February 27, 1803 – Thomas Jefferson Sends a Letter to William Henry Harrison Outlining a Plan for How to Push Out Native Americans

On this day in history, President Thomas Jefferson sent a letter to William Henry Harrison, the eventual 9th President of the US, who was then serving as the first governor of the Indiana Territory.

Jefferson noted that Harrison would from time to time receive information and instructions as to Indian affairs that would be in the public record, but he wanted to give Harrison “a more extensive view of our policy respecting the Indians” in an “unofficial and private” letter.

He informed Harrison of the intent of Americans to get Indians into debt, so they would sell off their land, but in a way that will “cultivate their love.” The goal was to get them to “remove beyond the Missisipi [sic]” but in a way suggesting “that all our liberalities to them proceed from motives of pure humanity only,” and thus “we shall thus get clear of this pest without giving offence or umbrage to the Indians.”

Our system is to live in perpetual peace with the Indians, to cultivate an affectionate attachment from them, by every thing just & liberal which we can do for them within the bounds of reason, and by giving them effectual protection against wrongs from our own people. the decrease of game rendering their subsistence by hunting insufficient, we wish to draw them to agriculture, to spinning & weaving. the latter branches they take up with great readiness, because they fall to the women, who gain by quitting the labours of the field for those which are exercised within doors. when they withdraw themselves to the culture of a small piece of land, they will percieve how useless to them are their extensive forests, and will be willing to pare them off from time to time in exchange for necessaries for their farms & families. to promote this disposition to exchange lands which they have to spare & we want, for necessaries, which we have to spare & they want, we shall push our trading houses, and be glad to see the good & influential individuals among them run in debt, because we observe that when these debts get beyond what the individuals can pay, they become willing to lop th[em off] by a cession of lands. at our trading houses too we mean to sell so low as merely to repay us cost and charges so as neither to lessen or enlarge our capital. this is what private traders cannot do, for they must gain; they will consequently retire from the competition, & we shall thus get clear of this pest without giving offence or umbrage to the Indians. in this way our settlements will gradually circumbscribe & approach the Indians, & they will in time either incorporate with us as citizens of the US. or remove beyond the Missisipi. the former is certainly the termination of their history most happy for themselves. but in the whole course of this, it is essential to cultivate their love. as to their fear, we presume that our strength & their weakness is now so visible that they must see we have only to shut our hand to crush them, & that all our liberalities to them proceed from motives of pure humanity only. should any tribe be fool-hardy enough to take up the hatchet at any time, the seizing the whole country of that tribe & driving them across the Missisipi, as the only condition of peace, would be an example to others, and a furtherance of our final consolidation.”