Views On American Indians
While travelling overland throughout the American West, Jedediah's policy with the Native Americans was to maintain friendly relations with gifts and exchanges. However, if Jedediah felt Indians were being hostile to his party, he would make a demonstration by having one or two Natives killed with a rifle. This was done to discourage any further tribal aggression against him and his party. Smith punished his men for indiscriminately shooting Indians without any perceived threat to his party. Smith's reluctance to kill American Indians was due to his Methodist faith and training. Smith held contemporary beliefs that Native Americans were for the most part intellectually inferior to whites and considered untrustworthy. Smith stated that Indians were "children of nature"; a link between animals and humans.
Read more about this topic: Jedediah Smith
Famous quotes containing the words views, american and/or indians:
“I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“What a prodigious growth this English race, especially the American branch of it, is having! How soon will it subdue and occupy all the wild parts of this continent and of the islands adjacent. No prophecy, however seemingly extravagant, as to future achievements in this way [is] likely to equal the reality.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“The Indians of this neighborhood are about as familiar with the moose as we are with the ox, having associated with them for so many generations.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)