Page 216 - American Stories, A History of the United States

Read the Document Pennsylvania Gazette, “Indian Hostilities” (1812) 8.1

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tenskWAtAWA Tenskwatawa, known as the Prophet, provided spiritual leadership for the union of the native
peoples he and his brother Tecumseh organized to resist white encroachment on Native American lands.
dream of cultural renaissance. The populous Creek nation, located in the modern states of
Alabama and Mississippi, also resisted the settlers’ advance, but its warriors were crushed
by Andrew Jackson’s Tennessee militia at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend (March 1814).
Well-meaning Jeffersonians disclaimed any intention to destroy the Indians. The pres-
ident talked of creating a vast reservation beyond the Mississippi River, just as the British
had talked before the Revolution of a sanctuary beyond the Appalachians. He sent federal
agents to “civilize” the Indians, to transform them into yeoman farmers. But even the most
enlightened white thinkers did not believe Indian cultures were worth preserving. In fact,
in 1835, the Democratic national convention selected a vice presidential candidate, Richard
Johnson of Kentucky, whose major qualification for high office seemed to be that he had
killed Tecumseh. And as early as 1780, Jefferson himself—then serving as the governor of Quick Check
Virginia—instructed a military leader on the frontier, “If we are to wage a campaign against What would Tecumseh have thought
these Indians the end proposed should be their extermination, or their removal beyond the of Federal attempts to “civilize” the
lakes of the Illinois river. The same world will scarcely do for them and us.” Indians?

Commercial Life in the Cities
Before 1820, the prosperity of the United States depended primarily on agriculture and
trade. Jeffersonian America was by no stretch of the imagination an industrial economy.
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