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.
3 comments:
Excellent post, Nancy. You clearly read the Jefferson pieces carefully and were able to understand and pick up on many of the ideas and contradictions included in his piece. I think you provide our class with an excellent commentary and you back up your points with evidence from the text. Very well said!
I find you outlook on Jefferson interesting. You really show that his views did fall short and that this man was a little biased. Jefferson does talk about the Native Americans and how that they are less advanced then the Europeans and he goes on to talk about how the African Americans are slaves because of bodily things that are not fully supported and given just cause to which make the African American slave differences from the white Europeans. I find it interesting that Jefferson would take time and write about a topic so varied and not have very much proof or logical reason.
I have to agree with you that we are taught that our founding fathers are brilliant and great men to be studied and then we read things like Thomas Jefferson’s piece and realize that they weren’t really that great after all. I believe Jefferson’s condemns what he doesn’t understand which in my opinion seems to anything common sense. As we have discussed in class he doesn’t back up his own thoughts. You raise many valid points.
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