In 1803, Thomas Jefferson wanted to open up trade routes through New Orleans and sent a delegation to Napoleon in France with an offer to buy the city for ten million dollars. However, Napoleon surprised the American delegation by offering the entire Louisiana territory for a mere fifteen million dollars. The bargain was too good to pass up, and Jefferson jumped at the chance to expand the western border of the United States. The purchase doubled the size of the country and provided room for the growing population to settle in new lands. However, there were already people living in the Louisiana Territory.
Before the Louisiana purchase, the native peoples did well. They were allowed to inhabit their traditional lands and participated in the French fur trade. The Spanish and French governments left them mostly untouched. That would all change when the United States purchased the land with the ideology of westward expansion.
The concept of Manifest Destiny was a later idea, but the roots of it are entrenched in the purchase of the Louisiana territory. The goal of spreading out the United States and settling the land meant that the native inhabitants of it would need to assimilate or move. Jefferson outlined the idea of his “enlightenment plan,” which would have indigenous peoples adopt a “civilized” agrarian lifestyle to help them become less savage. In a letter to the Marquis de Chastellux Jefferson explained his view on why natives should be “civilized”:
I believe the Indian then to be in body and mind equal to the whiteman
Jefferson’s idea that native peoples were intellectually and materially similar to European peoples was novel for his time but led many of the policy changes he tried to enact in regards to the native peoples living in the Louisiana Territory. While some tribes allowed for relocation to cities in the west, others resisted. In the century following the purchase, there would be many bloody wars and numerous atrocities carried out against the Native Americans who inhabited the lands of the Lousiana Territory.
The first threat to Native Americans after the Louisiana purchase was the loss of the fur trade. The trade supported nearly all economic activity of the interior tribes. The combined effect of new settlers from the east and hostility from tribes in the west meant that there was no way to continue the trade effectively. In Liberty, Equality, and Power, the authors explain the effect of shrinking territory and the loss of the fur trade on Native Americans from the interior:
Faced with shrinking territories, the disappearance of wildlife, and diminished opportunities to be traditional hunters and warriors, many Indian societies sank into despair. Epidemics of European diseases attacked peoples who were increasingly sedentary and vulnerable...Murder and clan revenge plagued the tribes, and depression and suicide become more common. The use of alcohol, which had been a scourage on Indian societies for two centuries, increased (Murrin et. al, 2007)
While native leaders like Tecumseh, Geronimo, and Sitting Bull would wage war against the United States over the next century, US policy became increasingly hostile toward Native Americans of the plains. The inland US Policies, like the Indian Removal Act, worked to harm native peoples by taking their lands, crippling their economic abilities and destroying their cultures. The effect of the Louisiana Purchase on indigenous populations was a net negative, and many of the tribes still exist on the reservations they were forced to move to at the time.
At the time of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the vast majority of the inhabitants of that vast region were Native Americans. They, however, were not consulted and had no sway over the transfer of the territory from France to the United States.
In the beginning, the transfer had no effect on the Indians living in the region. The US was not able to settle or control the area for many years. In the long term, however, the consequences were dire. Historically, France never placed many settlers in the New World, so the French had had less disruptive impact on Indigenous North Americans. The United States, on the other hand, was a rapidly growing country with a hunger for more territory. The expansion of the United States to the Pacific in the nineteenth century is known as Manifest Destiny. The Native way of life and the freedom of Native peoples were ultimately doomed.
The Louisiana purchase would have a dramatic impact on the indigenous Native American populations in the region. The purchase nearly doubled the size of the American controlled lands and would later incorporate fifteen states into the Republic. Although the land was controlled by French interests and some contact with Native Americans had occurred, given the sheer size of the territory, it would be unlikely anyone exploring the territory would have human contact for weeks or months.
Native Americans were affected in two significant ways. The first is Native Americans had a much different view of property than settlers. In Native American culture, ownership of property was a foreign concept. It is true that to keep the peace between tribes, tribal leaders would designate hunting areas and boundaries, but that is not the same as owning the property. As settlers moved into the territory, the first conflict between settlers and Native Americans occurred over property.
The second way Native Americans were affected was the destruction of their culture. It is interesting to note President Jefferson was willing to negotiate with a foreign power to purchase the property while at the same time not acknowledging Native Americans had the first claimed the land as their generations before settlers landed on the American continent. It can be argued the dismissal of Native American complaints first registered with the government during the settlement of the lands in the Louisiana Purchase set the tone for future relationships and negotiations. Jefferson pursued policies designed to ingratiate Native Americans to the Republic in order to prevent them from making treaties with other foreign countries. He also believed in the European notion of what a civilized society should look like and pursued policies that attempted to get the mostly nomadic tribes to adopt an agrarian lifestyle much like the Europeans when they first settled in America.
The Louisiana Purchase was the foundation for the philosophy of Manifest Destiny. Free land and other enticements encouraged rapid settling of the land encompassed in the deal furthering the encroachment on Native American land and anti-Native American sentiment.
Initially there were few impacts faced by the Native Americans who lived within the bounds of the Louisiana Purchase. Many had already experienced either French traders or Spanish missionaries and had made up their own minds about white culture before Lewis and Clark arrived to explore the territory. Lewis and Clark had differing experiences with the native groups. The Mandan welcomed the Lewis and Clark expedition and allowed them to overwinter with their group. The Sioux, on the other hand, experienced a smallpox outbreak due to contact with traders and rebuffed the diplomatic attempts made by the Lewis and Clark expedition.
In time, the native groups throughout the territory would feel the presence of Americans more often. Mountain men came and forged alliances with some tribes for both companionship and trade rights. The mountain men in time would serve as guides for the wagon trains heading west. These wagon trains would encroach on hunting grounds and holy sites, and this would lead to the friction between the native groups and the United States government that would be prevalent after the Civil War.
No comments:
Post a Comment