Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West

by Stephen E. Ambrose

Jefferson was as responsible for this mad rush west as any man. He had purchased Louisiana. He had sent out his “beloved man” Lewis to explore and publicize it. He had printed and widely distributed the captains’ glowing descriptions of the land along the lower Missouri. He was thus encouraging what he said he wanted to restrain. Hypocrisy ran through his 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. Jefferson said he believed the Indian was almost as capable as the European, and although not ready for assimilation soon would be (in contrast, blacks would never be ready). In this he differed from other presidents, yet only in theory, not in action. In fact, he stole all the land he could from Indians east of the Mississippi while preparing those west of the river for the same fate, after the beaver were trapped out. How could the greatest champion of human rights in American history do such a thing? 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. As one historian observed, “A band of Sauks, say,...