Thomas Jefferson believed Native American peoples to be a noble race[1] who were "in body and mind equal to the whiteman"[2] and were endowed with an innate moral sense and a marked capacity for reason.
Like many contemporaries, he believed that Indian lands should be taken over by white people[1] and made the taking of tribal lands a priority, with a four step plan to “(1) run the hunters into debt, then threaten to cut off their supplies unless the debts are paid out of the proceeds of a land cession; (2) bribe influential chiefs with money and private reservations; (3) select and invite friendly leaders to Washington to visit and negotiate with the President, after being overawed by the evident power of the United States; and (4) threaten trade embargo or war.”[3] Before and during his presidency, Jefferson discussed the need for respect, brotherhood, and trade with the Native Americans, and he initially believed that forcing them to adopt European-style agriculture and modes of living would allow them to quickly "progress" from "savagery" to "civilization".
[7] The rise of Napoleon in Europe, and rumor of a possible transfer of the Louisiana Territory from the Spanish Empire to the more aggressive French, was cause for consternation amongst some people in the American republic.
[8] In a letter written to Benjamin Hawkins on February 18, 1803, Jefferson wrote: I consider the business of hunting as already become insufficient to furnish clothing and subsistence to the Indians.
[9]Still recovering from the American Revolutionary War, the U.S. federal government was unable to risk starting a broad conflict with the powerful tribes that surrounded their borders.
"[18] In cases where Native tribes resisted assimilation, Jefferson believed that to avoid war and probable extermination they should be forcefully relocated and sent west.
On the commencement of our present war, we pressed on them the observance of peace and neutrality, but the interested and unprincipled policy of England has defeated all our labors for the salvation of these unfortunate people.
They have seduced the greater part of the tribes within our neighborhood, to take up the hatchet against us, and the cruel massacres they have committed on the women and children of our frontiers taken by surprise, will oblige us now to pursue them to extermination, or drive them to new seats beyond our reach".
"[20] Jefferson's first promotions of Indian removal were between 1776 and 1779, when he recommended forcing the Cherokee and Shawnee tribes to be driven out of their ancestral homelands to lands west of the Mississippi River.