of the Native Americans is his portrayal of African Americans. It was downright offensive, filled with falsities, and seemingly arrived at through observing few African Americans and not considering the population as a whole.

The only idea of his about African Americans that I found noteworthy was that from the Laws section where he seemingly is advocating transporting newly born slaves, once they reach a certain age, back to other countries and filling their gap in the workforce with whites that the government or some institution would induce to come to America. While this notion is preposterous and the Melting Pot and especially the Salad Bowl perceptions of America are apparently way beyond his time, Jefferson did foreshadow something insightful. He notes “Deep rooted prejudices…by the whites” and “recollections, by the blacks, of injuries they have sustained” that will probably cause problems between them until one race exterminates the other (47). While such an extermination has not occurred, and hopefully and presumably never will, race issues were especially high during the Civil Rights Movement and prejudice still remains today. At least Jefferson was onto something.

John Smith's purposes

The tone’s and styles of each of these pieces by John Smith is rather different. In the first work, A Description of New England, it seems that Smith is trying to encourage other Englishmen to travel to America and colonize. Our class discussion revealed he felt that it was a man’s duty to cultivate land, but he also seems to feel that it is imperative to convert the Native Americans to Christianity. It is “agreeable to God…to seeke to convert those poore Salvages to know Christ” (15), a notion which I find disagreeable. Though religious myself, I do not think it is necessary or advisable to try to convert others who are not looking to convert. That’s an intrusion, but I guess that should not be surprising since Smith is promoting settling this free land that is actually occupied by Native Americans. This piece seems largely propagandist and does not mention any of the hardships of cultivating new land or disagreements with the Native Americans.

It was thus interesting to me that Smith’s tone had changed so much by the time he wrote The Generall Historie of Virginia eight years later in 1624. Smith is fearing death at the hands of Powhatan and his followers. As a potential colonist, this story would not inspire me to make the trip, although it may be argued that since he is ultimately saved by Pocahontas, this story may not deter Englishmen from coming to America. As we discussed in class, using third person in this work makes Smith seem like more of an identifiable character and builds him into a legend. I however question the accuracy of his tale. Someone being danced at spookily by Native Americans and fearing death at every moment would probably not remember and note each of the types of furs that the Native Americans had wrapped around themselves and how they were each positioned as Smith so intricately describes.

John Smith and the media

I thought that it was interesting that when asked on the first day of class to think of our stereotypical impressions of the South, none of the ones shared went back so far as to include the time period during which John Smith was writing. Some mentioned historical events such as the Civil Rights Movement and the Civil War, and current events such as Hurricane Katrina were brought up. Even though we have each presumably taken American history and learned about colonization as well as the events that did get mentioned, I think that the reason none of us thought so far back is because of the media. The media places issues on our minds by frequently discussing or depicting them and certainly current events and even the Civil War and Civil Rights Movement have been much more frequently shown by the media. It is evident that the media at least contributes to stereotypes because we did not come up with any from this early colonial period that is much less visited by the media.

Moreover, John Smith, at least in my mind, is famous for his interactions with Pocahontas, probably in large part due to the Disney movie. However, I thought it was at least as important that he was responsible for the first publication from a British colony in North America, A True Relation of such occurrences and accidents of noate as hath hapned in Virginia. Yet that was not reported by the media, so that is not what Smith will be remembered for.