18 January 1803
Jefferson links trading houses and assimilation to acquiring Indigenous land
United States; eastern Indigenous nations
In a confidential message to Congress, Thomas Jefferson proposed encouraging Indigenous peoples to shift toward farming and domestic manufacture and expanding federal trading houses. He explicitly connected these measures to obtaining land for the growing settler population, despite Indigenous resistance to further sales.
Dates preserve the source’s precision. This entry is part of a selected historical record; its qualifications and sources are retained below.
Context / qualification
This entry concerns the January message, which predates the Louisiana Purchase. Jefferson’s assertion that earlier sales were voluntary is his claim, not an endorsement here. The chapter’s broader account of debt as an instrument of dispossession requires additional correspondence; it is not quoted as a provision of this message.
Sources
- Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, chapter 7, pp. 126; supplied print pages, edition/year unidentified
- Thomas Jefferson, confidential message to Congress, January 18, 1803; National Archives transcript, opening discussion of land sales and trading houses ↗