3. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 – A plan for a Permanent Indian Frontier
On February 18, 1803, U.S. President Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to Benjamin Hawkins, a former U.S. Senator and then Indian Agent. Jefferson expresses his view that he believes that the traditional practice of hunting was no longer meeting the subsistence needs of the Native Americans and that a more widespread adoption of farming and household manufacture was “essential (to) their preservation.” By adopting traditional subsistence methods employed by white settlers, such as farming, Jefferson believed that it would “enable them to live on much smaller portions of land,” which would, in turn, free up more land for white settlers.
Jefferson envisions a trade of land for goods which the Native Americans require and believes that it is in the Native Americans interest to intermix with white settlers as they are in a more dangerous and insecure position living separately and independently. This assimilationist view would become official government policy later in the nineteenth century but in the first half of the century, segregation and removal was the prevailing policy.
An example of the policy of removal and segregation can be found in a message by President James Monroe to Congress in 1825. Monroe discusses extinguishing Native American title to land in Georgia and the removal of tribes to allow for white settlement. Monroe states that “experience has clearly demonstrated that in their present state it is impossible to incorporate them in such masses, in any form whatever, into our system.” Therefore, the removal of these tribes in Georgia, Monroe feels, will “shield them from impending ruin.”
The purchase of Louisiana from the French in 1803 would facilitate the removal of tribes located in the east to lands west of the Mississippi. Jefferson envisioned most of this newly acquired territory as a Permanent Indian Frontier west of the Mississippi River. As historian Gregory H. Nobles put it, “implicit in that plan was the assumption that some native peoples would have to move – or be moved – so that the citizens of the United States could inhabit all the lands to the east of the Mississippi without competition or conflict.”
On March 26, 1804, the U.S. Government gave official notice to the tribes located east of the Mississippi River to move to lands located in the west. In 1821, the U.S. government began moving the “Five Civilized Tribes” of southeast America – i.e. the Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Choctaw, and Chickasaw tribes. This process would intensify following the passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830.