Joseph Bruchac Quotes
At a time when Europeans already had a long history of violent contact with Native people, Lewis and Clark made most of their journey in peace.
Bruchac, Joseph. "Joseph Bruchac Interview Transcript." Scholastic, Scholastic Inc., 2001.
This was the beginning of the Jeffersonian effort culminating in the Corps of Discovery and the Lewis & Clark Expedition. Presidential, confidential memoranda to the Congress were more common then than now when they have become a rarity.
The central Indian policy problem for Jefferson’s Administration was the fact that most Indians hunted for subsistence and the amount of land needed to support a hunting society was per capita much greater than an agricultural and especially an industrial one. Jefferson had no personal animosity against the Indians as many in his day did. But he perceived the need to obtain Indian lands for white agricultural use.
The Iroquois were generally recognized, even by the other tribes and nations, and the most advanced and most powerful of the Native Americans. Their example was critical in shaping the policies and behavior of all the Indians. At the time “Western” Indians referred to those in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois and those West of the Eastern seaboard. West Coast and Plains Indians were not known generally known to the colonists and those nations had no knowledge of the Iroquois. Johnson himself married an Iroquois woman.
Jefferson had offered the command of the large expedition to General Clark, but instead was persuaded by him to send a smaller force headed by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (no relation to the General.)
First Indian to hold the position
Indian treaties had legal problems from the beginning of the nation. An agreement had been made at Fort Harmar with 6 Indian nations. One man signed for the United States and several of the sachems, for the Indians. President Washington reported this to the Senate and there was much confusion as to how to proceed. Typically, agents for nations negotiated a treaty but it would not be binding until each ratified it. To the Indians this was not a familiar practice. In this case, the treaty was approved for ratification by the Senate, but what kind of ratification was to be required of the Indians? The Iroquois Indian tribes had formal, methods of reaching consensus, but other nations did not. Whites sometimes reneged on later treaties on the grounds that they were not ratified by the Indian nations. In others, the Indians themselves made the same claim and challenged the right of the Indian treaty signers to speak for the tribe or nation. The problem has never been resolved.
Most of her modern admirers tend to repress this quotation which is very embarrassing for most modern conservatives. However, there is a minority of thinkers who maintain that land, unused, is open to anyone who will make use of it to improve civilization. Many conservationists, in contrast, extol unused land for preservation.
1st Baronet Hart. The Customs Duty was a major revenue source for governments of the day. China, had such a history and culture of corruption, especially around customs, that the Empress Cixi, to the distress of many of her own people, appointed Hart to oversee the entire customs operations. The yield amazed all, and opposition to Hart evaporated except from the officials who could no longer profit as before. Hart served in this position for 47 years.
Joseph Bruchac is a writer of books relating to the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, with a particular focus on northeastern Native American and Anglo-American lives and folklore. He has published poetry, novels, and short stories. Bruchac is from Saratoga Springs, New York, and is of Abenaki, English, and Slovak ethnicity. Among his works are the novel Dawn Land (1993) and its sequel, Long River (1995), which feature a young Abenaki man before European contact.
